Page 41 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Then slowly I release my grip on my own head, and curl my hands into fists, trying to get ahold of myself, trying to stem the rise of emotion inside me.

“I actually can’t answer that question. I don’t know why you were there.

I don’t know why someone would try to hurt you.

You’re a rich and powerful man, but for all that we were married, I don’t know you.

You could ask me to give you the details of your life and you would have just as much luck with an internet search. ”

He’s silent for a long moment. “Is that why you left me?”

“One of the many reasons,” I say, my throat tight with emotion now.

“You don’t love me?”

I swallow hard and try to banish that tightness. “You don’t love me , actually. And you made that very clear in our last interaction.”

“Do I live in Paris?”

Even without a memory he’s infuriating. He’s not asking the questions I wish he would. He’s asking stupid questions.

“No. You live in London. Usually. But you have houses all over. Like here, in Geneva.” I pause for a second. “Or rather, a mountaintop above Geneva.”

“So I followed you to Paris.”

“That would be my guess. I thought I saw you, over the last few days, but I convinced myself that I was hallucinating, because you haven’t made any contact with me since I left.”

He sits back and rubs his chin, the stubble making a rough sound beneath his fingertips. “That seems out of character. I must’ve had a plan.”

“You don’t know your name, how do you know your character?”

“I told you. I have feelings about things. Instincts. Not specific memories. But you… You are very important to me.” He pauses. “What is your name?”

It’s such a simple question, and it shouldn’t nearly send me to my knees. It took him three days to ask my name after the first time we had sex, and it was only because I asked him his. This version of himself without memories cared about my identity much faster than the man I met initially.

I’m tempted to tell him it’s Cassie. But something—not something, I know exactly what, that small, needy part of myself—wants him to know what my name is. Wants to hear him say it in that way of his. “Cassandra.”

He closes his eyes. “Cassandra.” He says it like he’s purring. Like it gives him deep satisfaction. I stand there feeling outside of myself. He has blood on his face, and it’s a face that I hoped I would never see again. And now that he’s in front of me, I’m just… Glad.

I swallow hard. And I walk past him, through the palatial, all-black living area and into the kitchen.

“Black on black on black,” I mutter as I open up a drawer and find a rag.

Well, rag is kind of an understatement. It is a lovely very expensive square of fabric that I would never want to get dirty in normal circumstances.

Or, rather I wouldn’t have in my former life when I was much more connected to the value of things and hadn’t been married to a billionaire for four years.

They dressed the wound at the hospital, but didn’t take the time to clean his face properly.

I run water on the cloth, and I walk over to him slowly, like I’m approaching a lion and not a man I know intimately.

“Don’t you ever get tired of black?” I ask, leaning in and wiping at the dried blood on his face. Our eyes meet, and he is so close to me, it makes my stomach clench.

“I don’t know,” he says, his lips so close to mine.

“All of your houses have this same motif. At least every one I’ve been to. It’s very boring.”

“I don’t let you decorate.”

“You don’t let me do anything.”

His eyes never leave mine, and my heart flutters like I’m a schoolgirl with a crush and not a married woman standing two inches from the man who broke her.

This is ridiculous. I can’t be lusting after my near ex-husband, who I hate, who was stalking me, who now has amnesia.

I’ve made a lot of questionable choices with him, but this would be a bridge too far even for me. Even for us.

Still, I notice that my breathing gets shallower and my heart begins to beat faster. Then he reaches up and touches my face, his rough fingertips dragging down my cheek.

I move away from him. “Don’t.”

“If you insist.”

“I don’t know what you’re telling yourself.

I don’t know why your brain is trying to protect you from the truth of how you actually feel about me, but the truth is, you don’t love me.

I’m one of your possessions. That’s why you came after me.

You were pursuing me just like you would a stolen car.

In fact, I did take one of your cars, maybe that’s really what you were looking for. I sold it.”

He’s looking at me blankly. “I didn’t come for a car. I came for you. That much I know.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”

“I can,” he says. And then he gets up out of the chair, his movements surprisingly fast and fluid.

He grips my arms, his expression ferocious, and I try to move away from him but he holds me fast. “The only thing I knew in that moment after the bullet grazed, when I hit my head on the ground, and I came to, the only thing that I knew was that I had to get to you. I could see you in my mind before I went upstairs. I knew where I was going.”

“But don’t you understand that you only do that because you were stalking me? Because you’re imbalanced and unhinged.”

“And what about you? With those pictures you painted of me all over the room.”

“Call it an exorcism,” I spit back at him. “Because I did love you. But I was dying living in that house. I was dying.”

“Did you tell me?”

“Yes,” I say, the word a choked, pained whisper.

“And here’s the thing, Dragos, you don’t remember how we met.

You reminded me of how we met before I left you.

When I told you that our marriage was suffocating me you reminded me that I was only a waitress.

That’s how you met me. I was waiting tables.

I was young and vulnerable. Ripe for you to pick me, and you did.

And I thought it was exciting, sleeping with a stranger.

