ONE YEAR, FIVE MONTHS EARLIER

"I DON'T even remember what we were arguing about."

Auden felt her eyes flutter close, a suppressed sigh following in the dark confines of her bedroom. Every muscle in her body was tight, her earlier irritation returning now that the moment had passed.

I remember, she thought to herself. I always do.

Cillian had only been home for a few days. For last two weeks, he had been in Los Angeles, meeting with his investors in his fledgling production company, Big Things Films.

Today, he had agreed to pick up Catherine from school, but inevitably ran late. Another last-minute meeting, another urgent call —

"They're in a different time zone," he had told her over the phone. "Right now is the only feasible time to get this on the books."

But for her, it was just another excuse that pushed their daughter further down his list of priorities. So Auden had to leave the gallery early, again, disappointing Brigid who was already covering too much and missing the call from the Morrison estate that could have secured their biggest commission of the year.

When Cillian finally walked through the door at half past seven, Catherine was already in her pajamas, homework scattered across the kitchen table like evidence of his absence.

"Daddy!" she had called out, but her voice carried that particular note of rehearsed enthusiasm that children use when they're trying to bridge a gap they shouldn't have to bridge.

"Sorry, love," he had said, kissing the top of her head. "The call ran long. You know how it is."

But she didn't know how it was. She was only six years old.

Auden stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching this performance of fatherhood. She'd already helped Catherine with her math homework, listened to her read aloud, and fielded questions about why Daddy was always working when other daddies came to school pickup.

"We need to talk," she had said once Catherine had been tucked into bed.

"Can it wait? I'm exhausted." Cillian had groaned. He was on their couch, legs propped on the oak coffee table — which Auden had specifically asked him not to do — with a warm glass of whiskey in his hand. It was gesture that was supposed to signal the end of his workday, as if he could simply shed his responsibilities along with her questioning.

"No, it can't wait," Auden had insisted, like always. "It couldn't wait two weeks ago either, but you were in LA. It couldn't wait last month, but you were in meetings. When exactly is the right time, Cillian?"

He turned his head to face her then, craning around the back of the couch and she saw the familiar flicker of irritation cross his features. "You know this is important. The company is at a crucial stage—"

"Your daughter is at a crucial stage too. She's six years old and she barely knows her father."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Auden's voice had risen despite her intention to keep this calm. "I had to leave work early again today. Brigid covered for me, again. I missed a call from the Morrison estate because I was sitting in my car outside Catherine's school, waiting."

Cillian turned back to the television, which sat paused on a particular show of cartoon of a blue dog, which Catherine adored.

"I said I was sorry."

"You said you were sorry about the call running long," Auden had retorted, moving from the doorway and stepping in front of him. "You didn't say you were sorry about leaving your daughter waiting. You didn't say you were sorry about me having to clean up your mess."

The argument that followed was both predictable and exhausting. Cillian defended his absence with the language of necessity and future security. Auden countered with the reality of present neglect. Round and round they went, each point scored and deflected, until the words themselves became meaningless.

It was Cillian who moved first, crossing the space between them with that particular intensity that had always undone her. His hands found her face, fingers threading through her hair, and his mouth was on hers before she could protest.

"Don't," she whispered against his lips, but even as she said it, her body was already responding, already forgetting why she was angry.

"I can't help it. I missed you," he had said, and the words were both true and manipulative, both an admission and a deflection. "God, I missed you, Aud."

And now, as they lay in the tangle of sheets, Auden stared at the ceiling and felt the familiar hollowness that came after. The argument hung in the air above them, unresolved, transformed but not transcended. This was how it always went between them — passion used as punctuation, sex as a way to end conversations they didn't want to finish.

She had tried forcing sleep, to escape the hole she had somehow managed to dig herself in. But Auden remained awake, thinking about the Morrison estate, about Catherine's face when she'd finally spotted her father's car in the pickup line, about how easy it was to mistake intensity for intimacy, how readily she let him change the subject with his hands and mouth.

She knew she would wake up tomorrow with the same problems, the same resentments, the same pattern that kept them circling each other like planets locked in a destructive orbit.

"Are you awake?" Cillian's voice broke in again, but this time it was barely a whisper.

"No," she lied.

Cillian shuffled next to her, the mattress dipping briefly, before his hand found hers under the covers, their fingers interlacing. "I'm sorry about today."

Which part? she wanted to ask. Me missing the conference call? Or fucking me instead of actually talking about our problems?

