The night had turned cold with a bitterness that penetrated my body, the winds outside our villa moaning as if mourning all that we had lost. Within, though, the silence was heavy with unseen emotions and the ferocity of nightmares. I thrashed restlessly in the blackness of our bedchamber's bedroom, the buzzing of the air conditioner and creak of wood distant to shatter the silence. Every sound made my heart thump, every black dance appear to murmur the memories of the terror now ruling our lives.
Caspian had been cold for days, now. He was the man who had enveloped me in blinding heat—whose eyes smoldered with passion and unyielding love. Now he was a ghost in our home, withdrawing to the back of his private office, where he sat for hours on end watching security tapes and poring over maps and yellowed reports. I could feel the space between us, not in inches but in the unspoken abandonment of an all-consuming man possessed by his demons.
It was on that evening, I had reached my breaking point. I slammed the study shut, could no longer stand his perpetual absence. I remember slamming the door behind me, my heart pounding, and seeing the bitter glare of the computer screen cast unseemly shadows on Caspian's face. He slouched forward, eyes glued to the screen, fingers pounding the keyboard savagely, as if he attempted to wash his head clean of the horror with every maddened blow.
"You're freezing me out again," I snarled, my own voice coarse in the tiny space, searing with fury and loneliness.
He didn't lift his head to begin with, his eyes fixed on information that was not mine. "I'm keeping you safe," he said, hardly above a murmur, near as loud as the whine of the machine.
I took the laptop, my hands trembling as I threw it onto the floor. The crash resonated, demanding he hear it. I screamed at him, every molecule of me angry to tear down the wall he had built around himself. "You're not keeping me safe. You are killing yourself," I yelled, each word shattering on my lips.
For what seemed like forever, agonizing silence. But only the eyes of Caspian finally lifted, stormy and black, with pain, fury, and sorrow so closely intertwined together. I sensed the tension in all unforgiving lines of his face—the tension which had been his constant companion.
"You don't understand—" he started, but I let him say no more.
"Then show me!" I wailed, my voice shattering like broken glass. "I'm right in front of you, Caspian! I'm not some fragile little secret you put on the shelf and store away. I'm your wife. I want to help you fight this. I want to help you get better."
He leapt up, the chair scraping harshly over the floor as he stood. His normally shut-down eyes were now black depths of raw pain. "I can't," he breathed on a shuddering voice, low and jagged. "Because if I tell you what really happened—what really happened with Victor, with what I did to him—you'll never look at me the same anymore."
I walked forward, trying to step over the shiver in my legs. My heart pounded so violently that I knew that it would break the delicate peace we'd only just had for a second. "Try me," I panted, staring at him. "I have the right to know why you're so terrified.".
For an instant, he looked away, black eyes fleeing like they wrestled with centuries of secrets. Then he leaned across the desk, hunching his shoulders beneath a load I could barely even start to comprehend. I kneeled on my knees beside him, clasping my hand around his, fingers closing over it gently. I could sense the wild, frantic thud of his heart—a demented beat of love and fear intertwined.
Lily. His voice the breaking, creaking note, a rending of cracked glass from straining. "I wake up every night and I'm filled with nightmares—with visions of you. with visions of you fleeing from me. I see you die and I wake up screaming, in fear, with the horror that I've wasted so much time and can't keep you back." His hand trembled on my cheek. "I have tried my best to protect you, but I feel like I am ripping myself in two in an effort to drive you past the reach of this wickedness."
I could feel my own tears burning to form behind my eyelashes as I wrapped his hand around me again. "You're not breaking me, Caspian," I spat out harsh, voice trembling with emotion though stubbornly resistant to it. "Your love's not a curse; it's the only thing that makes us cling to hope. I choose you day in and day out-even the nights we give in to fear. I'm not a burden. I'm your equal."
He looked at me then—brooding, wild-eyed, and fixed with weakness. "But what if. what if that you find in me all the ugliness?" he panted, barely above a whisper, shaking with fear. "What if you find that I am so faulty, so soaked in shame, that it would be better for you not to have me?"
My heart aches at his words, and I buried my face in his. "Caspian, listen to me," I breathed, "I love you—not despite your scars, but because of them. They're evidence you've battled for us, that you've survived so much. I don't care about your history, and I won't let it ruin us. I want to remain here, with you, with every shadow and every fear."
I looked into his eyes, and saw the struggle there break down—briefly, at least, for a moment. His pain-and-guilt-glazed countenance eased in the look. "I'm so sorry," he repeated, his voice full of remorse. "I never meant to drag you into this limbo. I've been so terrified of losing you that I built these walls, and now I think they're killing us."
I leaned forward, my fingers cupping his face, to inform him that our love was greater than any wall he could construct. "I'm here, Caspian. I'm not going anywhere. We'll knock down these walls, no matter how tall, no matter how dark the shadows."
For one tormenting, eternity-long moment, all there was of anything was his heartbeat going slow, steady measures and distant moans of the wind outside the windows. And in silence did our hot glares pledge more than any words ever so much swear an oath—a promise to struggle through whatever monster had hunted us both even to encounter the worst of each of us.
Caspian eased me back into his arms slowly. His grip was hard but gentle, as if he tried to keep all his pain and fear in this crazy hug. Our lips collided in a kiss that was hard and soft—a meeting of two lost souls who were trying to mend and believe that love would cure the most agonizing wound. His arms were passionate in their quest but each embrace was infused with his subdued sorry and every sticky "I'm sorry" that nagged at our sleepless nights. I hugged him like I'd perish, compelling him to make him bear the burden.
"I don't promise you an unbroken future," he whispered against my lips, his voice shaking and raw. "But I promise to fight for you, for us, until the last desperate gasp of my devils is spent. I'd be burned by perdition's flames if it'd put you standing at my side."