Page 66 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
“All of your houses have this same motif. At least every one I’ve been to. It’s very boring.”
“I don’t let you decorate.”
“You don’t let me do anything.”
His eyes never leave mine, and my heart flutters like I’m a schoolgirl with a crush and not a married woman standing two inches from the man who broke her.
This is ridiculous. I can’t be lusting after my near ex-husband, who I hate, who was stalking me, who now has amnesia.
I’ve made a lot of questionable choices with him, but this would be a bridge too far even for me. Even for us.
Still, I notice that my breathing gets shallower and my heart begins to beat faster. Then he reaches up and touches my face, his rough fingertips dragging down my cheek.
I move away from him. “Don’t.”
“If you insist.”
“I don’t know what you’re telling yourself. I don’t know why your brain is trying to protect you from the truth of how you actually feel about me, but the truth is, you don’t love me. I’m one of your possessions. That’s why you came after me. You were pursuing me just like you would a stolen car. In fact, I did take one of your cars, maybe that’s really what you were looking for. I sold it.”
He’s looking at me blankly. “I didn’t come for a car. I came for you. That much I know.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”
“I can,” he says. And then he gets up out of the chair, his movements surprisingly fast and fluid. He grips my arms, his expression ferocious, and I try to move away from him but he holds me fast. “The only thing I knew in that moment after the bullet grazed, when I hit my head on the ground, and I came to, the only thing that I knew was that I had to get to you. I could see you in my mind before I went upstairs. I knew where I was going.”
“But don’t you understand that you only do that because you were stalking me? Because you’re imbalanced and unhinged.”
“And what about you? With those pictures you painted of me all over the room.”
“Call it an exorcism,” I spit back at him. “Because I did love you. But I was dying living in that house. I was dying.”
“Did you tell me?”
“Yes,” I say, the word a choked, pained whisper. “And here’s the thing, Dragos, you don’t remember how we met. You reminded me of how we met before I left you. When I told you that our marriage was suffocating me you reminded me that I was only a waitress. That’s how you met me. I was waiting tables. I was young and vulnerable. Ripe for you to pick me, and you did. And I thought it was exciting, sleeping with a stranger. But it is far less exciting when four years on the man you’re sleeping with is your husband but still a stranger.”
He releases his hold on me, and begins to pace in front of me. “You are the only thing I know,” he says, looking at me. “You are the only thing I know for sure.”
I should leave him. Honestly. I should have left him in Paris.
Left him to die? The very thought makes me feel like I’m the one dying.
“You don’t mean this,” I say. “You think you do right now, but you don’t. If you came for me, it’s only because you’re obsessed. We both are. But you weren’t even that obsessed with me in the end. You were avoiding me. I think you’re having an affair.”
I wait to see what he’ll say to this. Because his guard is down, and even though he is in some ways maddeningly the same as ever, he also feels different. I’m wondering if he’ll tell me more than he did before.
“Were you?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
“How do you know that?”
“I just do. I cannot remember another woman. Not a single one. I cannot remember another woman’s touch, another woman’s kiss. And no, I cannot see the times that we were together, but I feel them. They exist inside my bones. They are more real than I am to myself right now. You are more real. I don’t even know what I look like except for the paintings that you did of me. But I knew what you looked like. And I know what I look like through your eyes.”
I don’t know what to say that. It is a stunning realization. I have somehow become this man’s north star, and after years of him being mine it feels…
It should feel triumphant. But I wanted to escape this, not become more deeply enmeshed in it.
I shake my head, and I turn away from him.