"I know you are," she said instead.

"I'll do better."

It was same promise he'd made a dozen times before. The same promise she'd made to herself about being present, about not letting work consume her, about not becoming her father.

But marriage, Auden had learned, was not built on promises. It was built on doing. On following through, even when it felt like you couldn't.

Seven years ago, she'd stood in a registry office in Dublin wearing a simple cream dress, only two months after they had decided to try again. They'd been giddy with happiness then, drunk on the possibility of forever and the relief of having found their way back to each other after everything they'd endured. Months later she was pregnant. And nearly a year after they had married, Catherine lay in her arms, so tiny and perfect, that it had been impossible to even consider what this new responsibility would mean.

The early years had been exactly what she'd dreamed of — quiet mornings over coffee, Catherine's giggles and cries filling the house, Cillian's arms around her as they watched their daughter sleep.

For a while, it had been perfect. Or as close to perfect as real life allowed.

But somewhere between Catherine's third birthday and now, something had shifted. The demands of Cillian's career had grown more intensive, the projects bigger, the time away longer. Auden's gallery had flourished beyond her wildest expectations, demanding more of her attention, more of her energy. They'd both been succeeding, both building the lives they'd dreamed of, but somehow in the process they'd started building them apart rather than together.

Everything had been so quick — too quick, maybe, than Auden should've allowed. But you couldn't turn back time.

Their fights had started small. Cillian missed dinners. He'd forgotten school events. He'd show up late to artist openings, with Auden trying to wrangle Catherine as she ran around expensive pieces while simultaneously trying to host.

And always, it was the same. I'm sorry. I'll do better. Next time, I'll clear my schedule.

And it never happened.

It was slow accumulation of resentment that came with two people trying to do everything and somehow managing to support each other less and less. But lately, the arguments had taken on a different quality — sharper, more desperate, as if they were both fighting not just about the dishes or the schedule but about something much deeper. It lingered in the pit of her stomach and she was too afraid to confront it.

The stress was eating them alive. Cillian's shoots somehow grew longer, his absence stretching from days to weeks, leaving Auden to manage the gallery, Catherine's budding school schedule, and the crushing weight of a household that felt like it was held together by her will alone. When he was home, he was distracted, restless, guilty for missing so much. When he was gone, she was resentful, exhausted, angry.

But underneath all of that — beneath the fights and the frustration and the bone-deep exhaustion — was a love still so profound it terrified her. Cillian had become woven into every part of her life, every decision, every breath. She couldn't imagine her morning coffee without wondering if he'd remembered to eat breakfast on set. She couldn't look at Catherine without seeing his eyes staring back at her. She couldn't fall asleep without reaching for his side of the bed, even when he was thousands of miles away.

And that's what was killing her.

At first, the realization of what was unfolding directly in front of her face had come slowly, then all at once: she had lost herself so completely in loving him that she no longer knew where she ended and he began. She fought harder than anyone to maintain what they had built — took on more, managed more, sacrificed more — because the alternative was unthinkable. A life without him wasn't a life at all.

She knew he felt the same way. Could see it in the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn't watching, the way he still reached for her hand without thinking, the way he said her name like a prayer while she was wrapped around him despite the circumstances that landed them there. They loved each other with a ferocity that had carried them through betrayal and loss and heartbreak, but somehow that very love had become its own kind of prison.

Auden turned on her side, curling her body inward in an almost fetal-like position. The sheets were still damp with sweat beneath her, itching her skin, causing her limbs to twitch. The air was heavy, uneven — not quite comforting but not quite uncomfortable either. Her body ached in that familiar way that came after they'd fought like animals and fucked like strangers, all teeth and desperation and the kind of raw need that left bruises she'd have to explain away at the gallery tomorrow.

All that remained was the familiar hollow ache in her chest, the sense that they were both drowning in the same pool but couldn't seem to reach for each other's hands to pull themselves up.

"You're thinking too loud," Cillian's voice was rough with coming sleep and something else. Exhaustion, maybe. Or defeat.

"I'm not thinking about anything." Another lie that came easily, practiced from years of this exact conversation.

He shifted beside her, and she felt his fingers brush against her hip to try and pull her back around. "Aud —"

"Don't." She shuffled father away, to the edge of the bed before he could finish whatever apology or explanation or promise he was about to make. They'd been here before, too many times to count. Their old cycle was as familiar as breathing: fight, fuck, forgive, repeat.

