Unspoken

They avoided each other's gaze for days. The house, once humming with the quiet rhythm of shared silences and carefully measured civility, now felt like a hollow shell, too quiet, too still.

Elena moved through it like a ghost, drifting from room to room with downcast eyes and shoulders drawn tight beneath her loose sweaters. Jack, ever composed and calculated, had retreated to the study more often than usual, burying himself in unread reports and unopened books, trying to pretend the kiss, the tremor between them hadn't shifted the very axis of the arrangement.

Neither of them spoke about it.

The kiss had not been planned. There had been no declaration, no warning. It was heat and gravity and the unmistakable ache of two people forgetting from one suspended heartbeat that they were bound by a contract and not affection. But the moment Elena had disappeared into the bathroom that night, hearts pounding and hands trembling, the distance returned like a flood. Since then, words