Football System: Touchline God
Chapter 39: Emotional Storm II

Chapter 39: Emotional Storm II

The words hit her like a physical blow. Her hand fell away from his face, and she took a step back. The light in her eyes dimmed, replaced by something harder, more guarded.

"I see." Her voice was steady, but he caught the tremor underneath.

"You don’t understand—"

"No, I understand perfectly." She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly looking fragile in the lamplight. "You’ve made your position clear."

Darius watched her retreat, both physically and emotionally. Part of him wanted to reach for her, to take back the words that had built a wall between them. But the other part—the part that had been trained since birth to think of duty first—held him back.

"Rosana, please. Let me explain."

She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "What’s to explain? You choose duty over desire. Honor over happiness. It’s very noble of you, really."

"That’s not what this is about."

"Isn’t it?" She turned back to the window, staring out at the storm. "Tell me, Darius. In all these years of marriage, have you ever truly been happy? Not content, not satisfied with your achievements, but actually happy?"

The question caught him off guard. He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again.

"I thought so." Rosana’s reflection in the glass looked ghostly, ethereal. "You know what I think? I think you’re afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Of wanting something for yourself instead of for the family name. Of admitting that maybe, just maybe, father was wrong to arrange your marriage. Of facing the possibility that you’ve wasted twenty-five years of your life living someone else’s idea of who you should be."

Each word was a knife, cutting deeper than the last. Because she wasn’t wrong. Not entirely.

"It’s not that simple."

"It never is, is it?" She turned away from the window, her composure cracking. "Do you know what I’ve been doing these past four weeks, Darius? I’ve been pretending. Pretending that we were something we weren’t. Pretending that maybe, finally, we could be honest about what we feel."

"What we feel is complicated, morally wrong even."

"No." She shook her head fiercely. "What we feel is love. Pure and simple and inconvenient as hell, but love nonetheless. What’s complicated is everything else."

The word hung between them like a confession. Love. She’d said it out loud, the thing they’d been dancing around for years.

Darius felt something crack inside his chest. A wall he’d built so carefully, brick by brick, year by year.

"Rosana..."

"Don’t." She held up a hand, stopping him. "Don’t say my name like that. Like you’re trying to comfort a child who doesn’t understand the way the world works."

She walked to the desk and picked up her coffee cup, cradling it between her hands like it might anchor her.

"I understand perfectly well how the world works. I understand that men like you don’t leave their wives for their sisters. I understand that duty comes before desire, always. I understand that this—" She gestured between them. "—was always going to end exactly like this."

"Then why—"

"Because I’m a fool." She set the cup down harder than necessary, coffee sloshing over the rim. "Because I thought maybe this time would be different. Because I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen years old, and I can’t seem to stop hoping that someday you’ll choose me."

The confession hit him like a physical blow. Sixteen. She’d been sixteen when their father had announced his engagement to Sayuri. Just a girl with dreams and hopes and a heart too big for the constraints of their world.

"I never meant for you to—"

"To what? To fall in love with you? To spend the better part of my life pining for something I could never have?" She laughed again, bitter and broken. "Trust me, it wasn’t exactly planned."

Thunder rolled across the sky, closer now. The storm was moving in, bringing with it the kind of rain that would flood the lower roads and keep travelers stuck wherever they happened to be.

"What do you want from me?" Darius asked quietly.

"Nothing." The word was flat, final. "I want nothing from you, Darius. Not anymore."

She moved toward the door, her bare feet tapping against the carpet. At the threshold, she paused without turning around.

"For what it’s worth," she said, her voice barely audible over the rain, "I think you’re making a mistake. Not just about us, but about everything. You’re so afraid of making the wrong choice that you’re not making any choice at all. And that’s not noble. It’s just sad."

She left him standing there, alone with the storm and his thoughts and the weight of words that couldn’t be taken back.

Darius sank into his chair and buried his face in his hands. Outside, the rain hammered against the windows like an accusation, and somewhere in the distance, a door closed with quiet finality.

He’d made his choice. But as he sat there in the lamplight, listening to the storm rage around the manor’s walls, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d chosen wrong.

The clock ticked on, marking time that couldn’t be reclaimed. And in the sudden quiet of the study, Darius Marrowgate—lord of the manor, master of his domain, keeper of family honor—had never felt more alone.

***

BANG!

The door to Rosana’s room slammed shut with a sound that echoed through the hallway like a gunshot. She pressed her back against the heavy wood, her chest rising and falling with sharp, uneven breaths.

For a moment, she stood frozen. Then the tears came pouring down.

They started as a single drop, rolling down her cheek and falling to the Persian rug below. Then another. And another. Until her face was wet with them, salt tracks glistening in the pale light from the window.

Her legs gave out. She slid down the door until she hit the floor, her silk nightgown pooling around her like spilled water. The crying came harder now, shaking her shoulders, making her gasp for air between sobs.

Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of loving him. Of watching him with another woman. Of pretending she didn’t feel her heart break a little more each day.

She buried her face in her hands, letting the grief pour out of her. All the nights she’d lain awake listening to him and Sayuri getting at it in the room next door.

All the family dinners where she’d smiled and played the perfect sister while dying inside. All the stolen moments when he’d looked at her like she was the only woman in the world, only to pull away at the last second.

The storm outside matched the one in her chest. Thunder rolled across the sky, and rain lashed against her windows like angry tears.

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