I hadn't withdrawn because I didn't want him.
That was the lie Alexander kept telling himself.
The truth was quieter and sharper.
Since the thirty days began, he hadn't touched me. Not once. No hand at my waist. No fingers threading through mine. No absent-minded contact that said I see you here.
I had asked for thirty days to be treated right.
Being seen meant more than conversation.
It meant being wanted.
That night, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing my hair with slow, deliberate strokes not for him, not to perform, but because my body needed something grounding.
The door opened behind me.
I didn't turn immediately. I felt him before I saw him the pause in the doorway, the way his presence changed the air.
"You said," Alexander began, then stopped.
I waited.
"You said the thirty days were about being treated right."
"Yes."
His voice was lower when he spoke again. "I don't think I understood what that required."
I finally turned to face him.
He hadn't come in halfway. He was either fully present or not at all. Jacket gone. Shirt sleeves rolled up. No armor. No distance.
"I've never known how to touch you," he said.
The admission landed heavily.
"You're my wife," he continued, eyes steady but uncertain. "But I was raised to believe wanting was a weakness. That restraint was respect."
I stood slowly.
"Restraint without intimacy," I said, "feels like absence."
He swallowed.
"I didn't want to do it wrong," he said. "So I didn't do it at all."
That—that was the wound.
Not neglect. Fear.
I crossed the space between us until we were close enough that I could feel the warmth of him. He didn't move. Didn't reach.
Waiting.
"You can't learn without trying," I said quietly.
"I know," he replied. "That's why I'm here."
His hand lifted, hesitated then settled at my waist. The contact was tentative, reverent, as if he were memorizing the fact of me rather than claiming it.
My breath caught despite myself.
"Is this okay?" he asked.
"Yes."
He drew me closer, slowly, carefully, until my body aligned with his. There was no urgency in it only intention. When his arm came around my shoulders and he pulled me into his chest, something in me finally loosened.
Cuddling.
Simple. Intimate. Unfamiliar.
His heartbeat was uneven beneath my cheek.
"I've wanted this," he said quietly, "but I didn't know how to ask."
"You don't always have to ask," I replied. "Sometimes you just have to show up."
His other hand came up, brushing my hair back from my face. The touch was gentle, exploratory learning. When he leaned down and kissed me, it wasn't practiced or possessive.
It was earnest.
The kind of kiss that asks rather than takes.
I responded before I thought about it, my hands finding his shirt, grounding myself in the reality of him. The weeks of distance, of restraint, of unanswered need pressed forward all at once.
He broke the kiss, forehead resting against mine.
"If we do this," he said, voice rough, "it won't be because I'm afraid of losing you."
I looked at him. "Then why?"
"Because I choose you," he said. "Tonight. Fully."
That was what changed everything.
What followed wasn't perfect or polished. It didn't need to be. It was slow, deliberate, deeply aware two people paying attention for the first time. When we finally came together, it wasn't about urgency.
It was about presence.
About being seen.
About being wanted without conditions.
Later, we lay in the quiet, his arm around me, my head resting against his shoulder. The silence felt different now, not empty, not strained.
Alive.
"I didn't realize," he said after a while, "how much I'd been holding back."
"I did," I replied softly.
He tightened his arm around me, not possessive, but protective in a way that felt new.
"I won't do that again," he said.
I closed my eyes, listening to his breathing, aware of how dangerously close this moment was to changing the entire shape of the thirty days.
"Be careful what you promise," I murmured.
"I am," he said. "That's why I'm choosing it."
That night, I slept beside him not because I was relieved, not because the ache was gone, but because for the first time since the contract began, my body felt acknowledged.
The distance hadn't disappeared.
But it had been crossed.
And now that Alexander knew how to touch me, I knew something else just as clearly:
Letting go was going to hurt far more than holding back ever had.