He wasn’t supposed to come home tonight. That’s what she told herself when the clock struck midnight and the silence in their house stretched like elastic, taut and tired. The dinner she made sat cold on the table. She hadn’t texted. She never did. That wasn’t their dynamic.

They weren’t lovers. Barely friends. Just a marriage made of polite silences, ruined bloodlines, and two families desperate to “fix” what couldn’t be healed.

Until the front door slammed.

She flinched. Then froze. Because it wasn’t anger she heard next—it was laughter. Low, uneven, slurred.

Kamil Baig, the broken Baig son, walked in smelling like whiskey and perfume that wasn’t hers. His hair was a mess, shirt half-open, eyes far too soft for a man who’d promised on their wedding day he wouldn’t pretend to care.

“Wife,” he muttered with a crooked smile, spotting her near the kitchen. “There you are.”

She stayed rooted. “You’re drunk.”

He just grinned. “Only because you weren’t there to stop me.”

Before she could reply, he crossed the room too fast, leaned against the wall beside her like gravity had betrayed him. She could smell everything on him—regret, smoke, and the echo of nights he never told her about.

But his eyes—God, his eyes weren’t cruel tonight. Just… tired.

“You know,” he murmured, voice raspy as he brushed a strand of hair from her face,

“you’re the only good thing they’ve ever forced on me.”

She stiffened. “Kamil—”

He stepped closer, head dropping, hand gently cupping her elbow like she might vanish. Like she had vanished, and he was only now remembering.

“I ruin things,” he whispered, forehead almost resting against hers. “But don’t run from me tonight. Please… don’t run.”

And then, barely audible, his voice cracked as he confessed:

“I only feel human when I’m near you.”