They had been married for five years — not years of fading affection, but of bright and unruly love that sometimes overflowed its container. Their greatest divide was not distance, nor doubt, but time itself: she was still gathering her youth in fistfuls, while he had already learned the weight of consequence. The age between them was not a number, but a language — one they were still struggling to speak without wounding each other.

After weeks apart — she in the quiet refuge of her mother’s house, he alone in the penthouse where every room still remembered her — they were summoned by the only thing that could pull them back into the same orbit without hesitation: their son. Little Archie. Three years old, fragile as morning light, and suddenly bruised by the world’s first cruelty.

She arrived first at the principal’s office, the click of her heels striking the tile like a heartbeat trying not to falter. And there he was.

William stood against the far wall, arms folded in a posture that looked like restraint more than distance. His face was composed, but barely—his fury lay just beneath the surface, not wild but coiled, the kind born of helplessness when the child you love has been hurt and you cannot trade places with him.

He didn’t look at her immediately—not out of coldness, but because looking at her always cost him something. Even now. Especially now.

“Welcome, Mrs. Beeman,” the principal said.

William’s gaze finally lifted at the sound of her name. Something soft flickered through his expression—recognition, longing, the unspoken truth that the space between them was an ache, not a choice.

He had not stopped loving her.

He had simply not yet figured out how to love her gently enough that it didn’t break them both.