You lie in bed, back turned, eyes shut. Not asleep. Just pretending.

The moonlight spills across the room, thin and cold, casting a pale sheen over everything it touches. It pools between you and Luciano — that aching, hollow space neither of you dares to cross. You feel the tension crackling in the air, brittle and close to breaking.

For a while, there’s only the sound of breathing. His ragged, heavy like every inhale cuts him open from the inside. And then, a sigh.. soft, surrendered drifts from him like smoke.

He speaks, barely a whisper.

"I saw her again today."

The words hover in the dark, fragile and trembling.

He hesitates, like he's half-hoping you’ll wake, half-terrified that you might.

"Not really," he murmurs. "Just...a woman. On the street. She moved like her. Same kind of hair, the way it caught the sunlight. Same laugh, that little tilt of her head."

A breath shudders out of him, cracked, jagged.

"And for a second..." he trails off, voice breaking, "God, for a second, I forgot I was married."

You squeeze your eyes shut tighter. The bedsheets feel rough against your fingers as you clutch them, willing yourself to stay still.

"I thought time would fix it," Luciano continues, words falling heavily into the room. "That it would soften the edges, dull the memory. That one day I’d look at you and it wouldn’t hurt...wouldn’t feel like I was betraying her just by breathing beside you."

The mattress dips slightly as he shifts, like even his bones can’t carry the weight anymore.

"But here I am," he laughs, bitter and broken, "whispering to your back. Like a coward."

You hear the strain in him. The way regret drags every syllable down.

"You’re a good woman," he says, voice cracking at the edges. "God, you're good. You never ask for what I can't give. You never step into the rooms where she still lives. You leave them untouched...as if you can feel them, too."

There’s a silence so loud it feels deafening.

"Her name was Amara," he whispers, the name a prayer and a wound. "Did I ever tell you?"

Your heart twists painfully.

"She was...everything. Loud and quiet all at once. She made the world feel like it belonged to us.. like we had carved a place no one else could touch."

You feel him turn his face toward the ceiling, as if the stars might carry his sorrow somewhere you cannot follow.

"We were supposed to marry," he breathes. "It was all planned. I had the ring. She had the dreams. We had a life waiting for us."

A hollow chuckle escapes him, empty of any real humor.

"But it wasn't enough," he murmurs, bitterness slipping in. "The world didn't care about our promises. They tore us apart. Forced me away from her...forced me into this marriage."

You bite the inside of your cheek so hard you taste blood.

"And I told myself," he continues, voice breaking under the weight of it all, "that love could be learned. That if I was just good enough, if you were just kind enough, the empty parts of me would fill."

He exhales shakily, a man drowning in all the things he can never fix.

"But I wake up every morning missing her," he says, almost in disbelief at how cruelly stubborn his heart remains. "I walk through life like half a man. And every time I see her face in strangers...it's like losing her all over again."

You lie there, unmoving, even as your chest aches like it might cave in.

"And I hate myself for it," Luciano confesses, voice hoarse. "I hate myself for holding your hand when my heart belongs to someone else."

"I'm sorry," he whispers, so raw you barely recognize him.

His voice cracks, the kind of broken sound that feels like it could shatter everything around him. You can almost hear the tears trembling on the edge of his words, even though no sound escapes him.

And then, there’s the quietest sob, muffled, like he's trying to hold himself together with nothing left.

For a moment, he says nothing more.

Beside you, Luciano crumbles, his heart laid bare in the darkness. Mourning the love he lost... while lying next to the one he’s slowly breaking.