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“I’m quite enjoying a slow morning,” she said.
“You must prepare yourself.”
“What’s happening?”
“You are going back to Paris.”
“What?”
“You’re going back.”
“I didn’t ask to go back,” she said.
“And I did not ask you what you wanted. I will not hold you here. I will no longer tie you to this family. Or to a past that... Was not your fault.”
“I know it isn’t my fault,” she said. “But you don’t. You don’t know it isn’t your fault. And now what are you doing? Punishing yourself?”
“I am making things right. This is the only thing that I can set to rights.”
“I chose you,” she said. “Don’t you understand? I chose you, Cairo. If I hadn’t... Don’t you think I would’ve had a lover in these last sixteen years? But it was always you. I had freedom. I had freedom to be with whoever I wanted, and I didn’t want to. Because I could never get you out of my heart. I had a choice. And now... Kidnapped or not, you are my clear choice.”
“No,” he said. “You will not be another in my long list of sins, Ariel.”
“And you think that sending me away and acting like none of this ever happened will... Absolve you? You’re just afraid. You’re afraid of what you feel for me. And you’re making it about me... It isn’t fair.”
“I will carry you out to the private jet myself.”
“A reverse coup and a reverse kidnapping. You really have had a busy few weeks.”
“You think I’m kidding.”
And he could see something change in her face. Some kind of acceptance. Some kind of resolve. “You need me to do this.”
“No. You need to do this.”
“No. You need me to. And so I will. I will prove to you that I love you.”
“Didn’t you hear what I told you about what happened?”
“Is that why you’re telling me? To prove to me that you don’t deserve to be loved? It’s too bad for you, because I think that you are. Because I care about you. I like you, and I love you. And I always have. What an inconvenience for you.” She stood up. “But I’m going to get dressed. I’m going to get on the plane. And in two days I’m going to come back. I’m going to buy a plane ticket, and I’m going to show up at the palace. Unless you want to come find me beforehand. To ask me to stay with you. Not kidnap me. Not make demands. You know where I live.”
And she began to collect her things. And he simply watched.
And then, in only an hour, she was gone. In the air, headed back to Paris.
And he found himself walking, stumbling, out of the apartment. And down into the dungeon.
She was broken. Possibly irrevocably. Possibly forever.
By the time the plane landed in Paris, and she got in the car that took her back to her apartment, the apartment that she had been so sorry to leave just weeks before, she felt like she was so brittle she might fall apart.
He didn’t love her. So maybe it was a foolish thing, to think of buying a plane ticket and going back.
But she didn’t know how else to show him. To make him believe that she was choosing him.
But what she wanted... What she really wanted was for him to choose her. What she really wanted was for him to understand.
Yes, he had given her father information that her father had misused, but it wasn’t his fault that her father had betrayed them.
