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I hadn’t stopped since.
Whenever something pushed my emotions into unease, I found myself twirling. Always twirling. As if trying to turn back the clock and erase what had happened or avoid what was next to come.
Sighing, I shoved aside the dark parts of our tale and focused on the light. The parts that warmed my heart to recount and reminisce. “When I first found Aslan, storm-battered and spat out by the sea, he was borderline malnourished. Once upon a time, he’d known the luxury of regular meals, but it had been a while. Far longer than a smuggler’s voyage. Far worse than losing his entire family. The reason they left Turkey took a toll far crueller than he admitted.”
I sighed and stared at the soft waves. “You have to understand, when Aslan looked at you, you could tell he carried a million secrets. You could see everything he would never say, swirling in his coal-black eyes. You could witness it in the way he moved, as if he expected the world to know who he truly was and to punish him for it.”
“Why did he think he’d be punished? Did he carry guilt for his family drowning?” Dylan asked, taking notes despite his reluctance documenting my unplanned autobiography.
“Oh, yes. To this day, he still carries that guilt. It will never go away. Neither will the inherent belief that he deserves to be sentenced for being responsible.”
“I don’t understand...” Margot murmured.
“You will...eventually.” I curled my hands on my lap. “For now, what I can tell you is...Aslan Avci was a walking contradiction.” I caught both their inquisitive stares, trying to explain. “He was tall for his age, yet seemed uncomfortable in his height. He was strong with his words and fierce in his actions, yet always seemed to swallow down the ferocity of his feelings. His lips knew how to smile, yet his eyes held a horror that never quite faded. His mind was bright and sharp, yet he hid his intelligence as if he feared it. The more I got to know him, the more I realised...he was hiding. Hiding from himself. Hiding a part of himself that he didn’t want, couldn’t accept, and for so many years, I had no idea what part that was.”
“When did you finally know?” Dylan asked.
“When he told me.”
“And were you right?” Margot tensed. “That he was hiding?”
“Oh, yes. He’s been hiding his entire life. I think, even now, a part of himself still pretends he isn’t who he truly is.”
“But why would he hide for so long? What on earth could be so bad that he never accepted himself?”
“That’s a question I can’t answer,” I said. “Soon, perhaps. But not yet.”
Clasping my hands, preventing myself from spinning my ring, I said clearly, “Of course, I know every secret and sin there is to know about my husband now. I know too much if I’m honest. Some of what he’s told me, shown me, has caused me to wake up screaming and break into sobs. I was naïve back then to think I could cure him of his sorrow. High on my own belief that I could singlehandedly crash my way into his heart and stitch it back up with everything I felt about him and every thread of connection I wanted to share. I should’ve heard what he was telling me. What his body was telling me.”
“And what was he saying?” Margot asked softly.
“That his past had once been bright but was now ever so dark. That he’d run from something far worse than death, and the fact that I’d kept him alive, when he was almost free of that darkness, was one of the things that kept him cursing me for far longer than I could stand.”
I looked at my lap. “He was malnourished for a reason. He woke from nightmares with explosive violence for a reason. He knew how to hold a knife and use it...for a reason.”
Neither reporter spoke as I settled back against the pillows. “Aslan at sixteen was as much a force as I was. I’d grown up believing I was a sunshine hurricane—destined to shed light on anything I chose to help. It gave me purpose. It gave me pride. But Aslan? His force was different. It was like a riptide. A silent, unseen force that operated beneath the surface, so elegant in its ruthlessness that you didn’t even know you were trapped before you opened your eyes and realised the shore was gone and you had drowned in its hold long ago.”
“That’s quite the claim,” Dylan muttered. “You’re saying he hurt you?”
I smiled, but it tasted sharp. “Oh, he definitely hurt me. He’s the only one who has ever made me wish to die. The scars he’s left me with—scars that can’t be seen with the naked eye but are felt with a heart—are long and deep and silvered with history.”
