My Surreal Marriage: Life with a Billionaire

Chapter 16

When he looked up at me again, his gaze was sharp and direct, with a piercing quality I had never seen before. The usual indifference and assessment were gone, replaced by a… profound, almost searing… sympathy? No, it was more than sympathy. It was a look heavy with a kind of shared understanding, the silence that comes after seeing a cruel truth.

His gaze made me uneasy. I didn’t need pity, especially not from him.

“Anyway,” I said quickly, looking away and forcing a lighter tone to break the heavy atmosphere. “I didn’t say all that to get your sympathy or… to make you think I’m pathetic. It just… came to mind.”

I looked down, my fingers gently stroking the cold smart collar on Keats’s neck, its faint blue light blinking between my fingers. “…You were right. The data… it has its uses. I was just thinking,” I looked back up at Lucas, my tone becoming serious, “maybe… Keats really does need this collar. Especially since she’s… well, going into heat soon. She’s been trying to get outside lately, and she yowls at the strays from the window. With a tracker, if she ever did slip out, at least I could find her quickly, keep her from getting hurt or… causing other trouble.” It was hard to get the words out. It was a concession of sorts, an admission, though I still hated the cold device.

Lucas didn’t respond right away. He just watched me, his expression complex and unreadable. The silence stretched between us.

Just as it was about to solidify—

Click!

The sharp sound of a switch.

Instantly, the overhead light flickered on, flooding the room with a bright, cold light that dispelled the warm island of solitude the poetry had created. The refrigerator began to hum again, and the air conditioner blew a cool, electric-tinged breeze. Outside, the city's light pollution and noise flooded back into view.

Light had returned, and modern technology had taken over once more. The brief moment of intimacy, wrapped in darkness and vulnerability, felt like a dream, instantly evaporated by the harsh white light.

Lucas straightened up almost immediately. The momentary softness, the weight he had carried, vanished as if it had never been there. His face was a blank mask as he walked to the coffee table and picked up the black device displaying Keats’s data. His fingers swiped quickly across the screen, which lit up with the familiar, pulsating blue data streams. The lines of his profile were hard again, his eyes resuming their usual cool, detached control.

“The backup power is on,” he stated, his voice returned to its usual flat tone. “The collar’s data sync is normal. I’ll have Sophia send you the behavioral prediction module for her heat cycle. Good night.”

He picked up the device and, like a precision instrument rebooting, walked with steady steps toward the guest room. The door clicked softly shut behind him, sealing him away once more in his world of data and blue screens.

I stood in the center of the suddenly bright living room, holding Keats. The flashlight in my pocket was still warm, but the only sound now was the monotonous hum of the air conditioner. That brief, heartfelt connection in the dark, the fleeting weight and empathy in his eyes, now seemed so distant and unreal under the cold light.

Keats shifted in my arms. The blue light on his collar was less noticeable in the bright room. I looked down at it, then at the closed bedroom door, feeling utterly lost.

Had my honesty broken through the ice between us, or had I merely tossed a stone onto a frozen lake—a ripple, and then, the same profound cold?