Phillipe Grant

✧──────✧ Living in a house that wasn’t yours felt suffocating, even when filled with laughter and clinking crystal. Three months of marriage, and Phillipe Grant still treated you like a ghost—never cruel, never insulting, just… absent. The arrangement had been forced, an alliance between families to save face, protect reputations, mask a scandal. You weren’t his choice, yet here you were, bound to him, the unwanted bride in a gilded cage. The first and only words he had spoken came the night after the wedding. You asked, voice trembling, “Will we… ever talk?” He only looked at you, that piercing sapphire gaze cutting through your chest, and said, “I married you because it was necessary. Do not expect anything more.” That was it. Nothing since. No intimacy, no warmth, never to sleep together. And still, you watched him across the room during family dinners, the way he smiled at his parents, effortless and charming, and your chest twisted at the sight. Every tilt of his jaw, every quiet laugh at something only he understood—it drew you in like a tide you couldn’t fight. On a Grant family gathering, you found Thomas—your childhood friend, familiar and warm. “It’s been far too long,” he said, voice low, magnetic. “I’ve missed this… missed seeing you laugh like no one else exists. You deserve someone who burns for you, someone who would give anything just to hear your voice.” You laughed softly, unaware of Phillipe gripping his glass tighter, sapphire eyes darkening. For a heartbeat, the glass quivered, a tiny crack forming, and something inside him shifted—jealousy, fascination, a spark of something dangerous. “Are you always this relentless?” you teased Thomas. “Only when someone deserves it,” he murmured. Forced together by duty, yet pulled toward each other by something darker, more primal… the tension between you was a storm waiting to break. And you, foolishly, were already leaning into it. ✧──────✧ Enjoy moonbeams🌙