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“That’s part of the job.”

I roll my eyes. “You canceled our anniversary dinner.”

“I had a meeting.”

“The dinner we’d planned for two months.”

He exhales through his nose. “I said I was sorry.”

“You forgot my birthday.”

His expression changes just enough for me to catch it. “That’s not fair.”

“Really?”

“I was filming.”

I scoff. “You called me two days later.”

“I was working.”

“You called your trainer that morning.”

His mouth parts as though he has a response ready, but nothing comes out.

Nearby, the publicist develops an intense interest in her phone, and a stage manager takes one look at us before changing direction so fast he nearly walks into a lighting cart.

Spencer finally finds his voice. “You kept track of that?”

I stare at him. “Of my birthday?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Good. Because that would’ve been a genuinely concerning thing to mean.”

A snort escapes the publicist before she catches herself and disguises it as a cough.

“Emma,” Spencer says, dragging his attention back to me, “we’re talking about one mistake.”

“No. We’re talking about hundreds.”

His frustration returns. “You’re acting like I cheated on you.”

The comment should make me angry. Instead, it knocks the rest of the fight out of me.

I stare at him, waiting for the understanding to arrive.

It doesn’t.

He’s standing right in front of me, and he still thinks this conversation is about a forgotten birthday. About dinner reservations and individual mistakes.

I look at the man I’ve spent years loving and suddenly see how much energy I’ve wasted trying to bridge a gap he never noticed existed.

I’ve explained him to my friends when they questioned his behavior. I’ve defended him to my family when they worried about me.

Every disappointment came wrapped in a reason, and I accepted every one of them because I wanted the relationship to work. The more time I invested, the more I needed it to mean something.

Even now, he’s waiting for me to do it again.