My Surreal Marriage: Life with a Billionaire

Chapter 14

"Ah!" A cry escaped me as the world plunged into darkness without warning, my heart seizing in my chest.

In an instant, the anger from my argument with Lucas was swallowed by a primal fear of the unknown darkness. I instinctively dropped into a crouch, pulling Keats close, clutching him as if he were my only anchor in the blackness.

Keats was startled too, letting out a short, sharp "Mrow!" and digging his claws into my sweater.

Deprived of sight, my other senses rushed to fill the void. I could hear my own frantic heartbeat thudding against my eardrums. I could hear Keats’s soft, rapid purr from within my arms. And I could hear… not far away, Lucas's steady, even breathing. He was still there, less than two meters away in the dark.

"Lucas?" My voice held a tremor I wasn't aware of, sounding unnaturally clear in the dead silence. "Is it… a blackout?"

A brief pause. In the darkness, I heard the rustle of fabric as he seemed to stand up straight.

"Yes." The low, steady response was like a stone dropped into still water, and it oddly brought me a faint sense of calm. "It's likely a regional outage. The backup generator will take time to kick in."

His voice was as cool as ever, betraying no hint of panic. That infuriating calm of his, at a time like this, became the only point of reference in the dark.

I tried to stand, still holding Keats, but my knees felt weak from the shock. I was completely disoriented in the darkness.

"Don't move," Lucas’s voice came again, command-like but somehow lacking its usual icy edge. "Stay put. I'll find an emergency light source."

I heard his steady footsteps in the dark, heading toward… the second bedroom? He knew the layout of this place perfectly, moving with purpose even in total blackness, while I was lost. I could hear him opening a drawer, fumbling for something.

"Keats… the thing on his neck…" I couldn't help but ask, my voice still tight. The darkness amplified my anxiety, making me even more fixated on that collar.

"The collar has a low-power mode and a built-in micro-LED," Lucas’s voice came from the other room, punctuated by the sounds of his search. "It can be manually activated for illumination if necessary. But we don't need that right now."

Soon, the footsteps grew closer. A weak but steady beam of orange-yellow light bloomed in the darkness, pushing back the thick ink around us. In his hand, Lucas held… an LED emergency torch? It was minimalist in design, perfectly matching the aesthetic of Keats's collar.

The torch cast a clean, white light that illuminated his chiseled profile, throwing a large, dancing shadow on the wall, which strangely managed to push back some of the oppressive darkness.

He placed the torch on the low coffee table. The halo of white light spread out like ripples in water, barely illuminating a small area around us. Keats gradually quieted in my arms, staring curiously at the unfamiliar glow.

The sudden darkness was like an invisible hand, forcibly pressing pause on our argument. The hostile atmosphere seemed to dilute, to soften in the faint light of the LED. The two of us, plus a cat, were trapped on this tiny island of light, surrounded by an all-consuming darkness. An awkward silence spread, broken only by Keats's occasional purr.

I sat on the edge of the sofa with Keats, not far from the torch. Lucas stood on the other side of the coffee table, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the window outside. His profile was deep and silent in the interplay of light and shadow. He didn't bring up the collar again, and I no longer had the energy to fight about it. My cry of fear and the way I’d clung to Keats had exposed a vulnerability I was embarrassed to show him.

To break the suffocating silence and dispel the lingering fear in my heart, I almost unconsciously reached for the book I often read before bed—the well-worn, dog-eared copy of Selected Poems of John Keats on the side table. The cool leather cover and the familiar feel of the paper were like an anchor, briefly pulling me from the chaotic present into a safe harbor.

I opened the book, the pages making a soft rustling sound. The faint glow of the torch was just enough to illuminate the print. Without looking at Lucas, my eyes fell on the familiar lines, as if seeking solace from an ancient power. A thought flashed through my mind: maybe… this was a way to "compensate" him for Keats's earlier rampage? With something he couldn't understand, couldn't quantify.

I cleared my dry throat, my voice sounding a bit abrupt in the quiet. I kept my gaze on the page and began to read aloud. My voice started with a barely perceptible tremble but gradually steadied, melting into the warm darkness:

> My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

> My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

> Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

> One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

> 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

> But being too happy in thine happiness,—

> That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

> In some melodious plot

> Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

> Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Keats’s "Ode to a Nightingale." The poem’s intricate tapestry of pain and ecstasy, its musings on the eternal and the fleeting, the untamed song of the nightingale… it all seemed to take on a new magic in this small, dark space lit by a single torch. My voice wasn't loud, but it echoed clearly in the silence, weaving through the cat's soft noises.

I read slowly, immersing myself in the world of the verse. As I read, it was as if I too had escaped the blacked-out apartment, escaped the cold contract and the bitter arguments, and flown to a summer grove shaded by beech trees, where a nightingale sang with abandon.

When the stanza ended, I paused, my fingers unconsciously tracing the rough edge of the page. The living room was completely silent. I almost expected Lucas to scoff, or simply ignore me as he usually did.

Instead, a low, slightly rough voice broke the silence.

"When you were a kid…"

My head shot up.

Lucas was still leaning against the wall, his posture unchanged. But his gray-blue eyes were no longer looking out the window. They were resting on the book in my hands. The soft light softened the usual hard lines of his face. The calculating, dismissive look was gone, replaced by something… unprecedented. An inquisitive, complex emotion I couldn't name. His gaze was deep, as if he were looking through the old book of poetry and seeing something else entirely.

He paused, his eyes slowly lifting to meet mine where the light met the cold dark. His voice was quiet, but it reached my ears with perfect clarity.

"…did you get through nights like this by reading poetry, too?"

I froze. It felt like my heart skipped a beat.

This wasn't about the collar, or the contract, or efficiency, or data. It was a question purely about me. About my past, my habits—a side of me as a person that had nothing to do with our cold agreement.

In the depths of his eyes, the torchlight was like a star falling into a frozen pool, stirring the faintest of ripples. For the first time, he had truly reached past the contractual identity represented by the name "Claire Bennett" and tried to touch the person behind it.

The darkness still enveloped the apartment, the halo from the torch illuminating only a tiny corner of it. But in that small space, something, buried beneath a cold contract and endless conflict, had quietly shifted its course.

Keats purred contentedly in my arms. On his neck, the faint blue indicator light of the smart collar blinked, weak but persistent, in the clean white glow of the LED torch.