Chapter 2

The door opened again, and a man in a sharp suit with a weary expression walked in. This was Dr. Reynolds, and from the look on his face, he was also Sophia' s friend. He didn't bother with pleasantries.

"Ethan," he said, his voice flat. "I've canceled my afternoon appointments for this. Sophia is on her way."

He saw the blank look on my face. "You've been married for five years. It was a contractual agreement. Your family's business was failing, her grandfather insisted she marry before taking over the company. You were convenient. You were also obsessed with her since high school, so you jumped at the chance."

Each word was a cold, hard fact that settled in my gut like a stone. A sham marriage. It explained the distance, the coldness. I wasn't her husband, I was a business transaction she was forced to endure.

"She doesn't love you, Ethan," Dr. Reynolds continued, his tone softening slightly, as if he pitied me. "You know she's always been close with Liam. He's been by her side since they were kids. You've always known that."

Liam. Liam Hayes. I remembered him too. Handsome, wealthy, and always orbiting Sophia. Her "white moonlight," everyone had called him. The perfect match. And I was the desperate fool who got in the way.

Bits and pieces of the last five years started to come back, not as memories, but as ugly, secondhand stories people told me. I had apparently spent the entire marriage trying to win Sophia's affection. I cooked for her, waited up for her, followed her to business events where I wasn't wanted. I had begged for her attention, cried when she ignored me, and made spectacular scenes of jealousy over Liam. I was a laughingstock, the clingy husband of the untouchable ice queen CEO. The shame was suffocating.

The worst part was the suicide attempt. Dr. Reynolds explained it in clinical detail. I had sent her a picture of my bleeding wrist from the bathtub. Her only reply, minutes later, was a text message.

"Don't bother me. I'm in a meeting."

The man I used to be must have felt his world end. But me, the eighteen-year-old trapped in this older body, felt only a surge of cold fury. How could I have let myself become so pathetic? How could I have given another person that much power over me?

When Sophia finally arrived, she was exactly as I remembered from high school, only more so. Her beauty was sharper, colder. She wore a perfectly tailored black dress, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. She looked at me not with concern or anger, but with a profound, bone-deep weariness. She was tired of me. Tired of my drama.

"The doctor said you'll live," she said, her voice as crisp and emotionless as a bank statement. "I've arranged for your discharge. The car is waiting."

She didn't ask how I was. She didn't touch me.

We drove back to our house-her house-in silence. It wasn't a home, it was a museum. A sprawling modern mansion of glass and steel, filled with minimalist furniture and expensive art. It was as cold and uninviting as she was. I walked through the cavernous rooms, a stranger in my own life. I watched her as she moved through the space, graceful and distant. She was beautiful, an ice sculpture I was forbidden to touch. But I felt no longing. All I felt was the desperate, overwhelming need to escape. This life, this house, this marriage-it was a cage. And I had to get out.