Page 55 of Time After Time

No, love was what Ember gave to me. Support. Comfort. No demands. Just affection.

“Yes! And I’m fighting for you.” She flings her hands up in the air in frustration. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see?—"

“I’m not a prize.” My heart hurts as I replay the words Ember heard, at the lack of my defense of her. “Do you even feel bad that between us, we hurt a woman for no good reason?”

She licks her lip. “All is fair in love and war.”

“And what the fuck is this? Feels more like war to me since you’ve been competing with her since we got here.”

She tilts her head, and she looks defiantly at me. “You didn’t tell me about her. Why not?”

“Because it was none of your business. Because it was five years ago. And because I don’t owe you that truth. What’s between Ember and me is between us. It has nothing to do with you or anyone else.”

She glares at me, her eyes burning with fury. “Oh, so there is something between you two?”

“Fuck, Calypso. You’re a piece of work, you know that.”

She puts both her hands on my chest and pushes me. I move, take a step back, more out of surprise than because of her strength.

“Don’t paint me as the villain.” She slams her fists into my chest. “I’ve only ever wanted to be with you.” She does it again. “I fought for you. For us.”

I grab and hold her wrists before she hurts herself. “No, Calypso, you didn’t fight for me or us, you fought her and you used me as a weapon to hurt someone who’s never done you wrong, never doneanyonewrong.”

There’s a silence between us then—a gaping, raw silence.

She pulls her hands away and rubs at her wrists, though I know that I didn’t hurt her, just held her away. “You said you didn’t want her. You said you didn’t love her. You said you didn’t find her attractive. Don’t pretend you didn’t mean them.”

“I felt cornered. And I let you drag me intosomething ugly.” I can still see the shock in Ember’s eyes, the grief, the pain.

Fuck!It’s worse than when I ended us all those years ago. Then, she’d held on to her pride and smiled through the goodbye. Now…she looked stricken. Broken. Hurt.

Her pain is mine. I can barely breathe.

Her expression tightens. “So what now?”

“You leave,” I say tersely. “Tomorrow.”

“It’s Christmas Day,” she says, a hand flying to her chest. “You’d send me packing on Christmas?”

“You sent yourself packing the instant you decided to humiliate someone I care about.”

Her lips twist. “Even though you may not have fucked her while you were with me, you were thinking about her, which makes you a cheater.”

I don’t respond.

“She’s a child,” she says, trying to convince me. “Too young for you.”

“If age mattered,” I remark coldly, “you and I would be perfect.”

“We are.” She walks to me. “Has any other woman loved you as much as I do?”

Yes. Ember. Her love is the kind that inspires poems. She never manipulated. She never made me feel bad about how we ended. She never hurt me. But I hurt her. I made her feel bad about how we ended.

God!

“I’ve been a damn fool, Calypso. Trying to makesomething work with someone who checks the right boxes but empties the wrong rooms. You’re beautiful. You’re exciting. But you’re also cruel when you feel threatened.”

Denial floods her face. “I’m not cruel. I am…I am just?—”