"Mm, I miss you."
"Want to take one together this year? Like we always do."
"Sure."
The last message was timestamped this afternoon, with a photo thumbnail attached.
I tapped it open. It was that third photo.
The Henson family banquet. The two of them standing side by side, his arm around her waist, her head tilted slightly toward his shoulder.
The timestamp on the photo read this year's Mid-Autumn Festival.
I scrolled up. Nearly every year—around New Year, Mid-Autumn, Dragon Boat Festival—there were similar brief exchanges and photos sent back and forth.
Nothing explicit. But the messages were steeped in an intimacy that needed no words, a quiet understanding between two people who knew each other completely.
"What are you looking at?"
Yvette's voice came from behind me.
My finger flinched. The screen went dark.
I turned around. She'd already finished the dishes and was drying her hands, her gaze settling on the phone in my hand.
"Louis, why do you have my phone?"
"Thought I heard it ringing." I handed it back, my expression unchanged. "It kept buzzing. You looked busy."
She took it, eyes darting to the screen, then back to me—studying my face, gauging how much truth was in my words.
The screen was dark. She'd have to unlock it again to see anything.
The suspicion in her eyes gradually faded.
"I'm going to shower."
The bathroom door closed and the water started running. I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the steady rush of it, a tangle of emotions I couldn't begin to sort through.
A few minutes later, the water stopped.
Yvette stepped out wrapped in nothing but a towel, her damp hair draped over her shoulders. Droplets traced the line of her collarbone and disappeared.
She carried the warm, humid air of the shower with her as she sat down beside me.
"Honey, it's been a while since we..."
Before tonight, a hint like that would have undone me in an instant. She knew exactly how to unravel my restraint.
But now—that pale skin, the wisps of steam rising from her body—it all sent a sour wave churning through my stomach.
The photos flashed behind my eyes, unbidden.
The same her. Had she done this with Theo Gilbert too?
On all those holiday nights I'd spent alone, had they—
I shifted away from her touch before I even realized I was doing it.
She froze. The edge of the towel slipped without her noticing. She just stared at me, bewildered.
"What's wrong? You don't want to?"
"Just tired."
I stood and walked to the water dispenser, filling a glass with cold water.
The chill slid down my throat, barely enough to tamp down the suffocating knot in my chest.
"Ran around to a lot of places today."
She sat in silence, her body taut beneath the towel.
"Yvette, what if—hypothetically." I kept my back to her, staring out at the city lights beyond the window. "What if an outsider really did attend the Henson family banquet? What would happen?"
Behind me came the soft rustle of fabric. She pulled the towel tighter.
"What do you think would happen? The family rules aren't just for show."
"At best, a public dressing-down and being made to kneel in the ancestral hall. At worst..."
"You know how my father is—old-fashioned to the bone when it comes to tradition. If it blew up, he'd have my name struck from the family register. Thrown out of the Henson family entirely."
She paused, then added, "So it's really not that I don't want to bring you. The price is just too high."
The price is just too high.
My grip tightened around the glass.
"Got it."
"I'll sleep in the guest room tonight. I'm tired. Just need some quiet."
She hesitated but didn't ask me to stay.
Lying in the guest room bed, I didn't sleep. Not for a single hour. My mind wouldn't stop.
It started from that very first New Year's Eve after we got married.
We'd only been married a short while then. I sat alone in the empty living room, listening to firecrackers popping near and far outside the window, and called her.