But it is far less exciting when four years on the man you’re sleeping with is your husband but still a stranger. ”

He releases his hold on me, and begins to pace in front of me. “You are the only thing I know,” he says, looking at me. “You are the only thing I know for sure.”

I should leave him. Honestly. I should have left him in Paris.

Left him to die? The very thought makes me feel like I’m the one dying.

“You don’t mean this,” I say. “You think you do right now, but you don’t. If you came for me, it’s only because you’re obsessed. We both are. But you weren’t even that obsessed with me in the end. You were avoiding me. I think you’re having an affair.”

I wait to see what he’ll say to this. Because his guard is down, and even though he is in some ways maddeningly the same as ever, he also feels different. I’m wondering if he’ll tell me more than he did before.

“Were you?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. I cannot remember another woman. Not a single one. I cannot remember another woman’s touch, another woman’s kiss.

And no, I cannot see the times that we were together, but I feel them.

They exist inside my bones. They are more real than I am to myself right now.

You are more real. I don’t even know what I look like except for the paintings that you did of me.

But I knew what you looked like. And I know what I look like through your eyes. ”

I don’t know what to say that. It is a stunning realization. I have somehow become this man’s north star, and after years of him being mine it feels…

It should feel triumphant. But I wanted to escape this, not become more deeply enmeshed in it.

I shake my head, and I turn away from him.

“It’s true,” he says. “You are the only thing that’s real to me.”

“I really sort of hate you,” I say. “What you think of that? What you think of knowing that the one person you can remember can’t stand you?”

“Then why didn’t you leave me to die, dragostea mea ?”

I despise him for that. “I’m not your love.

I never have been. Don’t torment me.” I lose my temper then, I cross the space and grab the shiny vase sitting on a stand in the corner, I wrap my hand around it and I throw it right into the side of the wall, watching as all the black glass splinters and shatters onto the floor.

“Are you even being real right now? This isn’t just another way that you’re looking to manipulate me? Because you love to manipulate me. I think that’s the only thing you ever really liked about me. That I was a young virgin who wasn’t armed against all of your machinations.”

It’s my turn to start pacing. “You took me to Paris, and I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was romantic. You said that you wanted to marry me, and I thought that it was because you loved me. What I’ve learned in the time since is that you never actually loved me.”

“You left me,” he says, his voice grim. “I must have done something terrible I…” His gaze goes distant, blank. “What is it I do?”

“What?”

“For work. What is it I do?”

“You own Apostolis Enterprises, and it is basically every industry you could ever imagine.”

“I… Am I a good man, Cassandra?”

I stop and stare at him. The question is absolutely sincere, entirely genuine. He looks different than I’ve ever seen him, the expression on his face totally unguarded.

“I… Why are you asking me that?”

“Because I have the feeling that I’m not. I was in danger, you left me. Those things together make me wonder…”

“You told me you’re certain you weren’t having an affair.” I despise myself for how much I want that to be the truth.

“I am. I am certain of that. I know that you’re the only woman I want.” I can’t ignore the sincerity in his gaze, but I also know it might not be true. He thinks it is, but that doesn’t mean I can trust a man with a head injury. “But I wasn’t good to you.”

I feel bad that he thinks… Well, I’m not sure what he thinks.

“You didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re thinking it’s…

I felt like I was isolated and alone. I can’t actually tell you what you do for work on a daily basis.

You’ve never explained it to me. I can’t tell you about your childhood.

I can’t tell you if you had any pets, or where you went to school.

I can’t tell you what your hopes and dreams are, if you ever wanted to do anything beyond running your father’s company.

I don’t know the answer to that because it’s something you wouldn’t share with me. ”

“Then I am afraid I’m right and I’m not a good man. It is entirely possible I deserved what happened to me today.”

I can only stare at him. He’s a stranger to himself now, and it’s terrifying to think that of the two of us, I know him best, because I don’t know him. Not really.

Except…

“You were never cruel to me, not… You were mean. You were mean to me when I told you I was unhappy, that is true. You said I was only a waitress. You tried to push me away and it very definitely worked. But you never harmed me. You never made me feel like I was in danger. The truth is, Dragos, I kept myself locked in your house. You didn’t lock me in. ”

I swallow hard and I turn away from him.

“I was afraid of you not wanting me anymore. I was afraid of that from the beginning, so I did everything you asked me to do and I didn’t rock the boat because I didn’t want to lose you.

But in the end I lost myself.” I take a deep breath and try to ease the knot in my chest. “That actually isn’t your fault.

That’s my fault. Some of this… I felt too much for you.

So much that it eclipsed all of my other dreams. I think that’s who I am.

I was that way with my art for my whole life and I thought it meant I loved art and it wouldn’t change.

But I met you, and you filled me up all the way and I couldn’t love anything else.

That’s my fault. Plenty of people have relationships and they stick to their own convictions about their life and they don’t give up their dreams. I did. ”

I turn away from him now because I can’t look at him while I’m feeling this much.

It’s hard to own my part in the mess.

But I have to.

His lack of love might have been toxic, but so is my love.