Page 44 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

“I want you too. But I always want you. I told you… The day that I left we had sex. On your desk. That’s who we are.

If you can understand one thing, then I need you to understand that.

You sitting on this bed and giving me soft promises of love is not us.

It never has been. I feel things for you.

I want you, I always have. From the moment that we first met.

But we don’t make sense. Whatever this is will end because you’ll remember and you’ll go back to being you.

A life cannot be built on this kind of sharp dangerous desire. It’s a fling, it isn’t a relationship.”

“But perhaps it can be.”

“Based on what? Do we just stay here forever? Me a woman who paints, and a man with two memories?”

“What is life? I don’t know anything outside of you, Cassandra.

And I’m not certain that I want to. All that is waiting for me is more of this,” he says, pointing to the picture.

“More bad things. Everything is bad. You were the only thing… The only thing that my brain saw fit to hold onto. Perhaps you were the only good thing in my life.”

“Then what is the good thing in mine?”

I feel racked with guilt as I say that, as I walk out of the room and leave him there. I feel like I might as well have shot him myself.

I go downstairs, back into the living room. That broken vase is still there. I wish I could forget something. I wish I could forget one moment of our time together. I wish that I could forget how I feel alive when I’m with him, and how terrible and dry and pointless everything feels when I’m not.

I wish I could go back to being the good, overachieving girl who wants nothing more than to succeed at her art.

I sit down on the couch, and I put my face in my hands.

Why do I want him so much?

Why do I want the darkness?

I think about my painting. About the paintings that I’ve done of him, and how different they are to everything else I’ve ever done. The paintings that I did while I was in the attic.

The truth is, the work that I’ve done with him, in the depths of my misery without him, those paintings are better than anything I did before, which were more about wanting to be good, and not about wanting to express a feeling.

But I hate the idea that perhaps I simply need a broken muse to make art.

Any therapist would say that’s a terrible thought. An artist doesn’t need to be tormented in order to produce good work.

They certainly don’t need to be in an unhealthy relationship in order to do it.

And yet, he calls to a part of myself that I never acknowledged before I met him. Sexual. Imperfect. Dramatic. Wild.

Joyful.

Because the truth is, while I’ve had a perfectly happy life, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt anything big, all-consuming. Nothing other than the need to succeed, the need to be perfect. The need to make my parents proud. And none of that was ever really about me.

It was about the way that other people saw me.

In his arms, for the very first time, I simply felt my feelings.

Understanding the gifts that I’ve gotten from him don’t make me feel better. They make me feel worse, in fact. Because it makes me feel like he was giving more than I realized.

I made it sound like he never gave me a thing. Like he never did anything other than hurt me, and that isn’t true.

I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn. There he is, looking wounded, which was nothing I ever thought I possessed the ability to do to the great Dragos.

“I hurt you very badly,” he says.

He did, it’s true.

“Remember you asked me if I slept with him?” I ask.

“Yes, I remember that, it happened only a few minutes ago. I’m not forgetting what we’re experiencing now, and I think you know that.”

“I don’t know how your amnesia works.” I sigh. “It made you want to kill somebody.”

“Yes. Though, not somebody. Him.”

“I understand that.” I sit there for a long moment.

“I convinced myself that you were sleeping with another woman. Perhaps more than one other woman. But you were distant from me before I left. And I would love to say that I left because our communication was dysfunctional, but some of it was that a lack of trust invaded me. Once I started thinking that you weren’t having sex with me as often because you were with someone else I couldn’t let it go.

” I stare at the wall, because I can’t look at him right now.

“I wanted to kill her. Whoever she was. I don’t like that part of myself.

I don’t like the intensity, I don’t like…

” I close my eyes. “But it’s always been there.

I just pushed it into my drive to succeed.

You actually make me feel it. In real time.

Not just this deferred daydream of things that I hope I do with so much fervency that I forget to live in the moment. With you, I’m always in the moment.”

“We sound exhausting.”

I laugh and laugh and laugh. It’s not funny, but it’s true. So very, painfully true. “We are. We are terribly exhausting.”

“I’m sorry.”

