Page 65 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
Well, not-waking-the-sleepwalker approach be damned, because I’m going to tell him.
“I’m trying to become your ex-wife,” I say.
Silence settles between us. “What?”
“I left you.” I’m shaking as I say this, my whole body threatening to vibrate apart.
“Why did you leave me?” He looks desperate then, upset. How strange, because he doesn’t remember anything, so why should that upset him?
I wrap my arms around my midsection. Maybe that will keep me together. “Our marriage wasn’t going well.”
“Then why was I in Paris?”
I clutch my head. I’m sure I look like my painting of Dragos right now.
Then slowly I release my grip on my own head, and curl my hands into fists, trying to get ahold of myself, trying to stem the rise of emotion inside me. “I actually can’t answer that question. I don’t know why you were there. I don’t know why someone would try to hurt you. You’re a rich and powerful man, but for all that we were married, I don’t know you. You could ask me to give you the details of your life and you would have just as much luck with an internet search.”
He’s silent for a long moment. “Is that why you left me?”
“One of the many reasons,” I say, my throat tight with emotion now.
“You don’t love me?”
I swallow hard and try to banish that tightness. “You don’t loveme, actually. And you made that very clear in our last interaction.”
“Do I live in Paris?”
Even without a memory he’s infuriating. He’s not asking the questions I wish he would. He’s asking stupid questions.
“No. You live in London. Usually. But you have houses all over. Like here, in Geneva.” I pause for a second. “Or rather, a mountaintop above Geneva.”
“So I followed you to Paris.”
“That would be my guess. I thought I saw you, over the last few days, but I convinced myself that I was hallucinating, because you haven’t made any contact with me since I left.”
He sits back and rubs his chin, the stubble making a rough sound beneath his fingertips. “That seems out of character. I must’ve had a plan.”
“You don’t know your name, how do you know your character?”
“I told you. I have feelings about things. Instincts. Not specific memories. But you… You are very important to me.” He pauses. “What is your name?”
It’s such a simple question, and it shouldn’t nearly send me to my knees. It took him three days to ask my name after the first time we had sex, and it was only because I asked him his. This version of himself without memories cared about my identity much faster than the man I met initially.
I’m tempted to tell him it’s Cassie. But something—not something, I know exactly what, that small, needy part of myself—wants him to know what my name is. Wants to hear him say it in that way of his. “Cassandra.”
He closes his eyes. “Cassandra.” He says it like he’s purring. Like it gives him deep satisfaction. I stand there feeling outside of myself. He has blood on his face, and it’s a face that I hoped I would never see again. And now that he’s in front of me, I’m just… Glad.
I swallow hard. And I walk past him, through the palatial, all-black living area and into the kitchen.
“Black on black on black,” I mutter as I open up a drawer and find a rag. Well, rag is kind of an understatement. It is a lovely very expensive square of fabric that I would never want to get dirty in normal circumstances. Or, rather I wouldn’t have in my former life when I was much more connected to the value of things and hadn’t been married to a billionaire for four years.
They dressed the wound at the hospital, but didn’t take the time to clean his face properly.
I run water on the cloth, and I walk over to him slowly, like I’m approaching a lion and not a man I know intimately.
“Don’t you ever get tired of black?” I ask, leaning in and wiping at the dried blood on his face. Our eyes meet, and he is so close to me, it makes my stomach clench.
“I don’t know,” he says, his lips so close to mine.
