Page 36 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

“I know full well how I spend my time. And because you have given such a well-stated opinion on me, allow me to remind you of who you are. A waitress. You say you’re an artist, where’s your gallery?

The hallway of your husband’s home does not signify.

You were serving champagne to people with more money than you would have ever seen, and I elevated you. ”

“You elevated me to the obscurity of the top floor of your house,” I say, his cruelty nearly taking my breath away, but I refuse to let him see it. I refuse.

“You hate me so much now,” he says, his eyes filled with a strange sort of wonder, and I think for a moment maybe regret.

A moment passes between us, and his eyes glint. “You still want me, though,” he says, and I want to kill him.

“I don’t know that I do. You haven’t touched me for two weeks.”

He grips the back of my head and holds me steady.

And then he’s kissing me. And it reminds me far too much of that first night.

Because I am lost in it. It’s not natural.

We’ve been married for four years. We’ve had each other countless times, and I’m on the verge of leaving, so there’s no way this should capture me the way that it does.

Dragos has always been my form of addiction. His kiss is my drug. And I can’t turn away from him. Not now.

His kiss turns carnal, and he pulls me on top of his desk, sweeping everything else aside.

He strips his clothes off. It’s so rare that he does this, so rare that I get to see his body. He is fond of taking me while I’m naked and he’s nearly fully clothed. I know that it has something to do with power. Control. Because he is nothing if not a man who values his dominance.

But this time he gets naked. This time, I can see every line on his body. All of his scars. All of his tattoos.

Stories that he has never told me about his life, but that I can trace with my fingertips.

I don’t know him. That makes me want to cry. Because I never will. This is the last time, I realize, as he pushes my dress up past my hips—the dress I know he bought to take off of me—and claims me in one smooth stroke. As he takes me to new heights, each stroke of him within me a revelation.

It’s the last time. I know that it is. Because I am going to leave. He doesn’t care. He can look at my pain and return that pain with cruelty. He doesn’t love me.

And I have to go.

Some of what he said is true, and it’s my own fault. I’ve surrendered to him, utterly and completely. But this ends now. It has to end.

I arch up against him, and cry out my pleasure, and at the same time I want to weep. He shudders, spilling himself inside of me. I look around the room, and I see the destruction left behind by our passion.

My life is destruction. I am in the debris that surrounds us now.

I move away from him. “Good night.”

“Have you nothing else to say?”

“No,” I say. “I have nothing else to say. This is all we are. It’s all we will ever be.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

“It is. It is, Dragos. How do you not know that?” I want to scream at him, but I know I could do that until I’m hoarse and it wouldn’t change a thing. He sees the world in this one, intractable way and he won’t let me reach him.

“What is love? What is it you think should pass between married people? I cannot understand you. This is passion. We have had it from the first moment we met, and it is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

He has never said anything like that to me. There’s something desperate in his voice, and I find that…

No. I can’t let him appeal to me. I can’t let it affect me.

“I only know that it isn’t this.”

I leave my clothes. I leave him. I go to my bedroom, and I wonder if he’s going to follow me. He doesn’t, of course.

Of course he doesn’t.

I let myself sleep, and then in the morning, when I wake up I search around the house, and I discover that he’s gone.

I pack one bag. I don’t want his clothes.

I don’t want all of the things that marked me as Dragos’s wife.

I leave my wedding rings on the dresser.

I find some clothes that I brought with me into the relationship.

A pair of black leggings and a sweatshirt.

A baseball cap. I leave my computer, my phone.

They could track me. I know that. But for all that Dragos is controlling, I can’t imagine that he’s going to pick me up and bodily carry me back to this house.

The truth is, the lock and key have been in my possession this entire time.

I’m the one the let myself become a prisoner. I did it to make him happy.

I did it to preserve the relationship. But now… I’m done.

I regret that I’m going to have to take the car that he bought me. The car that I never drive. I never drive it because he never lets me go anywhere. I don’t want to take anything extravagant.

I stand there and have a momentary fantasy about going to France. Living in a garret, waiting tables and painting in my spare time. I won’t need any men. I’ll stay by myself. I’ll focus on my art. I’ll make myself happy. I’ll be poor, but I’ll be… Myself.

That’s what I haven’t been for a very long time. Myself.

I open up the door, and for a moment I’m shocked that it isn’t locked. But of course it isn’t.

All of the barriers were in my mind all along.

He has security outside the house, but there’s always a shift change. I wait until then.

I close the door behind me. The silence out in our driveway is deafening. It’s a gated house. We have security. Perhaps I won’t be able to get out of the gate. That’s possible.

I open the garage and get into my little blue sports car. It’s a beautiful car. Maybe I’ll sell it. Maybe it will fund the beginning of my new life in France. Maybe it will fund my croissant habit. Maybe I’ll buy canvases and oil paint with the money.

A parting gift seems fair. But I really don’t want anything else from him.

I hold my breath when I pull the car up to the gate, but it opens for me. And as I drive away I take my first full breath in four years.