Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 105667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105667 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
The words hit me with a jolt. He wishes it wasn’t an affair. That implies a desire for something more, something legitimate. And that, in turn, makes me think of his wife, the woman he’s still married to, still talks to daily. It feels like more of a compliment to me, a heady rush of validation, but simultaneously, a profound insult to her, to his marriage. It’s a cruel, delicious irony.
A different kind of question forms on my tongue, one that feels even more intimate, more intrusive than the last. “Do you . . . do you have kids?” I ask, my voice soft, almost hesitant, crossing a line I’m not sure he wants me to cross.
He doesn’t answer immediately. He just looks at me, his gaze suddenly shuttered, almost cold, like I’ve asked something deeply inappropriate, like it’s crossing a sacred boundary to ask him these things. The sudden shift makes my heart sink.
“You know I have kids,” I press, the quiet desperation in my voice betraying my need to know, to understand him beyond the passion. “I want to know more about you.”
He finally breaks eye contact, looking out at the glittering water again. His voice is flat, devoid of emotion, almost dismissive. “I didn’t ask about your family. They just showed up. It’s different.” His implication is clear: My life, my family, my circumstances, were simply presented to him. He didn’t seek them out, didn’t intrude. But his, his are off limits.
A knot of frustration tightens in my stomach, but I bite back the retort, sensing a fragile barrier I shouldn’t push. I go back to reading my book, pretending to be absorbed in the plot, but the words feel like staring at a blank page.
Then, just when I’ve given up, when the silence feels like it will stretch forever, he starts to open up, his voice barely audible above the gentle lapping of the water against the hull. “We tried for years,” he says, his gaze still fixed on the horizon, his face a mask of distant pain. “To have kids. Failed IVF cycles, false positives, miscarriages . . . it was hell.” His voice cracks, just slightly, on the last word. “Turns out, after all the testing, it was me. Not her. I couldn’t have kids.”
I sit up straight, startled, my book sliding unheeded from my lap to the boat deck with a soft thud. Shock. The vulnerability in his tone, the depth of that revelation, takes my breath away. “Oh, Saint,” I whisper, my hand instinctively reaching for his arm, a gesture of comfort.
He flinches, just slightly, at my touch, then continues, his voice softer now, tinged with a deep sadness. “She started to resent me. I could feel it. The quiet anger. The unspoken blame for taking her dreams away. We separated six months ago.”
My mind reels. Six months? So recent. My heart aches for him, for the quiet devastation of that dream. And then, another thought, a more selfish one, emerges.
Why did he let me believe he was in a happy marriage?
“You didn’t tell me any of this,” I say, my voice trembling with the revelation.
He turns to me, his dark eyes meeting mine.
“I still wear my wedding ring. I still feel married. Where, in the space between you needing a muse who is a married man and me explaining my messy break, could I have fit all that in? Besides, you needed the full experience, Petra,” he says. “And I’ve had fun with it. The guilt, the secrecy, the forbidden thrill. You needed to feel it all, to live it, so you could feel better about your writing. To get the fuel you needed for Reya.”
A cold dread washes over me, mixing with a strange, dark understanding.
“Do you want the marriage to work?” I ask, the question tumbling out before I can stop it in a desperate need for clarity. I’m searching for a shred of normal human emotion in this chaotic game.
He looks back at the water, his gaze distant. “Of course,” he says, simply, quietly. “But I don’t want to tie her down. Or prevent her from having other children. From pursuing that dream with someone else.” His voice holds a profound sorrow, a selflessness that’s almost unbearable, given what he’s just admitted to me.
“Do you still live together?” I ask, pressing for more details, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of his life, to understand the man behind the persona.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “We don’t. But we talk almost daily.” He pauses, then turns back to me, his eyes searching, vulnerable in a way I haven’t seen them before. “She’s having trouble moving on. But so am I.” He shifts, his knee brushing mine. “Do you . . . do you have any advice?”
The sudden vulnerability, the genuine plea, takes me by surprise. And for a moment, I see him not as Saint, the intriguing, manipulative muse, but as a man in pain. But the answer is automatic. “No,” I say, shaking my head, my voice flat. “I don’t. I don’t know how to move on, either, even though sometimes I want to.” The words are true, agonizingly so. “But you don’t have kids,” I add, almost without thinking, a reflexive defense, a way to diminish his pain in comparison to mine, to make mine somehow more valid. “So maybe it isn’t as hard for you.”