Chapter 2 The man who waited in the dark

The cinema smelled of buttered popcorn and old carpet, and Toria had never loved a place so much.

For the first time in eighteen months, she wasn't waiting for someone to tell her what to do.

She watched three films back-to-back. A comedy where she laughed too loudly, a thriller whose ending she barely remembered, and a romance where a man chased a woman through an airport in the rain, begging her not to leave.

Toria sat in the darkness with her hands pressed against her mouth, crying so quietly that the stranger beside her politely pretended not to notice.

She envied that woman on the screen.

Not because someone was chasing her, but because someone was afraid of losing her.

No one asked where she'd been. No one needed her to be a daughter, a wife, a vessel, or a promise kept.

She ate chips for lunch and ice cream for dinner. She walked along the harbour wall with her shoes in her hand, letting the cold wind scatter her hair.

For a few precious hours, she forgot about the expensive house, the unanswered questions, the endless arguments about children, and the husband who could barely look at her without finding something to criticize.

As the lights came on across the water, she thought, with a clarity that scared her:

This is what it feels like to belong to myself.

It was nearly midnight when she finally turned her phone back on.

The screen lit up almost immediately.

Forty-one missed calls.

All from one name.

Chriss.

Her stomach tightened.

She stared at the notifications, scrolling through them as if the number might somehow change.

He had called repeatedly, sometimes three times within the same minute.

There were no messages.

Not even one.

She slipped the phone into her handbag and ordered a cab.

The house was dark when Toria arrived.

She unlocked the front door quietly, careful not to make a sound. She had no intention of explaining herself tonight. She was exhausted, and for once, she wanted to go to bed without having to defend her existence.

She made it three steps inside before a hand closed around her arm.

Toria screamed.

The lamp snapped on.

Chriss stood in front of her, his hair wild, his shirt creased, and his chest heaving as though he'd run all the way home.

"Jesus, Toria!"

His hands moved over her face, her shoulders, and her arms, turning her one way and then the other.

"Are you hurt? Did anyone touch you? Where have you been?"

His voice cracked on the last question.

He stopped.

Toria couldn't breathe.

His palm was warm against her jaw. His thumb trembled slightly as he brushed her cheek.

In his eyes, for one unguarded second, was something so raw and frightened that every wall she'd built in the cinema came tumbling down.

He was worried.

He was worried about me.

"Chriss," she whispered.

The shutters slammed.

His hands dropped. His expression changed so quickly she almost questioned what she'd just witnessed.

His face became cold, perfectly and terrifyingly cold.

He stepped back as though she had burned him.

"Where were you?"

The softness in her chest curdled.

"Out."

"I called you forty times."

"I counted."

His jaw tightened.

"Who were you with?"

"No one! I was alone. Is that so impossible?"

He stared at her handbag, then back at her face.

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying!"

"You expect me to believe you disappeared for an entire day without telling anyone where you were?"

"Anyone? Or you?"

His eyes narrowed.

"Toria."

"What? You want an explanation? Fine. I went out. I watched movies. I ate. I walked around. I did absolutely nothing wrong."

"And you couldn't answer your phone?"

"I didn't want to."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

She watched him decide to be cruel.

"You can't be trusted with an afternoon, and I'm meant to trust you with a child?"

Her lips parted.

"Eighteen months, Toria. Eighteen months, and you still can't do the one thing a wife is for."

Something inside her snapped.

She didn't remember crossing the hall.

She only remembered the flat crack of her palm against his cheek.

Chriss turned his face slightly.

Before he could respond, her fists were hammering against his chest.

"I am not a thing!"

He caught her wrists.

"Stop."

"No! I'm not something you use whenever you feel like it!"

"Toria..."

"I am your wife, not some machine you expect to produce a child!"

Her voice broke.

Eighteen months of swallowed arguments, lonely nights, and unanswered questions came pouring out of her.

He held her wrists until her strength finally gave way.

Then he pulled her against him.

She fought for another second before collapsing, her face buried against his shirt.

He said nothing.

His heart was racing beneath her cheek.

Maybe it had been racing for forty missed calls.

Maybe, for one moment, he'd actually been afraid of losing her.

"That was unforgivable," he said eventually.

His voice was rough and unusually quiet.

"What I said. I'm sorry."

Toria pulled away and wiped her face.

"No. You're not."

She didn't wait for an answer.

She went upstairs.

She did not enter their bedroom.

The guest bedroom smelled of lavender and dust.

Toria sat on the unused bed, staring at the unfamiliar curtains.

She pressed both hands against her stomach.

There was something Chriss didn't know.

Something she'd buried so deeply that sometimes she convinced herself it had never happened.

Six months ago, she'd been pregnant.

Two pink lines.

She remembered standing in the bathroom, holding the test with trembling fingers, waiting for the overwhelming happiness everyone said a woman felt when she discovered she was going to become a mother.

But joy never came.

What came instead was fear.

A cold, animal terror.

A child would bind her to Chriss forever. It would give him another reason to control her, another expectation to place on her shoulders.

She had imagined sleepless nights, a crying baby, and a husband who would still turn his back on her.

Three weeks later, she woke up in a pool of blood.

The hospital smelled of antiseptic. A doctor had spoken gently, explaining what had happened.

She remembered nodding.

She remembered the apology.

And she remembered feeling something far worse than grief.

Relief.

The realization had frightened her more than the miscarriage itself.

She had wanted the baby gone.

Or perhaps she'd only wanted to escape the life that came with it.

She had never told Chriss.

She'd called it a bad cramp and buried the truth.

But sometimes, in the middle of the night, a small voice asked the same question.

What if you wanted it gone?

She pulled a pillow into her arms and rocked gently until the sky outside turned grey.

The door opened without a knock.

Chriss stood in his shirtsleeves, looking at the made bed, then at her.

His gaze shifted to the small bag she'd dragged out of the closet.

"Our bedroom is down the hall."

"Your bedroom."

He stepped inside and shut the door.

The room suddenly felt smaller.

"Get up."

"No."

His eyebrows drew together.

"What?"

She stood to face him, although her knees felt like water.

"I said no. I'm done, Chriss."

"Don't start this."

"I won't share a bed with you. I won't have sex with you. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not until you stop treating me like a transaction."

Shock crossed his face.

Then anger.

Then something she would have called panic in any other man.

"You're my wife."

"Not your property."

"You're making this unnecessarily difficult."

A bitter laugh escaped her.

"Am I? Because from where I'm standing, you've made my entire life difficult."

He ran a hand over his face.

"You don't understand what you're doing."

"Then explain."

Her voice broke despite her efforts to control it.

"Why a son, Chriss? Why me? You can't stand me. You barely speak to me unless it's about getting pregnant. So why do you need me to be the one?"

Silence.

He looked at her the way he had the night they met, measuring, unreadable, deciding how much truth she could survive.

"Do you even know," he said very quietly, "why I married you?"

The question dropped between them like a stone into a well.

Toria stared at him.

"You married me because..."

She stopped.

Because he'd asked.

Because her father had said it was a good match.

Because she'd been twenty-four, hopelessly in love, and convinced that marrying the man she wanted was the beginning of everything she'd ever dreamed of.

She had never questioned it.

Not once.

Chriss watched the understanding crawl across her face.

And for the first time since she'd known him, he looked away first.

"Go to sleep," he said.

Then he turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Toria remained standing in the middle of the room.

For eighteen months, she'd believed she understood the man she'd married.

Now, alone with the silence he'd left behind, she wasn't sure she'd ever known him at all.