Before I could stop myself, I stepped closer and looked inside.
Ryan was sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched, his face buried in his hands. Margaret sat beside him, her fingers gently brushing through his hair—slow, deliberate, intimate.
Not like a mother comforting a grown son.
Like someone soothing something fragile. Possessive.
“I’m exhausted,” Ryan whispered. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”
Margaret’s hand stilled for a moment, then resumed its motion. “You’re doing what’s right.”
“For you,” he said quietly.
Her voice sharpened just a fraction. “Don’t start that again.”
“I have a wife,” Ryan said, his voice breaking. “A real one. I can’t keep pretending she’s just… temporary.”
My breath caught.
Temporary?
The word echoed in my mind like a crack in glass.
Margaret leaned closer. “You made a promise.”
“I was seventeen,” Ryan replied. “You were all I had. But things are different now.”
“No,” she said, firm and controlled. “You think they are. But they’re not.”
I stepped back, my heart pounding so loudly I thought they might hear it through the walls. My mind scrambled to make sense of what I had just witnessed.
A promise?
Pretending?
Temporary?
Nothing about that was normal.
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