Only lately, the forgiveness part seemed to be getting harder.

Auden rolled again, onto her backside and pressed the heel of her palms into the socket of her eyes, taking a single, controlled breath before slowly placing her hands back onto the sheets.

"We can't keep doing this," she spoke to the ceiling, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Doing what?"

"This." She gestured vaguely at the space between them, at the mess of sheets and regret and the invisible weight that seemed to press down on them both. "All of it."

She felt him go still beside her. "What are you saying?"

The question hung in the air between them, heavy and dangerous. Auden pursed her lips, tried to find the words that would make this better, that would fix whatever had broken between them. But all she could think about was how tired she was. How every conversation felt like a negotiation, every touch like a transaction.

"I don't know," she admitted, and the honesty of it surprised them both.

Cillian sat up, the mattress creaking beneath his weight. "Auden, look at me."

She didn't want to look at him. Didn't want to see the way his hair was mussed from her fingers, or the scratch marks she'd left on his shoulders, or the expression in his eyes that she couldn't quite read anymore. Instead, she slipped out of bed, reaching for her robe.

"Where are you going?"

"To check on Kittie," Auden told him. "Make sure she's still sleeping."

Lie number three, and they both knew it. Catherine was a sound sleeper, and their daughter's room was on the other side of the house, far enough away that their fights rarely woke her. But Auden needed space, needed air, needed to remember who she was when she wasn't tangled up in whatever this had become.

The hallway was dark and quiet, her bare feet silent on the hardwood floors. She paused outside Catherine's door, listening to the soft rhythm of her daughter's breathing. Six years old, and already the most perfect thing Auden had ever created. Catherine had Cillian's eyes but Auden's stubborn chin, his easy laugh but her careful way of watching the world before deciding how to engage with it.

Auden pushed the door open just enough to slip inside, settling into the chair by the window that she'd nursed Catherine in as a baby. The moonlight caught the child's face, peaceful and unmarked by the tension that seemed to permeate every corner of the house these days.

This was supposed to be different. They were supposed to be different.

When she'd married Cillian, she'd thought they'd learned from their mistakes. They had chosen each other again and again when it would have been easier to walk away. They'd built something beautiful together — their daughter, their home, their life.

So when had it started to feel like a prison?

When had loving him become so exhausting?

Was it just not enough? Could this relationship — no, this marriage — sustain itself without the underlying need to wound each other, whatever the cost, so they could lose themselves in the aftermath?

She didn't know. She wasn't sure she had ever really known. And that was the cruelest part of all. They had only ever known each other as fractured people, hastily mended by the other's touch because it was easier to admit they could heal together than apart.

When Auden first met Cillian, she was adrift — confidence shattered, drowning in grief, uncertain of who she was meant to be. For years, she'd carried the belief that he was her anchor, the one who'd pulled her from the depths when everything else had crumbled. He'd been her salvation, her path back to the light.

But now, nearly a decade later, the darkness was creeping back. Not the raw, overwhelming grief of before, but something more insidious. It was a slow erosion of everything they'd built together. The marriage that had once been her safe harbor was becoming the very thing that pulled her under. They were unraveling, thread by thread, retreating into old patterns of silence and resentment.

The thoughts circled her mind like vultures, relentless and hungry. She found herself remembering the woman she'd been before Cillian — fierce and convinced she was comfortable in her solitude. That version of herself seemed impossibly distant now, buried beneath years of bending and yielding, of shouldering the invisible weight that held their world together.

"She's still asleep."

Auden didn't turn at the sound of Cillian's voice, barely more than a whisper threading through the dim room. She'd heard him coming down the hallway, his footsteps careful and deliberate, each one placed with the precision of someone trying not to disturb the fragile quiet that had settled over the house. He moved into the room like he was approaching a wild animal, his presence shifting the air as he settled on the edge of Catherine's bed with the practiced silence of a father who'd done this dance before.

Catherine stirred slightly at the imperceptible shift in the mattress, and Cillian froze, his body going completely still until she settled again. Only then did his hand move, a ghost of movement as it traveled to her forehead, smoothing back the wild curls that had escaped her braid with touches so light they barely disturbed the strands.

His touch was so gentle it made Auden's look away, just for a moment. They were same hands that had gripped her hips with bruising force an hour earlier were now moving with the reverent care of someone handling something precious and breakable.

