Page 44 of Redeem

She cared for me too.

I didn’t doubt it, not even a little. She’d never said it, hadn’t really done anything to make me think it. But I knew it nonetheless. Absent the past, we might have a chance to make something of it. If I could pretend that past didn’t exist, I could nurture that chance, maybe grow it into a future.

But this would always hang between us. If I didn’t do this now, I’d never be able to tell her the truth. And I’d never make amends, would forever live with the burden of who I’d been and what I’d done.

Worse, Dana would never know me. As much as I wanted to unburden myself, she deserved nothing less than the truth.

That truth would kill the chance we’d only just found, but there was no choice.

I swallowed, found my voice. “I’m sorry you had to see him die.”

I watched her face as she processed my words, saw the way her expression changed. The furrow between her brows lifted, but then dropped deeper. There was a tightness around her mouth, one that intensified, but the biggest transformation was in her eyes.

She blinked, and in that moment the question, the tentative hopefulness was gone. In its place was nothing but pure hate, and a hurt so deep, it sliced through my heart like a jagged sword. She took a step back, and I could see the defeat, the crushing disappointment in the slope of her shoulders.

“What do you mean, Ciprian?”

Her voice, which had been so animated, so full with the roller coaster of emotions that I had seen her going through was now empty of all emotion.

That hollow sound, the vacant look on her face, the pain that I had seen that very first day, was yet another slice.

I paused, but knew I couldn’t let that dissuade me. I had lived so long with lies, but now, no matter how much it hurt me, I would give her the truth.

“I’m sorry you had to see him die,” I said.

She froze in place, looked at me with eyes that for a moment begged me to deny what I’d said but then went flat, cold.

“Who are you?”

Her question took me off guard. I blinked, stared at her, frowning. “Ciprian, as I’ve always said,” I replied.

“Ciprian what?” she asked, her voice a whisper now.

I heard the question she wasn’t asking, knew that we had reached the point of no return. “Ciprian Dragos,” I said. “The man who killed your husband.”

Dana

This couldn’t be happening.

How could it be that the man who had made me love him was the same man who had destroyed my life?

I stared into his eyes, searching for any ray of hope, anything to cling to.

There was nothing.

Even as the truth of what he said sank in, my mind still fought. When I looked at him, I still saw the man who had made me laugh, made me feel alive, who had, for the first time in my life, made me not feel alone.

But even as my mind fought, my heart knew. I studied him, searching for some difference.

But nothing about him had changed. Nothing about my reaction to him had changed.

And that was the worst thing of all.

Something should’ve been different, something should’ve happened. His confession should have broken the spell he had on me, but it didn’t.

It did nothing.

I turned, ran into the bathroom, pausing long enough to lock the door, before I collapsed, spilling the meager contents of my stomach into the toilet.

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