Chapter 3: A Desperate Offer
The dark in the bedroom was absolute, a thick fabric pressing down on her. Louise could hear the steady, untroubled rhythm of Ilia’s breathing beside her. It was a sound that usually anchored her, proof of his presence. Now, it felt like a taunt. Each exhale was a dismissal of the chaos spiraling inside her skull—the white roses, the hidden stem, the phantom scent of another woman’s perfume that she swore she could still smell on his jacket.
Her own body was a tight wire. Hours had passed since he’d fallen asleep. The digital clock on his nightstand bled red numbers into the gloom: 3:17 AM. The silence became a physical pressure in her ears. She couldn’t hold it in. The question was a live thing, writhing in her chest, threatening to crack her ribs.
She moved by inches. The cotton of her sleeve whispered against the sheet as she reached out. Her fingertips found the solid warmth of his forearm, the fine hairs there. She let her hand rest, a feather’s weight.
He stirred. A sharp intake of breath. His arm tensed under her touch.
“What.” The word wasn’t a question. It was a flat, gravelly slab of sound, already annoyed at being summoned from sleep.
Louise’s throat sealed shut. She had practiced the words in her head, a sane, calm script. It vanished. All that was left was a raw, scraping need for the truth, even if it killed her.
“Ilia.” His name was a choked syllable. She swallowed, tried again, her voice a threadbare whisper in the vast dark. “Please. I need to ask you something.”
He didn’t roll over. He just lay there, a dark mountain beside her. “It’s three in the morning, Louise.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just… I can’t stop thinking.” She took a shuddering breath, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. “Is there someone else?”
The silence after was different. Colder. It hummed.
She rushed to fill it, her fingers tightening just slightly on his arm. “The roses were so beautiful. Thank you again for them. It’s just… the card was torn. And there was… a mark. On the stem. It’s okay if there is. I promise I won’t be angry. I just need to know. So I can understand. So I can do better. I can fix whatever I’ve done to make you… look elsewhere. Just tell me what you need. I can change. I can be whatever you need me to be. I just want to make you happy. Please.”
She was crying now, hot, silent tears tracking into her hairline. She hated it. It was the very display of weakness he despised. But she couldn’t stop.
Ilia sighed. A long, weary, profoundly inconvenienced sound. He finally moved, rolling onto his back. She could just make out the sharp line of his profile against the faint window light.
“You’re doing it again,” he said, his voice clearer now, laced with a familiar, icy patience.
“Doing what?”
“Creating drama where there isn’t any. Inventing problems so you have something to fret about.” He lifted a hand and let it fall back onto the duvet with a soft thump. “I brought you flowers. A normal thing people do. And you’ve spent three days dissecting them like a crime scene. It’s exhausting.”
The logic was a sleight of hand, so quick it left her dizzy. The mark, the missing card—they were not evidence. They were proof of her own malfunction.
“But the lipstick…” she whispered.
“What lipstick?” The question was blunt. A challenge.
“On… on one of the stems. A red smudge.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “It’s a flower, Louise. They’re grown in dirt. Shipped in boxes. Handled by God knows who in a shop. You’re seeing ghosts.”
Her certainty, which had felt like a hard, sharp stone in her gut, began to dissolve into a messy slurry of doubt. Was she? Had her anxiety conjured it, painted a mundane blemish into a betrayal?
“I just… I want to believe you,” she said, the plea pathetic even to her own ears.
“Then believe me.” His tone softened, just a fraction. A calculated dose. “There’s no one else. I’m here, aren’t I? I come home to you. Every night.”
It was the closest he would come to reassurance. I come home to you. As if his physical presence was a gift, a sacrifice, not the bare minimum. And it worked. The words seeped into her, a balm on the burn of her suspicion. He was here. In their bed. He’d brought her flowers. He was telling her she was wrong.
The relief was sickly and sweet, a sugar rush that would later crash.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed, the tears coming faster now, a mix of shame and reprieve. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just get so scared.”
He didn’t touch her. He didn’t wipe her tears. He just lay there, letting her apology hang in the dark.
“You need to get a handle on your imagination,” he said finally, his voice drifting back toward sleep. “It’s not attractive. This constant need for reassurance. It’s draining.”
“I know. I’ll try harder. I will.”
“Go to sleep, Louise.”
He turned onto his side, his back a broad, unyielding wall facing her. The conversation was over. Dismissed. She had been heard and found wanting.
She lay there, curled on her side, staring at the space between his shoulder blades. The awful, gnawing question had been answered. He had said no. He had called her crazy. And she had chosen, with every fiber of her being, to believe him. It was easier than the alternative. The alternative was a void she couldn’t even look at.
She would try harder. Be less needy. Cook better meals. Lose another three pounds. Wear the lingerie he liked without him having to ask. She would erase the doubt, erase the need for answers, erase herself until she was nothing but a smooth, placid surface for him to rest his eyes on.
In the living room, unseen, the white roses in their vase drank the stagnant water. The hidden stem, with its waxy red cipher, pointed toward the wall, a secret kept even from the room itself.