"She looks like you when she sleeps," he said softly. His eyes remained fixed on their daughter's face, drinking in every detail in the amber glow of the nightlight. "That little frown between her eyebrows when she's dreaming. I love it."

Catherine's small fist uncurled against the pillow, and Cillian smiled — that soft, private smile that was reserved for moments like this. He reached out to adjust her blanket, tucking it more securely around her shoulders with the kind of unconscious care that spoke of countless nights spent in this same ritual.

This was the man she'd fallen in love with. Not the distracted, guilty stranger who came home from sets with his mind still elsewhere, but this — the father who remembered exactly how Catherine liked her bedtime stories, who could calm her nightmares with a few whispered words, who looked at their daughter like she was the answer to every question he'd ever asked.

Love and hatred had become strange bedfellows in her chest, each feeding off the other in an endless, bitter dance.

"Her eyes — that's what I love about her," Auden found herself murmuring, her voice barely disturbing the sanctity of the moment as she repeated the same sentiment that had stuck with her since the day Catherine was born. "They're just like yours."

The nightlight caught the crook of his smile, casting gentle shadows across his face as he absorbed her words in silence.

"She has your stubborn streak, though," he remarked after a long pause, his head tilting slightly as he spoke, though his gaze never wavered from Catherine's sleeping form. "That fit she threw earlier over finishing her homework when I came home? That was all you."

Auden suppressed a snort, the noise dying in her throat. "Maybe, but the way she threw her papers on the ground had her father written all over it."

Cillian's laugh was barely a breath, a quiet rumble in his chest that he kept carefully contained. From across the room, his eyes lifted to find hers in the dim light, holding her gaze for a heartbeat before returning to their daughter.

"So, what you're saying is that she's entirely fucked?"

She smiled without sound, the kind of expression that lived in the corners of her mouth and the softening around her eyes, as quiet and hidden as everything else in this suspended moment. "Unfortunately, yes."

Cillian's response was equally muted, a gentle shake of his head as he folded his hands into his lap with careful deliberation. They sat in comfortable silence. It wrapped around them like velvet, watching their daughter sleep in the golden pool of nightlight. The room held them in its quiet embrace, time moving like syrup around their shared vigil.

This was what they were good at — being parents, being partners in the raising of this incredible person, existing in these pockets of hushed intimacy. It was everything else that seemed to be falling apart around the edges of moments like these.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

"Come back to bed," Cillian said eventually, turning to her with that soft voice he used only in the darkness. But he didn't wait for her answer. Instead, he rose from Catherine's bed and crossed the small space to where Auden sat curled in the chair.

She looked up at him, this man who knew exactly how to undo her even in the middle of a fight. He reached out, his fingers finding the tangled mess of her hair, brushing it back from her face with the same gentleness he'd shown Catherine.

Now I can see you, his eyes told her, though he didn't voice this out loud. Something cracked open beneath her ribs, raw and tender as a wound. It was a pain so sweet it felt like bleeding rose petals instead of blood.

"We don't have to talk about it tonight," he said, his thumb tracing the line of her cheek. "We don't have to figure anything out."

We never do, she thought to herself.

His touch was warm, familiar, and despite everything, and she found herself leaning into it. He knelt down, his knees meeting the floor as he cupped her face fully in his hands, his thumbs smoothing away the tears she hadn't realized were falling.

"Just come back to bed," he whispered, and there was something in his voice that made her choke silently, though his hands were not wrapped around her throat. It was not the demanding tone from earlier, but something softer, more vulnerable. A plea disguised as a request.

Reluctantly, despite what her mind told her, she nodded.

He helped her to her feet, his arms coming around her in the glow of their daughter's room. She could feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her cheek, could smell the familiar scent of his skin beneath the lingering traces of their earlier desperation.

And there it was — the pull, the magnetic force that had drawn them together from the very beginning. Even now, even angry and exhausted and confused, she wanted to follow him. Wanted to lose herself in the warmth of his embrace and the illusion that physical closeness could fix whatever was broken between them.

"Cill—"

"Shh," he breathed against her hair, his arms tightening around her. "Just let me hold you for a second. Please."

Every instinct screamed at her to pull back, to maintain the distance, to protect herself from another round of the same exhausting cycle.

But still, Auden's body melted into Cillian's. Her hips flushed against his, her arms sliding around his waist, gripping the soft, white t-shirt he wore. She found herself nodding against his chest, surrendering to the familiar comfort of his touch.

Because this was what they did. This was who they were.

Even when it was killing them both.