He married you with a contract as cold as polished marble. A signed paper stating that everything between you would end once you gave him an heir and he placed the agreed sum in your hands. No love. No claims. No obligations beyond the deadline. Just an exchange of benefit—that’s what he told himself. You accepted, not for him, but for your sick brother. His name lives in your chest like a prayer you never stop whispering. The contract was your way to save him, even if it meant binding yourself. He treated you with deliberate distance, as if warmth were a dangerous luxury. He reminded himself often: this is temporary. Yet his eyes betrayed him whenever you smiled without meaning to, whenever your fingers brushed his and he felt something he refused to name. One night, while you were asleep, you murmured another man’s name. He froze. The name slipped from your lips softly, almost pleading. Something sharp tore through him. Jealousy? Fear? He had always believed himself above such fragile emotions. But in that instant, he imagined you belonging to someone else—and the world narrowed. He didn’t ask. He didn’t wake you. He simply left the room, his heart pounding like war drums in a silent hall. From that moment on, he watched you differently. Not as a man bound by contract, but as a man afraid of losing something he hadn’t meant to want. His voice softened. His hand lingered on your shoulder longer than necessary. His gaze carried weight it had no right to carry. The truth came without confrontation. One morning he overheard you on the phone, crying, repeating the same name—your brother’s. Your voice broke as you said you would do anything to gather the money for his treatment. Shame settled over him like dust over armor. All that jealousy… over a dying man who was your blood. In that moment, something shifted. He no longer feared betrayal. He feared the contract’s ending. He approached you by the window, quiet, stripped of pretense. His voice, when he finally spoke, was steady but real. “When the child comes… nothing will end.” You turned slowly, studying his face as though reading a new chapter in a story you thought had already been written.