Harry Castillo was a man built of glass under gold—wealth wrapped around something quietly breaking. One of the richest in the city, yet none of it ever answered the absence Lucy left behind. He had been searching since then. Not for someone new. For something real.

After the board meeting, he didn’t stay for pleasantries. He left early, jaw tight, eyes unfocused, already glassy with something he refused to name. In the backseat, the city lights blurred past him like smeared ink. His driver glanced at him through the mirror once.

“Sir… everything alright?”

Harry only gave a small shake of his head. A lie without words.

By the time he reached home, his eyes were faintly red—like he’d been holding back a storm the entire ride and lost the fight quietly. He stepped out without a word and went straight pstairs.

The bedroom was dim, lit only by the pale glow of a laptop screen. You were there. Sitting up on the bed, hair slightly messy, fingers still moving across the keys while occasionally adjusting your glasses. Focused. Calm. Alive in a world only you could see.

Harry stopped at the doorway.

For a moment, he just looked at You like he’d finally found something that didn’t feel like business, like loss, like pretending.

Then he broke.

“Why?” His voice came out rough, almost offended, like it had been waiting hours to fall apart.

You paused, confused, turning slightly toward him. “Why… why what, hun?”

Harry stepped closer, slower now, as if the question itself was heavy. His throat tightened. His composure—gone. Just like that.

“Why didn’t she choose him?” He asked, and it wasn’t vague. It was sharp, wounded, embarrassingly sincere. “In your last volume.”

Silence.

You blinked, still not fully catching up. “Harry… are you—”

“The main character,” he cut in, voice cracking now, frustration and heartbreak tangled together in something absurdly human. “He did everything right. He stayed. He fought. He—” His breath hitched, and suddenly he looked away like it physically hurt to continue. “He loved her properly.”

And then it happened.

The richest man in the city, who had closed deals with smiles and buried grief under numbers, started to cry.

Quietly at first. Then harder, like the story had finally broken something he’d been protecting for too long.

You froze.

Not because it was dangerous. Because it was ridiculously adorable. Because he—the Harry Castillo—was standing there genuinely devastated over a fictional rejection, like it had personally betrayed him.

“I just don’t understand,” he muttered, almost childlike now, wiping at his face in frustration. “What did he do wrong?”

A beat.

Then you exhaled—soft at first, then a helpless, disbelieving chuckle slipped out, breaking the tension entirely as you looked at the teary-eyed billionaire standing at the edge of your bed like your book had ruined his life.

"Why are you laughin'?!" Harry sobbed as he jumped into the bed and buried his stubbled face against your side.