The irony of it hit me immediately. Going to Sinclair for clarity was like asking a maze for directions. The man dealt in obfuscation, in carefully constructed half-truths that served his purposes more than anyone else’s. But I understood the impulse. When her world was spinning, she reached for the axis, even if that axis was a manipulative bastard who treated people like chess pieces.
I wanted to laugh. Wanted to point out the absurdity of seeking truth from the man who’d orchestrated our separation in the first place. But I kept the comment to myself, swallowingit down with all the other things I learned not to say. She didn’t need my cynicism right now. She needed space to process, to speak, to exist without my commentary shaping her experience.
So I just nodded, acknowledging her words without judgment.
She looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw the exhaustion in her eyes, not just physical, though the pregnancy clearly weighed on her, but emotional. The kind of tired that came from carrying too much for too long, from trying to make sense of a world that refused to be sensible.
“He told me why you left,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “About the consolidation. About Sylvia St. James. About keeping me safe by cutting all ties.”
I waited, letting her words settle between us. There was nothing I could add that would make it better, nothing I could say to erase the pain of those six months. Sinclair had given her the facts, the strategic reasoning, the cold calculus of survival. But facts didn’t heal wounds. Understanding didn’t automatically translate to forgiveness.
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse,” she continued, her fingers still tracing those absent patterns. “Knowing you had reasons. Knowing it wasn’t just abandonment.”
“It was still abandonment,” I whispered, my admission tearing out of me. “Reasons don’t change what you experienced. What you felt. What you had to survive alone.”
She blinked, surprise flickering across her features. Maybe she expected me to defend myself, to justify the choice, to explain why my reasons should matter more than her pain. But I’d spent six months learning that some things couldn’t be justified. Some choices left scars no matter how necessary they were.
The silence returned, but it felt different now, less hostile, more contemplative. Like we were both trying to figure out howto exist in the same space without the weight of the past crushing us completely.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, my hands clasped between them. My words came slowly, carefully, as if I were picking my way through a minefield.
“There’s a story,” I began, my voice low and measured. “About a man who gave up everything for love. You might know it. Edward VIII, King of England.”
She tilted her head slightly, curiosity replacing some of the exhaustion in her expression.
“In 1936,” I continued, “Edward was king. He had the throne, the power, the weight of an empire on his shoulders. Everything a man could want, everything he’d been raised to believe was his destiny. But he fell in love with a woman—Wallis Simpson. An American divorcee. Someone the establishment would never accept as queen.”
I paused, letting the parallel settle without forcing it.
“The government told him he had to choose. The crown or the woman. Power or love. They made it clear: there was no middle ground, no compromise, no way to have both. So he chose.”
Melissa’s eyes were fixed on me now, her expression unreadable.
“He abdicated,” I said, my words heavy with meaning. “Gave up the throne, walked away from everything he had been born to do, everything he had been told mattered. And he did it for her. Because being king without her felt like a prison, and being with her felt like freedom.”
I let the silence return for a moment, giving the story space to breathe.
“They called him weak,” I continued, my voice softer now. “Said he’d betrayed his duty, his country, his family. Said he’d thrown away something irreplaceable for a woman who wasn’tworth it. But he didn’t see it that way. He saw it as the only choice that mattered. The only choice that was truly his.”
Melissa’s hand moved to her belly again, that protective gesture that seemed to ground her.
“I’m not comparing myself to a king,” I said, meeting her eyes. “I’m not trying to romanticize what I did or make it sound noble. But I understand him. I understand what it feels like to stand at that crossroads and realize that all the power in the world means nothing if you can’t have the one thing that makes you feel human.”
“So you’re saying you chose me,” she said quietly, not quite a question.
“I’m saying I spent six months building something stable enough to walk away from,” I replied, my honesty raw in my throat. “I spent six months consolidating power, bringing factions together, creating a structure that could survive without me. And then I gave it away. Handed it to Braesal and walked out the door. Because being the head of the IRA without you felt like wearing a crown I didn’t want.”
Her eyes glistened, tears threatening but not falling.
“Edward VIII lived the rest of his life in exile,” I continued, my voice barely above a whisper. “He never regretted it. Never looked back and wished he had chosen differently. Because he understood something that most people don’t... that power is just a word for control, and control is just a word for fear. And love... love is the only thing that makes any of it worth surviving.”
My words hung between us, heavy with meaning and implication. I wasn’t asking for forgiveness. Wasn’t demanding she understand or accept, or even move forward. I was just offering her a story, a parallel, a way of seeing what I’d done that might make sense of the senseless.
She was quiet for a long time, her gaze distant, processing. The lamp cast shadows across her face, highlighting the exhaustion and the strength in equal measure. She looked like someone who had been through a war and was still trying to figure out if she had survived it.
“He gave up the throne,” she said finally, her voice thoughtful. “But he didn’t give up being royal. He was still the Duke of Windsor. Still had wealth, privilege, and status. He didn’t give upeverything.”
“No,” I agreed. “He didn’t. But he gave up the thing that defined him. The thing he had been raised to believe was his purpose. And that’s not nothing.”
