Page 53 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
“I only know that it isn’t this.”
I leave my clothes. I leave him. I go to my bedroom, and I wonder if he’s going to follow me. He doesn’t, of course.
Of course he doesn’t.
I let myself sleep, and then in the morning, when I wake up I search around the house, and I discover that he’s gone.
I pack one bag. I don’t want his clothes. I don’t want all of the things that marked me as Dragos’s wife. I leave my wedding rings on the dresser. I find some clothes that I brought with me into the relationship. A pair of black leggings and a sweatshirt. A baseball cap. I leave my computer, my phone. They could track me. I know that. But for all that Dragos is controlling, I can’t imagine that he’s going to pick me up and bodily carry me back to this house. The truth is, the lock and key have been in my possession this entire time. I’m the one the let myself become a prisoner. I did it to make him happy.
I did it to preserve the relationship. But now… I’m done.
I regret that I’m going to have to take the car that he bought me. The car that I never drive. I never drive it because he never lets me go anywhere. I don’t want to take anything extravagant.
I stand there and have a momentary fantasy about going to France. Living in a garret, waiting tables and painting in my spare time. I won’t need any men. I’ll stay by myself. I’ll focus on my art. I’ll make myself happy. I’ll be poor, but I’ll be… Myself.
That’s what I haven’t been for a very long time. Myself.
I open up the door, and for a moment I’m shocked that it isn’t locked. But of course it isn’t.
All of the barriers were in my mind all along.
He has security outside the house, but there’s always a shift change. I wait until then.
I close the door behind me. The silence out in our driveway is deafening. It’s a gated house. We have security. Perhaps I won’t be able to get out of the gate. That’s possible.
I open the garage and get into my little blue sports car. It’s a beautiful car. Maybe I’ll sell it. Maybe it will fund the beginning of my new life in France. Maybe it will fund my croissant habit. Maybe I’ll buy canvases and oil paint with the money.
A parting gift seems fair. But I really don’t want anything else from him.
I hold my breath when I pull the car up to the gate, but it opens for me. And as I drive away I take my first full breath in four years.
CHAPTER FOUR
IWON’T LIE, I’m somewhat surprised when he doesn’t come after me. And yet, it also feels like confirmation. Maybe this was what I was afraid of all this time. Not that he had me locked in, a prisoner serving a life sentence. Not that he would hunt me down in the streets.
That he wouldn’t come for me at all.
Maybe he’s moved a new woman into our home. It’s shocking how easily I can imagine that. His hands, his mouth, on someone else.
Someone who’s willing to play his games and live by his rules.
If it’s regret I feel knotting my stomach, I do my best not to acknowledge it.
I stay at a hotel in London. I work on selling my car for some cash. I find a little attic apartment in France and laugh becauseI’mputting myself in the attic now.
After three days, while I’m preparing to board a train to Paris, I call my mother.
“Cassie,” she says. “I’ve been worried about you. I haven’t heard from you.”
I smile at the wall, because I want to sound like I’m fine. “I… I separated from Dragos.”
There is deafening silence on the other end.
“That’s probably for the best,” my mother says after a good while, and her certainty about that hurts.
“Do you think so?”
“He’s very…cold.” My mother is quiet for a moment. “Your father and I never wanted to interfere, and really, we couldn’t. You were so in love with him. But it wasn’t like you. I imagined you with…a nice guy who might want to bring you back here.”
