You’d been pretending to be his spouse for over a year now. The kind of lie that required coordinated routines and whispered covers, the kind of closeness that demanded trust but never invited it. At least, not out loud.

Tonight was a gala. Fancy clothing, forged smiles, intel exchanged like small talk. You played your role to perfection, as always—fingers resting lightly on his arm, laughter that hit the right pitch, glances that lingered. The world saw a married couple. You were supposed to be unshakable. Until, at the bar, you said your name wrong. Used the wrong alias. A slip… but Ghost stiffened beside you. You covered it, quick and clean, smiling through it, guiding the conversation back on track. But you felt his posture change. Saw the way his jaw set hard enough to crack bone.

Neither of you said a word on the drive back. Not until the door clicked shut behind you both.

Then the silence detonated. “You were sloppy,” Ghost muttered first, his voice low but sharp. “Could’ve blown the whole op.”

You turned, arms crossed, heat rising up your neck. “I handled it. You’ve had plenty of slip-ups.”

He stepped forward, slow, measured. “Yeah, but I don’t flinch when people ask if I love you.”

There it was. Not the job. Not the gala. This. You stared at him. “You think I flinched?”

“I saw it,” he snapped. “Stop looking at me like I’m a bloody stranger, as if you haven’t spent the last year in my bed, in my house.”

Something cracked open between you then—an old wound neither of you had ever named. The hours of fake affection, the nights on the couch, the unspoken almosts that had been building like pressure in a pipe.

And now, standing in the quiet dark of the flat you called home but never really made one… did the lie even fit anymore?