“It doesn’t feel that way to me.”
"I'm not explaining myself," I started. “What I'm trying to say is… at the Institute, everything was so regulated, and we didn't have a lot of choices, so what we did together was what we had to work with, not what we chose. Then after we broke out, we were so preoccupied with all the chaos we caused that we didn't pay attention to all the little things.”
His brow narrowed in confusion. “I’m sorry, I’m not following.”
“Take food, for example,” I began. “At the Institute, we had to eat whatever was in the cafeteria, because that’s all that was available. Here, the servants make us whatever we want, but do we actually know what our favorite food is to eat together? If we were to go out to eat, would we even know what restaurant to pick? Or what meal is our favorite to cook on Saturday night?”
He was slow to respond, but still came to the same conclusion I did. “No.”
“And that's my point. What’s our favorite show, our favorite place, our favorite hobby or holiday? What do we do on the weekend when we’re bored? What do we talk about when there’s no bad guy to face? When you remove everything that brought us together, the prophecies, the bond, all of it… what are we?”
He considered my words carefully. “You’re wondering if we would be together if we hadn’t been bonded.”
“Yes,” I said, though it broke my heart to say. “If we were just two average people who met in boring, average circumstances, would we have gotten married if we hadn’t been forced into it? Sometimes I wonder if we’ve been through so much shit together that the trauma we faced forced us to fall in love. And that deep down, we don’t like each other that much.”
Charlie sat back and said quietly, “I sometimes think that, too.”
That crushed me. I wanted him to argue, to say I was being ridiculous and that there was more that held us together than what was obvious. That he didn’t tore me up inside. It was evidence that what we’d shared hadn’t been as deep as I’d believed.
I sighed. “There are so many little things that make up a marriage, and I don’t know if we share any of it.”
He nodded slowly. “I think you’re right.”
Stop agreeing with me, I wanted to plead, but the answer was clear. We had music, and that was the one thing that still gave us some sort of connection, but that wasn't enough, and sex wasn't going to fix this, either.
I didn’t know if we had much in common. We'd been great at committing crimes together, but that was a horrible trait. I didn’t want us to keep bringing out the worst in each other.
Even if I left his side out of it, I wasn’t sure what I should do. If I wanted this marriage to work, I had to completely re-learn who my husband was. I’d once thought this man was the love of my life, but now he felt like the biggest stranger on the planet. How was I going to get that feeling of being madly in love back again? How could I regain trust, rebuild intimacy that didn’t involve sharing our bodies, but our hearts and everything we were?
I didn’t think I could. So that left only one option. To go our separate ways, and never unite again.
Charlie crossed his arms over his chest and said softly, “I’m sorry I broke your heart.”
I wanted to cry. But I refused to allow any more tears fall tonight. I gave a scoffing noise and let a snide joke slip out instead. “That’s not the only thing you took. You must be a demon, because you stole my soul.”
“Must be. I belong in hell.” He held himself tighter, his eyes haunted and dark. His voice quivered, and wetness edged his eyelids. He couldn’t break down, because then I would, too, and then where would we be?
“Hey.” I reached out and wiped a tear away. “If it helps, I think demons are hot. And don’t judge yourself too harshly. Because I belong down there, too.”
He smirked through his tears. He heard me swing my legs over the side of the bed, indicating I wanted to leave. He brought my chair to me and I gathered my things, redressing before I slipped out quietly.
I really wanted to spend the night, to sleep warmly beside my husband and wake up the next morning like nothing ever happened. The last thing I desired was to spend another lonely night in a cold bed alone, vacant of someone who wasn’t truly mine.
But he was barely my husband anymore, and I didn’t think he would be for much longer. No matter what I desperately craved, we needed time apart. To figure things out, if nothing else.
This relationship couldn’t be saved. But tonight, Charlie had given me just enough hope to consider trying again.
Maybe.
Chapter Nine
CHARLIE
Weeks passed, and my head was still reeling from what Ava and I had done. It wasn’t supposed to happen… but it did. I was half convinced it’d been a dream, because there couldn’t be any world in which Ava and I connected physically after everything that happened.
Ava’s sheer avoidance of me over the following month solidified the reality, reminding me that the moment of passion we’d shared had in fact been real, and wasn’t some product of my delusional descent into madness. She wouldn’t be acting like I didn’t exist otherwise.
I didn’t understand. Ava gifted me that onesie she’d made, asked me to comfort her like that, and then we went right back to avoiding each other. It was like nothing had changed, but something was very different.
