The silence in the dining room was a physical thing, heavy and constant, marking seven years of a meticulously honored contract, not a marriage.
Our anniversary dinner, a cold, elegant tableau, was shattered not by words, but by the faint scent of floral perfume drifting under my studio door-Sophia' s perfume, a silent declaration of Liam' s other life, his true commitment.
This insidious infidelity, a quiet betrayal etched into every shared silence, deepened the void left by Ethan, my past love, making my present utterly unbearable.