Page 96 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
“Love,” I say finally.
“You did not say all of that because you love me.”
“I said it because I was afraid that I loved you. I… Love is not something I was ever taught to esteem. Love is not something I was ever taught to want. My mother and father never even said that they loved me, let alone each other. It was something that my life was completely void of. And then I met you. I could never figure out quite what you were. I could never sort out what we were. And when you came to me, demanding certain things, I found it confronting. I didn’t want to face it.”
“Well, you very nearly destroyed us both.”
“I don’t know how to do any of this.” For the first time, maybe in my entire life, I feel close to being defeated. There is so much work to do. So much unpacking of the baggage inside of me, and I’m not certain that I want to. I was willing to dismantle this empire on her behalf. More than willing. Money means nothing. Power means nothing. Not if I can’t have her. But all of this? Digging down to the very bottom of all that I am? Digging down into what makes me feel, what makes me act, that I do not enjoy.
I’m not even certain it’s possible.
“How do people do this? How do they go to dinner and share their lives and… What? They decide they want to be together based on all this?”
“I do believe that historically they generally also want to sleep together.”
“Well, I did that without having to take you to dinner.”
“Yes. But look where that got us.”
“Married.”
“Dysfunctionally,” she points out.
“I’ve never had a friend,” he says. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Cassandra looks at me as though I just told her the most heartbreaking thing she’s ever heard. “Dragos. You’ve never even had a friend?”
“What good would a friend do me?”
“I don’t know. But that’s not really what it’s about. It’s about human connection.”
She sounds far away when she says this, and I wonder if perhaps it’s too late for me. If maybe I’ll never truly learn how to have all this. I feel like I love her. When everything was erased inside of me, that felt like the one truth that remained.
But here and now it feels like a mountain I can’t quite climb and I’m not certain what I meant to do with it.
“They’ve done studies about that,” I say. “Babies who are neglected, and miss out on fundamental attachment phases, then they can’t ever bond to another human.”
“You can’t seem to let me go,” she says.
And that is perhaps the most encouraging thing anyone could have ever said to me. Because maybe I can care about another person then. Though I know my version of it is sharp, I suspect that love is supposed to be soft.
But then, how would I know?
“I am not going to be bankrupt, you know,” I say.
“Well, that’s nice to know.”
“I had begun streamlining my business. Sectioning off the parts that were legitimate. And I’m going to make sure that I devote some of my profits to charity. That’s a good thing.” I feel very much like I’m lost in paint-by-numbers morality. Hoarding too much wealth is bad. I’ve seen that in many articles. Giving it away is good, and I’m trying to be good. I have to make sure that I do all of this by causing the least amount of harm. But really what I want to do is build palaces for Cassandra, and wrap her in silks and jewels. Really, she is the only thing that I care about.
I find everything else quite boring.
But I want to change. Because she has asked me to do that.
Because she needs me to do that.
And what she wants matters to me. It matters so damned much.
“That’s… That’s great. And if you want help with any of that…”
