Chapter 83: Rumors and Uncertainty
Lisa’s POV
The silence in the apartment was different now.
It wasn’t the old hush—the one that hardened between us, cold and unfamiliar. I smiled at the memory of his hands intertwined with mine, in the delicate heat that couldn’t escape my chest.
And yet under all that heat, something else began to move in.
Fear.
I balance my weight on my sore muscles as I sit at the foot of the bed, my phone uselessly resting on my lap. I wasn’t even scrolling. I just needed something to anchor me, something normal. My eyes wandered to the high end furnishings chosen more for status than comfort, to the perfectly fluffed pillows that had never been truly mine, to the small indent in the mattress where Leo had lain on the other side for so very long.
I was falling in love with my husband.
The idea felt heavy and unreal in my head. What kind of twisted belated fairytale was that?
For years, I had taught myself not to feel. I had swallowed the bitterness of being dismissed, the isolation of sleeping next to a man who never really looked at me, the gradual, degrading realization that this was never supposed to be about love. Our marriage was a marriage of convenience, a business agreement masquerading as a life contract.
And now… now he was holding my hand under streetlights. Looking at me as if I were something precious. Taking me to dinner just to see me smile.
What if it was temporary?
What if this version of Leo was just like all good moments and fades away?
I shut my eyes, massaging my temples as if that might expunge the tempest swirling in my mind. My heart wanted to trust him. My heart wanted to believe this new tenderness was real. But scars don’t just disappear because the hand that inflicted them now reaches to heal.
A soft knock interrupted my thoughts.
“Lisa?” His voice. Low, careful. Almost hesitant.
“Yes,” I replied, and the word was softer than I intended.
The door squeaked open and Leo came in. He was looking different lately too. The lines on his face looked softer. The relentless knot in his shoulders had eased. Still, there was something restless in his look tonight.
He looked at me for a moment as if he were observing me for some undisclosed reason. like he was trying to see something beneath my skin.
“You’ve been quiet.”
“So have you,” I replied.
He smiled faintly, but without humor. “I suppose it’s your turn to worry now, and my turn to act like everything is all right.”
That’s the truth that hit me harder than any fiction ever could.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
He exhaled and with out stretching he crossed the room and halted before me, nothing separating us. Not yet.
“I don’t want to mess this up. I keep thinking… maybe this is just some fantasy I don’t deserve. Maybe I’m just seeing things because I nearly lost it all.”
“You never had it,” I said quietly. “Not before now.”
He turned his head and clenched his jaw.
“Exactly. And that’s the problem. I hurt you. I pushed you aside. I made you feel invisible — and now, all of the sudden, I know you’re out there. What does that say about a man?”
I stood slowly from the ground. “A man who is finally awake,” I said, with including a doubt trembling within me too. “But that doesn’t erase the past, Leo. You’re right about that.”
“You are my fear too.”
“Of me?”
“Of us. Of how quickly this is changing. Of how easily my heart is slipping into something that it’s been protecting itself from for years.”
He looks back at me now, his dark eyes wan with what looks like it could be regret and so, so close to having just been in the right place. I don’t want to be a wrong in your life, Lisa.”
“You were, I realized with an overwhelming sense of honesty. For a long time, you were one of my worst mistakes. It’s not because of who you are...it’s because of how isolated I was with you.”
That utterance crushed the mirage, the fantasy, the moment we were pretending wasn’t layered in history. Yet somehow, it never disintegrated us. It just made the air more real.
“I never want to feel so alone with you again,” he breathed. Even if you hate me in the end, I can’t bear the thought of me going back to how we used to be.”
Again silence came between us, but this time it was serrated. True. Necessary.
I turned my eyes to the window and browsed through the city night-scape, as its lights blinked like tiny, unsure lusters.
“Do you ever ask yourself,” I whispered, “if we feel all of this just ‘cause we’re trying to fix something broken? Like we’re trying to salvage the fact that this marriage wasn’t a total bust?”
Yes, ”he said without hesitation. “I just wonder every second. It’s the way my chest tightens when you enter a room. How my body responds when you touch me. How the world stops when you look at me like that. And I don’t know if you get that kind of feeling from obligation or guilt, Lisa. I think what that feeling comes from is something real.”
My breath caught, and suddenly my throat was dry.
Feelings don’t always come with safety,” I whispered.
“No,” he agreed. “But they always lead to the truth.”
There it was again — that intensity. That way he could squeeze all the words into one sentence that sliced into my chest.
“And what if the truth is that we waited too long?” I wondered. “What if the most ideal iteration of us has gone by?”
He stepped closer. Then to hide what was happening between us now?” I pressed too near. I could feel the heat of him, the quiet pull, like a tide rising.
“Then we create a new version,” he whispered. “One that doesn’t beat us up for what is done, but learns from it.”
His hand raised, brushing against my arm, just enough to make me shudder. Not possessive. Not demanding. Just a question in the faintest of touches.
“Do you trust me at all?” he asked.
The answer scared me because it came too quickly. The answer frightened me because it came so fast.
“Yes.”
He exhaled as if just saying that word had unlocked chains wrapped around his chest. “Then don’t listen to the ghosts of who we used to be. Let’s listen to who we’re becoming instead.”
Something inside me broke at the tenderness of that—and healed at the same time. Slowly I raised my hand and placed it on his heart. That steady beat beneath my palm gave me a sense of security. Real. Human.
“I have no idea where this is going to lead,” I told him.
“Me too,” he answered softly. “But for the first time, I really want to know.”
The doubts didn’t pop up again. They still remained – silent whispers at the edges of my mind. But I also realized something else in that moment as I stood there with him, our foreheads nearly touching, our breaths mingling, our hearts racing not apart but together in that very invocation was a very real one.