SOPHIE'S POV
Three days of this silence was going to kill her.
Sophie sat alone in the guest bedroom staring at the wall and trying to understand what had changed. Four days ago, Daniel had held her hand on the balcony. Four days ago, he'd looked at her like she mattered. Four days ago, everything had shifted into something that felt real.
Now he barely looked at her.
She tried to tell herself it didn't matter. That this was actually better. That having distance between them made the contract easier to manage. But lying to herself had never been her strength.
The truth was she missed him. She missed the way he listened when she talked. She missed the coffee he'd started drinking from the cups she'd left on his desk. She missed the version of Daniel that existed when nobody was watching.
But he was done with her. That was the only explanation that made sense.
Sophie couldn't live like this anymore. Couldn't eat breakfast across the table from someone who wouldn't meet her eyes. Couldn't walk past his office door knowing he was in there deliberately avoiding her. Couldn't pretend that the connection between them had been one-sided when she knew it wasn't.
So at 8 PM, when Daniel was still working, she went to his office and closed the door.
"Why are you acting like I don't exist?" she asked.
Daniel looked up from his desk like she'd appeared out of nowhere. For just a second, she saw something in his face. Something that looked like guilt. Then his expression went blank.
"We discussed this," he said carefully. "The arrangement. No emotional involvement."
"We're already emotionally involved." Sophie's voice was small but her eyes were fierce. She wasn't going to back down. Not this time. "You know things about me that nobody else knows. You know about my failed business dreams and my family falling apart and the night I cried on the phone with my father. You know me, Daniel."
She stepped closer to his desk.
"And I know you. I know you drink coffee at 3 AM when you're stressed about a deal. I know you listen to sad classical music when you think nobody's paying attention. I know you're scared of being alone but more scared of letting people close enough to actually know you. We can't undo that. We can't pretend to be strangers just because you decided you were scared."
Daniel stood up slowly. He looked at her across the desk with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"What do you want from me, Sophie?" he asked quietly.
"I want you to stop being scared," she said. "Because if you're scared, then I'm scared. And I can't afford to be scared right now. I've already given you three years of my life. I've already signed away my freedom. Don't take away the only real thing I've found in this place."
The words hung in the air between them.
Daniel came around the desk slowly. He moved like he was fighting every step. Like some part of him was still trying to keep the distance while another part of him couldn't stand it anymore.
When he stopped in front of her, they were close enough that Sophie could feel the warmth coming off his body.
"If I do this," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, "if I stop running, everything changes. The contract becomes impossible."
"The contract is already impossible," Sophie whispered back. "It died the moment you held my hand."
Daniel reached up and touched her face. His hand was gentle against her cheek. His eyes searched hers like he was looking for permission or maybe looking for a reason to stop before he went too far.
Sophie didn't look away.
He pulled her close. His arms came around her and suddenly she was against his chest and his hand was in her hair and he was kissing her like the contract didn't exist. Like three years of distance didn't matter. Like all that mattered was feeling her against him.
Sophie kissed him back with everything she'd been holding inside for days. All the longing. All the fear. All the desperate hope that maybe he felt the same way she did.
His lips were warm and his kiss was fierce and when he pulled back just slightly to look at her, his eyes were dark with something that looked like need.
"Sophie," he said her name like a question.
She pulled back completely. Her eyes filled with tears even though she'd promised herself she wouldn't cry.
"This makes everything so much harder," she whispered.
Daniel's hands dropped to his sides. He stepped back like he'd just realized what he'd done. What they'd both done.
"I know," he said.
"No, you don't." Sophie's voice cracked. "You don't understand. Now I can't pretend this is just a transaction. Now every time I see you, I'm going to feel this. Now when the three years are up, I'm not just walking away from a contract. I'm walking away from you."
She looked at him standing there with his hair slightly messed up from where her fingers had been and his lips still flushed from kissing her.
"I was supposed to survive this," she continued. "I was supposed to do my job, take the money, and rebuild my life. But you've made that impossible now."
"I know," Daniel said again. But he didn't move toward her. He was keeping distance now. Maintaining the boundary they'd just destroyed.
"Do you?" Sophie asked. "Do you really understand what you've done? Because I didn't come here expecting to fall in love. I came here broken and desperate and willing to marry a stranger for money. That was manageable. That was a clean transaction."
Her hands were shaking now.
"But you had to be kind. You had to listen to me talk about my dreams. You had to cook dinner with me and sit on the balcony and let me see the real you underneath all that coldness. You had to make me care about you."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"And now I do care," Sophie said. "I care so much it hurts. And in two years and eleven months, I still have to leave you because that's what the contract says. And I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to spend time with someone I love, knowing there's an expiration date."
She walked toward the door.
"We shouldn't have done that," she said without looking back.
"I know."
"We need to go back to the arrangement. To the distance."
"I know," Daniel said. But something in his voice suggested that knowing and actually being able to do it were two completely different things.
Sophie opened the door and walked out before he could say anything else. Before she could see his face and decide to run back into his arms. Before she could convince herself that somehow this would all work out even though every logical part of her brain was screaming that it wouldn't.
She went to her bedroom and closed the door and finally let herself cry.
Because she'd just realized something that was going to change everything.
She wasn't scared about the contract ending. She wasn't scared about walking away from the money or the penthouse or the life she'd built in this place.
She was scared that she was going to lose him and she wasn't going to have a choice about it. She was scared that loving Daniel Stone meant accepting that three years from now, she'd have to say goodbye to the one person in the world who actually saw her.
Sophie cried quietly in the dark and understood that Daniel had been right to pull away.
Because love made everything harder. Love made the contract a cage instead of a transaction. Love made the future unbearable when you knew it was temporary.
And now both of them had to figure out how to survive the next three years knowing that they were supposed to be together but couldn't actually be.
The kiss had changed everything.
And now they both had to live with the consequences.