“I’m not fond of leaving women weeping in my bedchamber.”

“I’m not weeping,” I informed him and it was the truth.

I wanted to weep. I was going to weep when the big gorgeous hot guy who didn’t want me anymore finally was “away.” And sure, there were tears in my eyes.

But I wasn’t weeping.

“Madeleine, your eyes are swimming with tears.”

Suddenly, I was done with this.

“Apollo, just let me go so you can go.”

“Speak,” he demanded.

I twisted my arm in his hold, repeating quietly, “Please, let me go.”

“Madeleine”—he dipped his face to mine, definitely impatient now and not remotely— “speak.”

“I made a mistake,” I whispered.

“In coming here?” he asked.

“In marrying Pol.”

He went still. He was right, my eyes were swimming in tears so he was hazy, but he went so still, I could feel it.

“I have this…thing about me.” My mouth kept going. “It’s a weakness. A failing, really. And I…well, it led me to Pol. Actually, it led to a lot of bad things but they all came through Pol. Because of this flaw, I didn’t make the right decisions. I didn’t listen to people who were telling me things I should hear. I saw what I wanted and went for it, consequences be damned.”

He said nothing, didn’t move, didn’t take his hand off me.

So my mouth kept going.

“My father told me. He told me that I shouldn’t marry Pol. And the first time it was bad, really bad in a way I knew it wasn’t going to get better it was only going to get worse, I should have driven myself to the hospital. Instead, I drove myself to my parents’ house.” I took a shuddering breath and slid my eyes to his shoulder. “He opened the door to me, one eye swelling shut, my nose bleeding, every breath shooting fire through me because my ribs were broken, he took one look at me and shut the door in my face.”

Apollo did something then, his hand tightened around my arm.

But that was it.

“I don’t know…I don’t know how to be taken care of,” I stammered my admission. “Because I’ve never had that. And looking back, my father was always that way. He was a bus driver and my mom worked too. But she made sure to rush home and have dinner on the table because that was what he expected. She worked as many hours as he did and still, she cooked dinner, did the dishes, the laundry, the shopping, cleaned the house. His job was driving buses, watching TV and complaining about everything under the sun all the time. The president and his policies. The Seahawks offensive coach. The number of Japanese cars on the road. I guess she did what she did, cowing to his every whim, just so she didn’t have to listen to him bitch if she didn’t.”

I shook my head again, eyes still to Apollo’s shoulder, and kept blathering.

“That negativity…constant,” I kept on. “My mother, by the time I could cogitate, was buried under it. So buried, she was barely even there. It consumed the air we breathed. She seemed to just drift through life with him, I swear, like she was doing her time, waiting for it to be over.”

Apollo said nothing.

I looked to his throat.

“I was trying to do right,” I said quietly. “When I got to this world. When I got a new start. I was trying to do right by finding a way to look after myself and do it not depending on someone to look after me. Finally, for once, being smart and learning to take care of myself. I depended on someone to look after me and he wasn’t up to that job and worse, he was what I needed to protect myself from.” My voice dropped lower. “I thought I had to learn from that. To be smart. To find a way to take care of myself.”

Finally, he let me go and spoke.

“I am not your husband.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“If you do, then you speak of him now because…” he trailed off on a prompt.

“Because you’re giving me everything he gave me except more and better. He gave me everything too and made it a curse.”

His voice was still cold when he stated, “And you assume I’ll do the same.”

“I don’t assume anything.” I lifted my eyes to his still blank ones. “I don’t think anything. I don’t know anything. Not even who I am. And that’s the point. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know how to be me. All I knew was living surrounded with negativity with two parents, one who was pissed at the world for what seemed no reason, one who was so gone, she was like a ghost. And my whole life, both of them seemed like they didn’t know I was around and clearly they didn’t care much after I was gone. Then I was living in fear with Pol and breaking free only to live on the run, hiding from him, afraid for a different reason and that was that he’d find me.”

“Maddie, your point,” he pushed and my heart sunk.

And it sunk because I was making my point, doing it honestly, sharing openly, and he still wasn’t listening.

So, I got down to my final point so this could be done.

“Well, I need to find me. And I need time to do that.”

His voice was arctic when he stated, “Alone time.”

“No, Apollo.” I shook my head again. “Just time.” I threw out a hand. “Do you have any clue what it’s like to live on the run, to live in fear, to know that if the man who seeks you finds you, you might have to take his life to save yours? Do you have any idea what it’s like to live for over a f**king decade knowing you gave into your weakness and made a mistake that you paid for not only in pain and misery but the death of your child?”

I crossed both arms over my belly and looked to the windows.

“This has been lovely, amazing, all of it, everything you’ve given me. Even fighting with you, because you showed me it was safe. I could say what I had to say without your fist connecting with my face.” I said softly. “But it takes more than fairytale worlds to fix what’s broken in me. And this is because I live every day knowing it was me who broke it.”

Suddenly, I felt him move and looked his way to see he was sauntering to the jade brocade cord with its golden tassel that was by the bed. He stopped at it and gave it a tug.

I then watched him move toward the windows and he did this to round the heavy handsome dark wood desk that was sitting at a diagonal in the corner, facing the room. Confusion filtered through my sadness as he pulled open a drawer and unearthed a sheet of paper.