On my husband's bed.

Cassie's Pov. 

"You left me."

The words come out quieter than I intended. I'd rehearsed a harder version in my head, something that would make him feel the weight of what he'd done. But standing in our bedroom doorway, watching David unbutton his shirt with the casual ease of a man who has no idea what happened in his absence, quiet is all I have.

He pauses. "Cassie—"

"On our wedding night." I step into the room. "You left me on our wedding night, David."

He exhales through his nose. The sound of a man bracing himself. "It was unavoidable. I explained that."

"You called me from an airport." My voice rises slightly. "You didn't explain anything. You just disappeared."

He turns then, and for a moment I search his face for the guilt I need to see. For something that tells me he understands what he took from me. His jaw is tight. His eyes are already somewhere else.

That's when I see it.

A faint smear of red along the edge of his collar. It's shape half of a woman's lips. So small I almost miss it. So small I almost let myself miss it.

"David." My throat tightens. "What is that on your collar?"

He glances down, barely. "What?"

"That." I step forward, my finger pointing. "That stain."

He pulls away from my touch before I make contact. "It's probably ketchup. I grabbed something at the airport. Cassie, I'm exhausted—"

"It isn't ketchup. It's–"

"I said I'm exhausted." His voice sharpens, the finality in it slamming down like a door. He grabs his jacket from the chair and heads out without looking back. "I have calls to make."

The silence he leaves behind is enormous.

I stand in the middle of the room and look down at my hand. The diamond glints under the morning light. A promise. I'd believed in it so completely that for five years I'd smoothed over every crack, every canceled dinner, every time he touched me like it was a task he was getting through.

I look at the ring again. And again.

I think about the Paris trip he postponed three times. The birthday dinner he left early. The way he barely made contact while kissing me. I am a woman with needs not a child that needs a quick forehead kiss. He was always cold like I was something to be managed rather than loved.

Had it always been this way? I pull the ring from my finger slowly, then slide it back on. I'd told myself it was the pressure of running the conglomerate. That love will look different after years together. That not every couple needed fire.

But I can't stop remembering the way I burned last night. And I hate myself for it.

I needed to feel something real. Something that was ours. I needed to remind my body who it belonged to.

I spend an hour on my makeup. I applied my foundation first, then contour, then the deep berry lip he used to love. I pull out the silk dress I'd packed for the honeymoon we hadn't taken yet — deep green, fitted, the kind that makes a man forget what he was going to say. I stand before the mirror and practice looking like a woman who is not unraveling.

By the time I'm done, I look like someone who has everything together.

I call for Jeremy. 

He appears at the doorway within minutes. Our household staff had come with the house, technically David's inheritance, but Jeremy had always been kind to me specifically.

"Bring in the wedding gifts from the foyer," I tell him. "All of them."

"Yes, ma."

It takes three trips. He stacks the boxes neatly on the sitting room floor and I thank him before settling cross-legged among the ribbons and gold paper, working my way through cards and silk wrapping and polished crystal.

I continue until I reach the fourth box. It was quite different. 

No ribbon, no excessive wrapping. Just a small, navy-blue jewelry box. I lift the lid and my breath leaves my body.

Before me was a necklace. Thin gold chain, a teardrop diamond pendant no bigger than a thumbnail. Delicate and precise.

Identical to the one David gave me when I was twenty years old, standing in a park while he fumbled the clasp and made me laugh. The one I'd lost on a flight to Dubai and quietly mourned for months. I had never told anyone about it because it felt too private to explain.

I turn the box over. There was nothing. No card tucked beneath the lid.

My chest tightens while I wonder who could have sent it. I set it on the coffee table and resolve to talk to David about it when he returned. 

*** 

When David walks in two hours later, I'm still dressed, still made up, still waiting. His eyes flicker with passion when he sees me, exactly what I've been starving for.

"You look beautiful," he says.

“Thank you, love.” I beam with a smile. 

I lift the necklace. "Someone sent this and there appears to be no name on it." I watch his face carefully. "It's exactly like the one you gave me years ago. The one I lost. Isn't that strange?"

He pauses for a while his eyes searching the necklace. “Where did you get that?"

"It came with the wedding gifts." I frown. "David, do you know who sent it?"

His expression hardens in a way I've never seen before. His hand comes out. "Give it to me."

"What? No — David, what is wrong with you?"

"Give me the necklace, Cassie."

"Why are you acting like this?" My voice rises. "I just asked you a simple—"

"I said give it to me." He snatches the box from my hand.

I stare at him. My hands are shaking. The man standing in front of me with clenched jaw and dark eyes is someone I don't quite recognize.

Then, like a tide pulling back, his shoulders drop. He sets the box down on the table. He runs a hand through his hair.

"I'm sorry." The words come out cracked and tired. "Work is — there's pressure right now that you don't understand. I shouldn't have grabbed it like that."

I say nothing because I'm still overwhelmed by what I'd just witnessed. 

He crosses the room and kisses my neck slowly. His lips are warm and familiar and I wait for something to ignite inside me. I wait for my body to remember why I chose him. Nothing comes. 

"Come to bed," he murmurs against my skin.

I follow him. I'm still angry but I have a major mission this night. I press closer and tilt my face up and he kisses me once, soft and brief, and then rolls away and closes his eyes.

Within minutes his breathing deepens. I sigh as I lie awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling.

He can't make me feel it. The realization settles in my chest and it burns every wall I built in his name. Five years and he cannot make my body want him. He couldn't make his voice stare something in me atleast. And I know now, with a clarity that terrifies me, that I know exactly whose hands could.

God help me. Because if this fire starts I'm afraid I can't turn it off. 

I slip out of bed.

The necklace is still on the coffee table where David left it. I lift the box, turning it over in my hands. My thumb catches on something. I peel back the inner lining, just slightly.

A small cream card, no bigger than a matchbook, falls into my palm.

Beautifully written in a slanted writing were three words. 

I never forgot.