Brinley's lips parted as if she might swallow the words back, but she forced them out.

"Austin." Her voice trembled, then steadied. "Do you...do this often?"

He tilted his head, his gaze fixed on her in the dim light."Do what?"

"Manipulate people." The hesitation faded,replaced with quiet insistence. "Even me."

Austin didn't answer right away. A long silence stretched between them, heavy with things unspoken. At last, he said evenly, "In the Moore family, if I don't stay three steps ahead, I'Il end up falling into someone else's trap. I won't let that happen. And I won't let you get hurt either."

There was no mockery in his tone, no shield of arrogance-o nly a raw honesty that caught her off guard.
Though shadows hid the details of his face, Brinley could still catch the honesty shining through his words.
"I see," she murmured, her voice barely audible.
Curling onto her side with her back to Austin,she tried to still her racing thoughts. Onlya few minutes passed before the steady rhythm of his breathing filled the quiet room.
Unable to resist, she shifted just enough to steal a glance at him. A thin blade of moonlight slipping through the curtains sketched his face in sharp relief,highlighting the strong cut of his profile.
He looked as though sleep had already claimed him.
Her taut nerves loosened, yet rest still wouldn't come.
The dip in the mattress reminded her that he was there.
His scent drifted across the narrow space-crisp cedar-not heavy, but insidious, curling around her senses like smoke. The more she breathed it in, the wider awake she became.

A low murmur drifted from behind her. "Still awake?"The words carried an easy tone, but a quiet thread of curiosity wound through them.

Brinley's pulse faltered, and she instinctively stilled,her breath shallow. Her lashes fluttered despite her effort to remain composed.

She forced her chest to rise and fall in an even rhythm, fingers curling tightly into the sheet beneath her.

Austin didn't speak again, leaving the room to its hush.

Still, she couldn't shake the heat of his unseen gaze pressing against her back-steady, inquisitive,almost burning-raising goosebumps along her nape.

She dared not roll over, eyes clamped shut as if sleep had already claimed her, though her thougts wandered restlessly in the dark.

The clock on the nightstand marked each dragging second until its hands pointed to one in the morning.

Brinley's eyelids drooped heavier by the second, and just as she began sinking into real sleep, the mattress shifted under a subtle weight.

Her breath caught, every musce strung tight as she sensed his presence leaning closer, the warmth of his gaze pressing down over her like a shadow.

For one dizzying heartbeat, she thought his fingers would graze her hair-but the touch never came, the moment suspended in a fragile hesitation.

"Brinley." Austin's voice borushed against her ear,hushed and fleeting, like a sigh swallowed by the dark.

Her lashes trembled, a strange sensation unfurling in her chest.

She burrowed deeper into the mattress, giving a soft, <###Chapter 38 A Sleepless Night +120 Points at most sleepy murmur as though his voice had pulled her from her dreams.
Austin let out a low chuckle, the sound carrying both resignation and a quiet fondness.
Afterward, the room slipped into heavy silence,without the faintest rustle.
Brinley,though,remained wide awake.
She sensed he hadn't stretched out beside her again, as if he were still seated nearby, his eyes lingering on her.
Not wanting him to know she was still awake, she held her rigid posture, her thoughts spinning aimlessly into the night.
Why was he watching her so intently? Could it truly be that Austin harbored a weakness for her?
Brinley pictured Austin dusted in flour as he stubbornly tried to master cooking, the steady calm in his face while he swallowed down her disastrous attempts at a meal, and the ghostly pallor when he endured the pain of gastrointestinal bleeding.

Those snapshots flickered through her mind like a reel of film, and her pulse stumbled, racing faster.

To everyone else, Austin was decisive, relentless, a man carved from steel-yet before her, he revealed a tenderness that seemed to exist nowhere else.

The thought stirred unease. Maybe she was reading too much into it.

Perhaps it wasn't affection at all, but simply that Austin had never been close to a woman before.Suddenly bound by marriage, he might only be treating her kindly out of obligation.

Their union had cemented the two families together,and she reasoned that so long as he posed no real danger to her, she was content to continue the marriage.

As for what lay ahead-they would just take things step by cautious step.

Brinley's thoughts meandered until the faint glow of dawn finally softened her mind into a shallow sleep.

When she stirred again, the space beside her was already vacant.

Sunlight poured in through the tall windows, spilling golden streaks across the polished floor.

Out on the balcony, Austin stood with a phone pressed to his ear, his lean, imposing frame outlined by the light. The dark gray pajamas he wore only sharpened his aura of quiet authority.

As she watched his back, Westley's words from the night before echoed in her memory.

"Brinley, you may not know this, but Austin's mother left the very day after he was born. He never experienced a mother's love. That's why he seems cold and distant. But he's soft on the inside; he just doesn't know how to connect with people. You're his wife, so try to endure. If he ever mistreats you, tell me-I'll make sure he's taught a lesson."

Back then, she had acknowledged with a smile, though something complicated twisted inside her chest.

Learning Austin had grown up in such a cold, barren household suddenly explained why he buried his emotions so deeply.

Yet Brinley couldn't help but question-was the Austin she knew truly as detached as Westley described?

This was the same man who had fumbled his way through cooking just to please her, eaten every poorly prepared dish she put on the table without a word of complaint, and stood quietly at her side when his family made things difficult for her.

He seemed nothing like the person that Westley had described.

"You are awake." Austin ended the call and turned with a faint curve to his lips. "Go freshen up.Breakfast's ready."

Brinley gave a small nod, slipped out of bed, and hurried toward the bathroom. In the mirror, she caught sight of the faint shadows beneath her eyes-evidence of the sleepless night she had endured.