I want to melt into his arms. And what if I do? He’s my husband. What if I melt into his arms and let him hold me? What if I let him kiss me? I’m stuck with them either way. We are stuck here. Except… I need to keep my distance from him. I need to prove that I have some sort of strength.

Just to myself.

I stand up, and I began to walk toward the kitchen, but he reaches out and grabs my arm. “Stay here. Are you hungry? I will get you something to eat.”

“You don’t have to…”

“Sit,” he says. “I am the one that has to stay awake so that I don’t die. Let me move. You take a rest.”

So I do. I just sit there. I sit there and for a full minute I don’t think about anything.

When he returns with a tray full of fruit, cheese and cold cuts, I don’t even know what to say.

He’s like a dream pulled from my deepest fantasies.

He’s like a Greek myth. A god offering a woman fabulous, irresistible temptation.

“That looks amazing.”

“I hope you like it,” he says.

“What’s not to like?”

“Would you like some wine? I thought that I probably had better not. With the head injury.”

“Yes,” I say. A moment later he returns with a large glass of red wine, and I wonder if I just should’ve grabbed him and instigated sex instead, because it might have made me feel a little bit more in control. Dragos being controlled by a softer aspect of his soul is disconcerting to say the least.

“Do you want to know what made me feel drawn to you?”

I look at him. “Do you know what made you drawn to me?”

“Yes. I feel it so clearly. It was like I could see the sun for the very first time. When I saw you… And you were smiling. Though then you smiled at another man.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In Trafalgar Square. You were dressed in yellow.”

“You keep talking about that. But you didn’t meet me there.”

“I did,” he says, insistent. “I didn’t meet you, no. I saw you. You were sitting with your friends. You were sitting with him.”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know what him you’re talking about.

You did take me to Trafalgar Square. After we met, though.

We met at an event that was hosted at a venue your…

company owns. It was a charity thing, I think.

And the catering company that I worked for was hosting it.

I was attracted to you instantly. And as we’ve discussed, I was a very good girl, so I didn’t even consider, not for a moment that I would…

I just thought that I would look at you, and I would go home and nothing would change.

But then you approached me and we started talking, though it very quickly turned into a proposition and I…

I wanted to say yes. I thought it would be a one-night stand. ”

“I didn’t,” he says. “Not for one moment. I knew that you would come home with me, and that you would never leave me. I knew that I had to keep you. Because you were so beautiful. But more than that. It was more than that. I can’t explain it.

I just know that I feel it. Like it was dark, and then it wasn’t. ”

It’s so strange to see him like this. Trying to communicate with me when before he would have rather cut his throat out than speak to me about anything of substance. Now he can’t find the words, and he wants them desperately. I feel sorry for him. Almost.

“Dragos, this version of you is so dramatic.” I pause for a moment. “I kind of like him. I mean, I especially like the cheese platter.”

He moves nearer to me. “I can make you one every day. I don’t care if I never remember.”

“That’s not true. You do care.”

“Well. Yes, I do care, because I could never stand not knowing everything. Everything I might need to know to keep you safe.”

“You actually have a life that doesn’t revolve around me.

The trouble is, I’m the only memory that you have.

So you think that I’m the only thing that matters, but that isn’t true.

You care about your work so much. You spend most of your time on that.

And you don’t even share it with me. Which is how I know I am not a huge priority in your life, whatever you might think. ”

He frowns. “I don’t like this interpretation of me.”

“I would welcome your perspective. But the truth is, you never gave it. Not even when you could.”

“I’m trying to give you some of it now. About you.”

“I understand that. But I’m telling you that as much as you might feel this way now, you didn’t really show it when you could have.”

He shakes his head. “I was afraid. Afraid. Of something.” He puts his hand on his forehead. “It’s got something to do with my father. Because I do think he was a very bad man.”

I feel bad, because I’m taxing him, and I can see that. I should probably be more concerned about that than I am.

But I’ve lived so many taxing lives with this man. Too many.

Yet here I am.

He reaches out to me, and I can’t help myself. I let him take my hands in his. I smooth my thumb over the ink on his.