The next few days passed like some events never happened.
Meeting. Press photos, carefully curated hand holding. From the outside,Liv and Ryan were becoming the perfect power couples, elegant,untouchable, strategically aligned. Inside,however Liv was unraveling.
Her sleep was light and full of tossing,even the bed would complain if it could talk. Her thoughts when not clouded by her internal nerves, constantly drifted to moments she couldn't forget. The garden, the way Ryan had touched her shoulders, not protectively but possessively,but protectively. The way his voice has carried something close to sincerity.
She didn't want it to mean anything to her but it did.
She sat alone in her room one evening,on a plush chair beside the window, watching raindrops run down the glass. Her phone buzzed with a message.
Ryan: Be ready by 7. It's not optional.
"No explanation, just that." She thought.
She frowned, it wasn't one of the public functions that they had as scheduled. She knew that much that she had to memorize their joint words like a soilder preparing for battle. Which meant that he was dragging her into something personal. Again.
At exactly 6:59, she prepared herself and decended the stairs in a navy blue dress, one she hasn't worn before. Ryan stood waiting at the last step, dressed in a way she hasn't seen him do before, black jeans, a fitted dark shirt, sleeves rolled, watch glinting under the light. Casual,but expensive
"You're on time," he said, sounding almost surprised.
"I figured since you didn't give me a choice, I might as well just look decent," Liv,replied.
He studied her for a bit too long. "You look more nicely and beautiful than decent"
She blushed internally and blinked at what he said. Ryan rearly gave her compliment that didn't sound rehearsed. That one hadn't.
"Where are we going ?" She asked as he offers her his arm, something he had never done unless they were camera around or surronded by the paparazzi.
"My parents'beach house," he said. "They wanted a private dinner, just us and them.
Liv stopped her step a bit. "Your kidding right ?" She asked.
"I wish I were."
The ride was quite, not uncomfortable but it familiar either. There was tension them but still, it was shifting,evolving into something more…more aware. and maybe dangerous.
The house was gorgeous, perched above coastline, the waves crashing faintly in the background.
Everything smelled of ocean salt and citrus. Liv had never been here before,but the place made her tummy twist and turn, it felt like a place filled with childhood memories she had no access to, which was concerning.
Ryan's mother greeted them first, tall and elegant,dressed like she belonged on the cover a well popular fashion magazine. His father followed, sturdily, with the same guarded eyes as Ryans, though his smile was wider, easier.
Dinner began pleasantly enough. Polite questions, Mild laughter. The occassional brush of Ryan's knee against hers beneath the table gave her some fellings, which she tried not to overthink.
And then the conversation shifted.
"So Liv," Ryan's mother said, her voice soft and silky. "Have you given any thought to your next steps? I know the public thinks you are Emily, but I imagine you'll want to shape a path of your own."
Liv felt her throat tighten. .."I….haven't really had the time to sit and think ahead about it yet.
Ryan jumped in smoothly. "She's still adjusting. Which is reasonable, considering everything.
His mother nodded, but something in her eyes suggest, she wasn't easily appeased. "Of course. It's just this family moves quickly. We don't pause or stop, we build."
That wasn't a suggestion, "she know that heartedly. It was a warning.
Ryan reached for his wine glass, took a slow sip. Liv glanced at him, was he annoyed? No. Worse, he looked resigned.
After dinner, she excused to the terrance to breathe. The ocean air was much cooler now, smoothing against her skin. She was tired of pretending , tired of playing the perfect wife role, even when the people closest to Ryan were still testing her like she was a stranger tresspassing on their dynasty.
Ryan joined her a few moments later, leaning against the railing beside her.
"They don't like me." She said boldly, not bothering to soften the truth.
He shirted. "They don't like anyone who wasn't born with a plan."
"Why didn't you tell me they would grill me like that," would have come prepared.
"Because it wouldn't have changed anything, you still would've come. And I still would've needed you here"
There it was again, that quiet vulnerability in his voice. It caught her off guard every single time.
"I'm it Emily," she said. "I'll never be who they want me to be." Trying to control her emotions.
"I know," he replied. That not what I need from you.
She turned to look at him fully, her heart beating fast and thrumming. "Then what do u need, Ryan?"
His gaze met hers, steady and slow. "Someone who won't walk away just because things will be hard."
The air shifted. Heavy, Intimate.
For a second, Liv forgot everything, the contract, the charade,the audience. She saw only the man in fornt of her no one else. And for the first time since the wedding, she didn't feel like an imposter or a substitute. She felt like someone who mattered.
But she wasn't ready, Not yet.
"You're asking a lot," she whispered.
"I know," he said again. "But I'm not asking for forever from you. Just for you to stay long enough to decide for yourself."
They didn't kiss, Didn't touch. But as they stood there, the waves crashing in the background and the stars beginning to prick the sky above them, something quiet and irreversible passed between them.
It wasn't love.
But it was the beginning of something
"Something they both aren't really ready for"
"Something which could change things between them"
"Are they ready?" That question lingered both in their mind quietly.