Almost His

Chapter 1

Naomi hadn’t meant to fall in love with her husband.

It wasn’t supposed to happen—not in a marriage built on contracts and signatures, not when they slept in separate rooms and carried on as though love was never part of the bargain.

But it had. Slowly. Quietly. Irreversibly.

When she first married Adrian, she told herself she wouldn’t get attached. Their arrangement was clear: two years, mutual benefit, no expectations. He needed a polished wife for the boardroom, and she needed to protect her family from financial ruin. The contract had drawn the boundaries neatly. A roof shared, but lives kept apart.

And yet, Naomi’s heart had betrayed her.

It started with small, foolish things. The way he knocked softly on her door when dinners ran late, just to let her know he was home. The way he remembered her tea—always chamomile before bed, with honey if she’d had a hard day. Once, when she’d twisted her ankle coming down the stairs, he had carried her to her room without a word, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

He was kind, considerate even, but never more than that. His room was at the end of the hall, always closed, always locked. Hers was nearer to the library, and sometimes she’d pause outside his door late at night, wondering what it would feel like if she were allowed inside.

Naomi told herself not to hope. But every smile he offered, every brush of his hand at the small of her back at events, every quiet glance across a dinner table made her ache with longing.

Adrian never raised his voice. He never pushed her away. But he never pulled her closer, either.

So she had lived in the silence between their rooms, in the space between almost and never. She had built a life on scraps of warmth, mistaking them for love. And somewhere along the way, she fell—hard and hopeless—for the man who slept just twenty feet down the hall, but felt an ocean away.

Now, as she sat across from Parker, the lawyer, staring at the neatly stacked divorce papers, Naomi told herself she should feel free. That she had wasted enough time loving someone who would never love her back.

But freedom felt an awful lot like heartbreak.

“Naomi,” Parker said, breaking into her thoughts, pen poised, “are you ready to sign?”

Her stomach tightened. She opened her mouth, but the words caught in her throat. The walls of the office suddenly felt too small, too suffocating. She couldn’t. Not yet.

“I… I need a moment,” she murmured, standing abruptly.

Parker nodded politely, sensing the tension. Naomi stepped out of the room, her heart racing, each step echoing the painful weight of the past and the uncertain pull of what might come next.