“Never said you were. You are naive and empathic. A more dangerous combination than stupidity.”
“And why is that?”
“All three can be exploited, but naivety and empathy push us to do things we do not wish to do. Because either we believe in the greater good or feel sorry for those who should never be pitied.” He waits a beat and delivers his next verbal blow. “Your family treated you like shit their whole lives, yet the minute they needed help, they told you to jump. And all you did was ask how high instead of telling them to fuck off.” Anger drips from his every word, and I wonder if it’s on my behalf.
Or is it disgust?
Shoving more food into my mouth because I want to be done with this dinner as soon as possible, I ponder what to say. Mentioning my grandmother to him wouldn’t be smart. I’d be handing him yet another weapon against me. I can’t visit her much anyway, and she doesn’t recognize me, which leads to hard episodes afterward. That’s why it was so important for me to provide her with the best care possible. At least in this hospital, they take care of her, and she’s comfortable.
“Strength is not always about confrontation or telling someone off. Sometimes we have to do what we don’t want in order to secure a future we crave.” My ambiguous reply is met with silence. “I imagine that’s a hard concept to graspfor you. We aren’t all born with a silver spoon in our mouths, in a castle surrounded by people who cater to our every whim.” The delicious dinner now tastes like grass in my mouth, I still eat it because starvation is not in my plans.
My eyes jump to him when I hear his chair scraping against the marble as he gets up, going to the minibar where he picks up a whiskey bottle and flicks the top off, pouring himself a generous amount. Once done, he drops several ice cubes in his glass and shakes it a little as he focuses his attention back to me, leaning his shoulder against the wall and studying me. It causes heat to travel through my body. “If I always had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, we wouldn’t be married.” He takes a sipfrom his glass. “So, you see,Wife, the parents can screw up even the most privileged lives.”
And just like that, he pushes me into a metaphorical cold pool, reminding me he’s no different from all these men I’ve encountered over the years.
Why did I expect this to be anything else?
Wiping my mouth with a napkin, I get up and plaster the smile on my face that I perfected to a T with my father. “I’m done. Please give my thanks to Leon. I’d like to go upstairs and get some rest. It was an eventful day.”
Spinning around, I go back to the living room and catch a glimpse of the fountain statue again, its beauty exceptional in the moonlight. Halting my movements, I stare at it, still wondering who it could be from the myth.
“Orion.”
I jump at the nearness of his voice, warmth enveloping my back.
I turn, and my chest bumps into Orion’s, his whiskey breath fanning my lips as his masculine scent twitches my nose, all while tickling sensations zip all over me.
He must read the confusion on my face as he points at the statue. “The hero portrayed there is Orion.”
As in an outstanding hunter in ancient Greek mythology, infamous for his beauty and towering height, who some people considered a giant?
While heroes in mythologies rarely caught my interest, I read several variations of the Orion myth because they mostly featured Artemis.
In one particular myth, they used to be close friends who bonded over hunting, while in another, he tried to rape her, so she punished him for it and killed him. There was also one in which he was bitten by a scorpion, a punishment for vowing to kill all animals.
They all sounded uninteresting to me, and I just assumed he wasn’t a character I wanted to read much about.
Until one day, I stumbled across the version that broke my heart and made me ache for the things I never knew, wondering how life could be cruel even to the immortals.
According to some myths, they had romantic feelings for each other despite Artemis vowing to remain a virgin goddess and never marry. This didn’t please her twin brother, Apollo, who created a scheme where he challenged Artemis’s hunting skills and pointed at the barely visible target in the water. She took the challenge head-on and sent her arrow flying, not knowing it was actually Orion’s head, thus killing him.
Heartbroken, she created a constellation named after him, so she could always look at him, while still keeping to her word and never letting a man or god touch her.
I never put much thought into my husband’s name until now, realizing how it connects to mine. “Your mother liked the myth about Orion and Artemis?” I take a step back, needing to put some space between us. “You mentioned the fact that she was fascinated that someone you love so much could kill you.”
“She loved myths. Her life had been too tragic to believe in fairy tales, and she associated herself with Orion to a degree, and maybe that’s why she named me after him. In the end, her love killed her. Just like it killed Orion.”
He steps forward, and I push back, stumbling a little. I gasp when his arm wraps around my waist, bringing me closer to him, and my splayed palms end up on his chest. The ring glistens under the moonlight, reminding me that this virile, handsome man is my husband. “Careful, Diana.”
“I have to go,” I whisper, our lips a hair’s breadth apart while my fingers curl on his chest. An unfamiliar fire spreads through my veins, and my mind screams for me to run.
Run from the man who will no doubt hurt me.
Because the chaos and emotions he awakens within me threaten the carefully built internal walls I have erected over the years to protect me from the inevitable.
Falling for a man who would destroy me, and that’s something my torn-to-shreds soul cannot allow.
I won’t ever give a man such power over me, and my mother taught me this valuable lesson from a very young age.
