Chapter 13
826 Words
Rain tapped softly against the windows behind him.
The study smelled faintly of whiskey and antiseptic now.
Emma sat quietly beside the desk after wrapping the bandage around his injured hand, unsure whether she should leave or stay.
He still hadn’t looked away from the photograph.
The woman in the frame smiled brightly beside a much younger version of him.
Before the coldness.
Before the walls.
Before grief hollowed him out from the inside.
Emma followed his gaze carefully.
“She was beautiful.”
A long silence passed.
Then finally—
“She never got to enjoy any of it.”
His voice sounded distant.
Almost detached.
Emma frowned slightly.
“The money,” he clarified quietly. “The success. The life I promised her.”
His fingers tightened slightly against the armrest.
“We had nothing when we met.”
For the first time, Emma saw something soften in his expression.
Not pain.
Memory.
“She stayed anyway.”
A faint breath escaped him.
“Everyone told her to leave me. Said I was too obsessed with work. Too ambitious. Too difficult.”
Emma almost smiled slightly.
“That last one may have been true.”
A brief flicker crossed his face.
Gone instantly.
But there.
“We were supposed to get married after Lia was born.”
The room fell quiet again.
Emma’s chest tightened.
“She died three days after Lia came home from the hospital.”
The words hit harder this time.
Because suddenly the grief felt smaller.
Sharper.
Fresh in a way that never healed correctly.
Emma looked toward the photograph again.
“She insisted on cooking that night,” he said quietly. “My favorite meal.”
His eyes lowered slowly toward his bandaged hand.
“The maid told me she wouldn’t let anyone help her.”
Outside, thunder rumbled faintly across the city.
“I wasn’t home.”
Something about the way he said it made Emma’s stomach twist.
Not anger.
Punishment.
“She called me twice that evening.”
His voice roughened slightly.
“I ignored both calls because I was in a meeting.”
Silence.
Dead silence.
Emma could barely breathe now.
“When I got back…”
He stopped.
For the first time since she entered the room, his composure cracked visibly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Enough for the devastation underneath to finally show.
“The entire kitchen was on fire.”
Emma’s throat tightened painfully.
He stared at the photograph like it physically hurt to do so.
“I couldn’t get to her.”
The words came out almost broken.
“There was too much smoke.”
Emma closed her eyes briefly.
“She was…”
His jaw tightened hard.
“…burned beyond recognition by the time they got her out.”
The rain outside suddenly sounded deafening.
Emma felt tears sting unexpectedly behind her eyes.
Not because of the tragedy itself.
But because she finally understood him.
Completely.
The control.
The distance.
The obsession with security.
The way he watched Lia constantly like the world might steal her too if he looked away for even a second.
He lost the woman he loved while trying to build a future for her.
And now he lived every day carrying the belief that answering two phone calls could have changed everything.
“They never found the exact cause,” he said quietly after a long while. “Faulty gas line. Electrical spark. Different theories.”
A bitter pause.
“No answers.”
Emma swallowed hard.
“And you blame yourself anyway.”
His laugh this time held no humor at all.
“How could I not?”
Finally—
Finally—
He looked directly at her.
Eyes exhausted.
Destroyed.
“I chose work over her that night.”
“You didn’t know—”
“I should’ve been there.”
The force behind those words silenced the room.
Years later, and he still lived inside that single moment.
Still standing outside a burning house in his mind.
Still hearing the sirens.
Still too late.
Emma looked at him carefully.
And for the first time since meeting him—
She didn’t see a cold man.
She saw someone grieving so deeply he no longer knew how to exist without guilt.
Upstairs, a faint sound echoed softly through the hallway.
Lia shifting in bed.
His eyes flickered upward instantly.
Instinctive.
Protective.
Terrified.
Emma noticed.
Of course she noticed.
“She’s all you have left of her,” Emma whispered.
His expression tightened painfully.
“No,” he answered quietly.
“She’s everything.”
The room fell silent again.
Heavy.
Breathing.
Alive with things neither of them knew how to say.
Then softly—
Almost too softly to hear—
“She would’ve liked you.”
Emma froze.
His eyes lowered back toward the photograph.
“She liked kind people.”
Something warm and aching spread painfully through Emma’s chest.
Because somehow—
That hurt more than everything else.
- Writer
