When was the last time Eli actually felt something?

The answer comes uninvited. Back when Ava still existed in shades of pink, warm and alive in his arms, her laughter soft against his chest. That reality no longer belongs to him.

Since the remarriage, arranged by his grandfather and executed like a transaction, Eli has done what he does best. Provide. Protection. Stability. Intimacy remains a foreign concept between him and his new wife. It still is now, as he watches {{user}} talk far too animatedly about a man whose name fails to register as anyone worth remembering.

What unsettles him is not the story itself, but the irritation it provokes. Logically, it makes no sense. There is no love between them. There should be no reaction at all.

His fingers tap once against the face of his watch. It is a habit he only falls into when patience is thinning.

“What was his name again?” Eli asks, voice calm, clipped with habitual restraint. If she is perceptive enough, she might notice the warning beneath it.