“You are,” she insisted. “You are my hero.”
At those words, he reared back. “I am no hero, Dorothea. I’m just a man.”
She saw the anguish in his eyes, but she had to tell him what she felt. “I disagree.”
He stood abruptly and began pacing. “I am not the man you think I am. You cling to some ideal, some imagined version of me. You hope for things that are not there.”
Dorothea sat still on the bed, watching him. “No, Dominic,” she insisted. “I see what is there. You just haven’t let yourself believe it yet.”
“I shouldn’t even be alive,” Dominic said. “If I had my wish, I would’ve died alongside my comrades.”
The way he said it, with such raw honesty, left no doubt in her mind that he meant every word. “I’m glad you didn’t,” she said, rising from the bed. Her voice trembled with feeling. “My life is better because you are in it.”
He halted mid-step, turning to face her, his expression twisted with disbelief. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” she insisted, stepping towards him. “With my whole heart.”
He looked as if her words pained him more than they soothed. “No… I can’t accept that.”
“You can accept it or not, but it does not change how I feel.”
He shook his head. “I know you mean well, but you’re wrong. You would be better off without me.”
Her heart clenched at the sincerity in his tone. “How can you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s true,” he said, voice growing tight with emotion. “I will never be the man you want me to be. I don’t even know if that man ever existed in the first place. Perhaps I was just playing a part, wearing a mask even I didn’t know I had on.”
Dorothea’s feet moved before her thoughts could catch up. She crossed the distance between them, standing before him in her bare feet. “I know he existed. Because he’s standing right here.”
Dominic turned his face away. “Dorothea… you don’t understand.”
“I do,” she whispered. “More than you think. And did you honestly believe I only married you for your wealth?” Her voice caught, her brows drawing together with hurt. “If that’s what you believe, then you never truly saw me.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Then why?” he asked, barely above a whisper. “Why would you bind yourself to someone like me?”
She took another step forward, close enough now to reach for him, but she didn’t. Not yet. “Because even when you were gone, even when I believed you were lost to the war, I wanted to remain tied to your memory. I wanted to honor the man you were and the man I still see.”
“You wanted to be tied to a failure?” he murmured, his voice cracking.
She waited for him to meet her gaze before saying, “You are no failure, Dominic.”
He gave a hollow laugh. “Why? Because the king granted me a title and called me a hero?”
“No,” she said, her voice growing fiercer. “Because I was there. I saw you. Even when you were too weak to lift your head from the pillow, you asked about your men—each one—by name. You mourned them. You grieved them as if they were your own brothers.”
She continued, hoping her words gave him a semblance of peace. “You saved lives. You gave them someone to follow. You gave them a reason to hope, even in the blood-soaked chaos.That’s what makes you a hero—not what the king said, not what Society thinks. But who you were when no one was watching.”
Dominic stood there, breathing raggedly, studying her. What he saw, she did not know. But she had to say one more thing. “I see you, Dominic,” she whispered. “Even when you try to disappear.”
Dominic stood frozen in place, unable to summon a single word. What could he possibly say to the woman standing before him, her gaze full of trust and tenderness, as though she truly believed he could be more than what he was? He could see it in her eyes—that unwavering hope—and it gutted him. He knew, with a grim certainty, that he would only disappoint her in the end.
A part of him—a quiet, desperate part—wanted to be the man she saw. But that part had been buried beneath the weight of all he had endured. What he had endured on the battlefield had taken so much from him.
They stood so close. Just one step, one motion, and she would be in his arms. Would she welcome his touch?
He couldn’t chance it. Not for her sake. And not for his.
It was safer to walk away, to maintain the distance he had so carefully preserved between them. Because if he let that wall fall, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to rebuild it. And once Dorothea was let in—truly in—he feared there would be no turning back.
