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Just as her whole life had been a perversion of family.
Yes, she had felt joy. Connection.
But they were only slivers of what was meant to be.
She understood him. In this, she understood him.
“It is costly,” she whispered. “Taking those sorts of small pleasures. Because on the other side of the wall is a whole world. A feast you sacrifice for the crumb before you.”
“Sometimes the crumb is all you can see.”
“Yes. So too with freedom, I suppose.”
“There is a freedom to driving, yes. But then, that freedom can be easily accomplished with enough money as well. As you can see.”
“Provided you’re the one in control, yes.”
“Perhaps that is the problem,” he said, and she sensed the change in subject. “The amount of lives I have tried to live. Maybe the problem is a man can only jump to so many. And this last one... It is what I will not be able to find my way out of.”
“I don’t believe that. I’ve had three lives too. The one that I can’t remember, the one in the compound, and now this one. I need to believe that I can change again, Cameron, otherwise what will happen to me after?”
He looked at her. Long and hard. And she found herself looking back. Unflinching. Unwilling. “You will do just fine, my goddess. You are a woman of exceptional strength, and there is nothing that will compromise that.”
“I don’t know that I believe it. It would be nice if I could. But I have no evidence to suggest that I will be all right when I’m out and left to my own devices.”
“Perhaps you will make mistakes. Perhaps you will sample all the things that have been withheld from you, and you will find yourself drowning in the excesses. I’m familiar with that. But there’s something different about you, Athena. It is your warrior heart, I think. It grounds you. I lost myself. Because I never knew who I was. Except angry. I took joy in manipulating others. Because I felt that somehow they were withholding something from me simply by existing. You do not have that same spite in you that I have in me.”
“I don’t know. The spite is beginning to feel real. I spent a great many years believing that I was simply spoiled. Protected. I spent a great many years not thinking about how many years were passing. And then I had to wake up. It was like a bucket of cold water being dumped on my head. And I find that I am angry. Because here I am, twenty-eight years old with no real idea of how the world works. And no idea at all where I fit in it. I was not a fit for the life at the compound, not really, because it was not for me. And what is? I do not know. Perhaps I will discover my roots, perhaps I have a family, and I will have no place there either. You’re assuming that I am measured because that’s my nature, but I believe it is simply because it is all I’ve ever had the opportunity to be. I’m angry. Because the whole world is out there. All of this before me, and it was denied me. And why? I may never have the answer to that.”
“You may not. And so what will you do with that? I let it twist me. The people around me were selfish, and so I let myself become equally so.”
“Could I be selfish. Just for a while?”
“Of course you can. When we part, you can live for yourself. Take the money that I give you and spend it on clothes. Go to clubs and dance the night away, buy yourself a luxury car. Take as many lovers as you please.”
She watched his face when he said that, and was satisfied to see it darken with something unreadable.
“Is that what you think?” she asked. “That I should take many lovers? I thought that you decided I needed romance.”
“It is what you said, not me. But it would likely benefit you to seek something other than romance for a time. Something that is simply light and free.”
“Did you find those interactions light and free when you had them?”
He laughed. The sound cynical. “No. If you want the honest truth, I’ve never found sex to be anything more than a weapon. Used against the other person, or used against my own demons.”
“And yet you enjoyed it?”
“Physically, it feels good. But I was dark and twisted long before that car accident. And so the dark and twisted always served me. I took great joy in using beautiful women who begged to be with me. Because I was important and handsome and all the things they prized. Because I was no longer poor, where people would just pay for my services, pay to have a handsome man on their arm, or a secret, shameful night in bed. Yes, I took great pleasure in that power shifting. All the women who graced my bed were symbolic of that. A salve for my rage. Except they were human beings. And using them was wrong. And nothing brought that into sharper clarity then Irina dying in my arms simply because she had the bad misfortune of being my lover for that couple of weeks.”
She swallowed hard. “It hurts you. The harm you’ve caused.”
“Yes,” he said. “And once Irina died, once the accident happened, I let every bit of harm I ever caused hurtme. Cut me. Down to the bottom of my soul. Because something had to give. Because something had to shift. Because otherwise it’s all... Because otherwise it’s all so ugly. It is all so ugly.”
She moved her hand to brush against his thigh. The suit pants were luxurious in quality, soft, his thigh hard. And she could feel a large dent in the muscle there, more evidence of trauma from the accident.
“You are not ugly. Just so you’re aware.”
He gripped her wrist and pulled her close. “Don’t lie.”
