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She had called him that. Even as she had taken pleasure from him.
And he just wanted... He wanted something else. Something other than what he was. Something other than what they were.
“What about the baby...”
“She was fine without me for a month. She will be okay with the nannies while we do this.”
“What if it’s for nothing?”
“I’m fighting for you. It will never be nothing. No matter the outcome.”
They made arrangements with the staff, and got on the private jet. They barely spoke on the trip over. It was almost like she might have left him. The pain that stretched between them was palpable. The tension. This was like dying.
The only time he had ever felt this way before was after his mother’s funeral, but in that case, there was nothing to be done. Nothing to change.
He didn’t know what he wanted now. Whether he wanted to be right, or whether he wanted... Her to be right.
It was an endless night. Neither of them slept. They didn’t speak. And when they landed in the morning, it wasn’t morning there. Just another endless day. And by the time they got out to the temple ruins, the sun was setting again.
He began to walk through the columns, the endless rows of brick and climbing vines.
And he remembered asking her if she was here for a spiritual pilgrimage. As if that was laughable.
“What did you hope to find here?” He looked back at her.
“Myself.”
“And you found me instead.”
“Yes. But along the way I found myself. I... I thought I was the lamb being led to slaughter. But I’m not. I’m stronger than that. My question is... Are you?”
He didn’t know what answers he was looking for, but as they walked through, in total silence, he stopped in front of the remnant of a goddess. And something about it flashed a memory through his mind.
They had something like this. A likeness of the same deity in his home when he was a child. He could scarcely remember. Just like he could scarcely remember his own mother. And suddenly, he could remember feeling. He could remember being in that little house. And everything being right. There was nothing to think about. He was a child, and everything had always been taken care of for him, and he believed that it always would be.
And then...
He remembered... He could remember clinging to his mother’s shirt, crying. While they tried to take him away.
And she cried. She screamed, her wailing matching his own.
And they had taken him. They had taken him anyway. He couldn’t understand a word they said. He couldn’t understand anything. And then there was that man. His father. And he had been... Blisteringly cruel. And he had still longed for his approval. For his affection. For something. Anything.
And all those realizations seemed to pour from him. He wasn’t examining them with distance. They were pouring out of him like a flood. Like bleeding.
And he had no control. None at all.
It was just pain. There had been so much pain. And he had chosen to block it out. But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that and love her. That was the problem. That was the problem.
“I almost lost you,” he said. “And you know what that would’ve done to me?”
“No,” she said.
“I wasn’t okay. When you were gone. I didn’t take another woman to my bed. I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted you. Then I found out you were in an accident...”
“And would your detachment have spared you?”
“Maybe. I would... I would never have even known what I felt. I...”
