"Oh my God," Maxime stammers amid my narration.
I tear myself away from the memory, lift my gaze, and look at him across the ice table.
"I received this diagnosis just a few hours before the show in Lyon. The little information I could gather about my genetic condition until your performance was..." I strain to find the right word. Devastating? Frustrating? "It robbed me of all hope," I admit openly.
Thoughtfully, he shakes his head. "The doctor only said it was likely. That means there's a chance..."
The same sadness from back then permeates me. "Would we have survived that?" I ask him pointedly and suddenly feelliberated, able to tell him all that burdened me back then. "How many miscarriages would our love have endured? How many deaths would we have had to mourn, perhaps even without me ever being able to grant you your great wish?" With each word, my voice grows weaker. "I couldn't do that to you. To live such a life..."
The expression in his eyes softens. "My biggest wish was always just to be with you."
Hardly has he spoken the words when he covers his mouth with his hands.
Tears well up in the corners of my eyes, and I allow them to flow. It's okay for everyone to see my vulnerability.
"I couldn't dance with you, and I couldn't start a family with you." What would we have had left together? Who would we have been? "I thought there was nothing I could give you. Not even hope."
"What are you talking about?" His chest heaves, and his fingers nervously stroke mine. "Your love was all I ever wanted."
"And it hasn't faded," I say, filled with pain. "I left my whole life behind me. Everything that mattered to me, my friends, my dream of dancing, my family. You."
My voice falters, and I beg him with my eyes, finally admitting to myself what I hadn't even acknowledged before.
"I ran away, literally. For years, I ran until I collapsed, exhausted, just to find some rest. I exploited my body to keep going." It was an addiction, the only thing I had left. "Yet I could never forget you."
Suddenly, his hands rest on my cheeks, and he gently wipes away the icy tears with his thumbs. "My God, Aurora," he whispers, almost inaudibly.
I dare to stroke his temple. "You deserved a chance at a better life. That's all I wanted."
He shakes his head. "A better life?" he asks weakly. "Without you?"
My shaky breath forms a small white cloud between us. "I wanted to be strong," I repeat my words from earlier, as the circle closes. "But in reality, I was weak."
Too weak to explain to him what I feared so much. Too weak to show him that I was not the fighter I pretended to be.
Too weak to let go of control.
I look at him, urging him to understand. "What I did had nothing to do with not trusting you. It was about not trusting myself, about not being able to face everything that would inevitably come."
I would like to say so much more, but he surely knows what I mean.
"And now?" His voice trembles. "Have you learned to trust yourself now?"
I nod, feeling the fear creeping up inside me.
Maxime reaches his hand toward me but withdraws it before touching my cheek. Then he smiles wistfully. "Why should I believe you?"
A dark heaviness takes hold of me.
"What are we doing here, Aurora?" His exhausted gaze meets mine. "What are these memories supposed to achieve?"
"Maybe nothing," I confess openly. Then I take a sip of my ice-cold Cosmopolitan, my thoughts drifting to what's to come. "But maybe everything. We should find out together."
He looks at me for longer than necessary, then reaches for his cocktail and empties the rest in one go. As he has done so many times before, he glances at his watch.
I also sneak a look there. It's 7:06 p.m. The three hours he promised me in the park are long gone.
"You decide," I say with a trembling voice. "Will you give me the chance to show you that I'm no longer the blind fighter from the past?"
