Page 77 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
The definition of insanity is love.
And that is a terrifying realization.
He lays me down on the soft mattress and I cling to him for a moment. Because I don’t know what it is to be put to bed by him without sex following. We know the steps to this dance. His body does, even if his mind doesn’t. I’m confident in that. I see it, in the barely banked black flame in his eyes. Every other time he would’ve kissed me. Touched me. Held me down, restrained my hands, thrust into me and made me cry out his name.
He doesn’t do that. Instead he smooths my hair back from my forehead and gazes at me as if I am a sight that he has longed to see for millennia.
Time ceases to exist.
There is nothing beyond the two of us. The affection in his touch. Something that I’ve never felt from him before.
“Like the sun coming out from behind the clouds,” he says softly. “Like finding a missing piece to my soul. Like finding a lifetime of missing peace.” He lets out a hard breath. “I don’t remember everything, in fact, I barely remember a single thing. But that feeling inside of me is so large, so all-consuming. I think nothing could banish it. That’s why I remember you.”
He’s talking about me like we might be soulmates. That’s how I felt. From the first moment I saw him I thought…
No. I tried so hard to stop romanticizing that moment. To sit and recognize it for what it was. Lust overtaking sense. I’m not immune to that. Who is?
“It was sexual attraction,” I say. “Us and all of humanity. It isn’t that unique. We start wars and religions to try and contain sex. We paint our feelings and turn them into song lyrics, poetry and films. It’s a playground game. Kiss, marry, kill. There’s a reason those three go together. We kiss and marry and kill the one we love.” I touch his face. “I don’t want you to go thinking that we had some beautiful life and I’m denying us. Our feelings were real, but I’m not sure that I believe in love anymore.”
As I say that, I feel my heart begin to crumble. I feel like I’m doing to him what he did to me. I looked at him, hoping, praying that he would give me something. That he would tell me that he cared for me.
That he loved me.
Now he’s looking at me like he wants the same reassurance and I’m refusing to give it. And I can’t figure out if I’m being punitive, or if I’m just trying to save us both.
He moves away from me, but stays sitting at the foot of the bed.
“Sleep,” he says.
“You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I don’t want you out of my sight. You’re the only thing I know. Without you I’m… I don’t exist.”
My eyes begin to drift closed. I think I’ve been awake for twenty-four hours. I don’t want to sleep, actually, I want to answer him. But I feel myself being dragged under into unconsciousness. And when I wake, none of this is a dream.
I am still living in Dragos’s nightmare.
CHAPTER NINE
Dragos
IWATCH HERsleep all night. I know this isn’t the first time I’ve done that. I know it the way that I know so many things about her. Things that she continues to dispute.
The hours pass quickly. She wakes on a gasp, and I immediately want to comfort her, but understand that I might also be the source of her fear.
“Good morning.”
“Dragos,” she says.
Yes. She’s still surprised to find herself here with me.
“I will make you coffee,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says, sitting up slowly. I’m overcome by the urge to kiss her. I was last night, too, but I could sense her pulling away from that. I understand why she didn’t want that. But I want it. I wanther.
Still, I’m listening. She says that we default to the physical because talking is so difficult. But talking is especially difficult when you don’t know anything about yourself. And the things I do know she rejects.
I make my way downstairs, and marvel at the way muscle memory carries me through the motions of making coffee. The way that I am able to perform basic functions without knowing anything about myself. I don’t remember how I learned these things, and yet my body still knows them.
