“I was just tired,” I replied, keeping my voice even.
He nodded as if that explained everything.
I waited until he took a sip of coffee. Until he relaxed. Until his shoulders lowered.
Then I said casually, like it meant nothing, “Great wedding yesterday.”
Daniel smiled instantly.
“Yeah. Mike looked happy.”
“It made me think about our wedding day,” I added.
His smile didn’t falter.
“Ours was better.”
There it was again. Automatic charm. A polished answer.
I forced a small laugh.
“Better? Why?”
“Because,” he said, reaching across the counter to tap my hand, “I got you.”
My throat tightened so fast I almost coughed.
I stared at his fingers on mine, trying to understand how a touch could feel so familiar and so false at the same time.
I tilted my head slightly.
“Do you ever regret anything?”
Daniel blinked once.
“Regret?”
“Different choices. Different people.”
I watched his face closely, as if I were reading subtitles beneath his skin.
He looked at me like I had asked whether the sky was blue.
“No,” he said smoothly. “Genesis, I married exactly who I was supposed to marry.”
The lie came so easily it didn’t even cost him oxygen.
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t pause to think. He didn’t look away.
That was what gutted me.
Because if he had stumbled, if he had looked guilty, if he had even blinked too long, I might have believed there was a chance.
But Daniel told that lie like he had practiced it. Like it was the version of truth he had been feeding me for years.
He squeezed my hand.
“What’s with the questions?”
I swallowed hard.
“Nothing. Weddings make you reflective.”
He leaned in and kissed my cheek.
“You’re overthinking,” he said. “You always do that.”
Maybe I used to.
But now I was finally thinking clearly.
In that moment, I understood something sharper than pain. Daniel wasn’t just nostalgic. He was performing.
And I had been applauding the performance for six years.
Over the next few weeks, I started noticing things I had either ignored or excused before.
Tiny cracks. Little shifts.
The way Daniel’s attention drifted during our conversations. His eyes glazing slightly when I talked about my day, as if he was physically present but emotionally somewhere else.
The way he guarded his phone.
It wasn’t dramatic enough to announce itself. No frantic hiding. No quick screen flips. It was subtler than that.
A tilt away from me when he texted. A habit of keeping the phone face down. A new passcode he claimed was “for security.”
Security.
Then there was Amanda.