Page 45 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
But over the years it’s changed. Slowly, over time, he’s gotten distant.
It feels like he’s trying to make up for something. Apologizing to me by cooking for me.
Another woman.
I keep obsessing about that, I’ve been thinking it constantly. It sneaks into my dreams at night and I wake up howling—more points for my theory that I’m going mad. I ask myself why I even care.
If he’s betrayed me then I should rejoice, honestly, because it gives credibility to this deep dissatisfaction I feel, to my resentment. If he’s sleeping with someone else I can leave him easily.
I let myself imagine it, those hands on someone else’s body.
It fills me with fury, and absurdly, makes me want to grab him. Kiss him. Remind him.
We’re the best. He and I. When we’re together we break furniture and sound barriers. He leaves bruises on me, I leave bite marks on him. We aren’t like anyone else.
I don’t have to have a long list of lovers to know that.
He loved that I was a virgin. He told me. He loved that he claimed me. That he was the only man to ever see my body, to ever touch it. He recited poetry about it while he thrust deep inside me. The idea that it hadn’t actually meant anything, or that my inexperience might have actually bored him made me want to die now.
Or maybe kill him.
I might be more likely to stab him than he is to stab me, if I’m honest. I’m almost certain I’m being figurative.
“Did you?” I ask. “Miss me?”
“Yes, though if you’re going to be unpleasant I might revise my opinion.” He says all this in the same smooth voice he’s said everything else in.
“Have you been working on a big project or something?” I ask.
Apostolis Enterprises is a Death Star–level conglomerate. It’s not a moon; it’s a giant megacorporation coming to kill you.
It keeps him busy and that’s understandable. Maybe it’s something to do with that.
“No,” he says. “Nothing new.”
I feel certain he’s goading me with that. I move into the room and walk behind him, sliding my fingertips over the black marble. “I think I’d like to go visit my parents.”
“I don’t have time to take you to America right now.”
I stop. “I didn’t ask you to come with me.”
“You aren’t going alone.”
“Don’t be unhinged, Dragos.” I frown. “I managed to travel the world without you when I was much younger.”
“Now you’re my wife, Cassandra Apostolis, and that puts you at risk.” There was a dark flame in his eyes that rose up suddenly and it set me on my back foot. “It’s not safe for you to travel without me.”
“I’m not your prisoner!”
“When do you want to go, perhaps I can arrange a security team for you.”
“I don’t want to bring a massive security team with me to Idaho. This is silly. They live in a small town, nothing is going to happen.”
“You’re naive,” he snarls, and then turns back to his cooking. “Go upstairs. I’ve left a dress for you for dinner, and some other gifts.”
My stomach feels sour with suspicion and anger now and in spite of all that, my heart beats faster when he says that because it reminds me of the earliest days of our marriage. It reminds me of how things were when I thought these kinds of gestures were love.
That he showered me with designer dresses and jewelry and flowers because it was how he showed me the depth of his feeling.
