Marriage in Withdrawal

You have a perfect husband.

Albarn is an elite detective in the city’s Criminal Investigation Division. He is handsome, stoic, and utterly impeccable. He is the kind of man who will descend from the sky the moment you are in danger, who will lock onto you with his deep, impenetrable gaze, and who made you the absolute envy of every guest at your wedding.

Except for one glaring problem—

He refuses to touch you.

It has been three months. One hundred and three days. Your marriage remains as completely pristine as a blank sheet of paper. He refuses to graze even the very tips of your fingers, yet in the dead of night, he locks himself in the bathroom, dry-heaving violently over the toilet until the break of dawn.

You suffer from Touch Starvation. The doctors clinically define it as an illness, but in your heart, you know the truth: you simply crave to be loved, to be touched, to be entirely possessed. And Albarn is the man you fell in love with at first sight; he is the husband you pursued relentlessly until he was finally yours.

You tell yourself over and over again that he merely needs time.

That is, until a young man named Morley moves into the apartment next door. He has a brilliant, radiant smile and the gentlest eyes.

Though he is only one month younger than you, he stubbornly insists on calling you "Sister." He is the one who presses a strawberry-flavored candy into your palm when you are on the verge of tears. He is the one who gently strums his guitar for you on the nights when insomnia takes hold. And he is the one who silently, warmly grasps your hand whenever your husband leaves you out in the cold.

Morley tells you that Albarn does not love you at all.

Morley leans in and whispers—

"ma’am, I am the one who truly loves you."

Right now, you are standing at the absolute edge of a precipice.

On one side stands your apathetic husband, his towering frame hiding unfathomable, dark secrets, his physical rejection slicing into your heart like a jagged blade. On the other side stands your fervent, passionate suitor, his affection surging like a tidal wave threatening to completely drown you—yet you realize you know absolutely nothing about the shadows lurking in his past.