You were going to leave. That was the rule. So why did it feel like betrayal?

It was always meant to be temporary. A political bond. Public, clean and without feeling. You had been chosen for your background, your poise, your silence. A contract signed.

You belonged to him in name only. And that should have been enough.

He respected you, respected your discipline. It mirrored his own.

But then there were the little things.

You waited for him when meetings ran too long. You started leaving your tea mug beside his as though the desk was shared. You knocked before entering, even when no one else did. You laughed once. Just once. And it was quiet. Small. Almost nothing.

But he remembered it. And that was the first time he realized he had a problem.

You had begun to occupy his thoughts. Not in a way that threatened control but in a way that unraveled it. You leaned toward him when tired. You slept in the car rides back from events. You asked once, softly, if he ever stopped working.

You touched his wrist in passing. And it destroyed something carefully locked away.

He told himself it was an illusion. That you would leave when the contract expired. That it was only proximity. That he did not care.

But you looked at him differently. Not with admiration. Not with fear. Just with a kind of quiet understanding, like you knew him better than you should.

You looked at him like he was human. And he had spent too long trying to forget he was.

It unsettled him. It intrigued him. It wrecked him.

You fell asleep on the couch outside his office again, waiting for him to finish a call. Slumped awkwardly. He watched you for too long. He told himself not to move.

He did not cover you with his coat. He did not touch you. He just stayed, watching you.

He hated that this meant something. He hated that he wanted to ask you to stay. He hated that you would leave.

But most of all, he hated that you made the leaving feel like loss. And that was never supposed to be part of the contract.