The silence in the villa's study felt almost sacred—a peaceful retreat from the nagging pulsatings of the outside world. The storm outside had finally receded, taking with one the soothing hum of waves on distant cliffs now. But in here, it loomed heavily over remembrance and untold secrets.
I entered the study with caution. The room was a mixture of fantasy of the past and high-modernist architecture: mahogany bookshelves stacked high with leather-bound books, heavy Persian carpet that devoured my steps, and a solitary older clock that ticked brutally in the distance. There was a solitary source of light, an antique brass desk lamp that shed a warm, soft light, shadows that writhed on walls. Bathed in the soft light, Caspian slumped in one of the well-padded leather armchairs, his head bowed as if lost in thought. His expensively pressed suit was rumpled, and his normally polite face now had a recognizable sheen of sadness to it.
I paused, my pounding heart inside my chest, my head thinking about whether to push it or not. My inquisitiveness encouraged me to try harder, and I managed to force it open, reaching there to see Caspian's eyes eventually raise up and find mine, their vulnerability of depth so deep that I could hardly breathe.
"Lily…" He spoke in a low tone, his voice full of pain and uncertainty. I could sense the storm raging behind his eyes—a typhoon of guilt, of fear, of something else that I had not yet found.
I moved forward until we were at arm's length. "I'm here," I panted, putting a trembling hand on the chair beside him. "I want to know you—the truth about you."
He didn't say a word for a full minute. Something else interrupted the silence in the room besides the metronomic tick of the clock, the second pulsing out into seeming eternity. Then, ever so slightly, his hand trembled and he went to lift the glass on the table. Rather than drink from it, he sat there cradling it futilely, looking at swirling amber liquor as if the liquid contained all his secret guile.
"I've protected my life," he at last wheezed, whispering. "With every door I open for any person, I share part of myself. I built walls so high, Lily… so high that I think if I let them fall, all I shall be left with are shavings."
His words me like a thunderbolt. I always had this feeling that the cold-blooded businessman with body armor around the heart was hurt, but since he confessed it to me so plainly, I was hurt and in a sense freed.
I went a step further, reaching to place his face within the palm of my hand. "You are not unlovable, Caspian. Scars, pain—you bear them, yes, but they do not define you. I am not here to judge or pity you; I am here because I care about you. I would like to bear your burden with me, though it will mean loving you in fragments."
His turbulent, dark eyes flared with something I couldn't discern. For an instant, I would have taken an oath that I saw relief—a secret hope that perhaps I could be the one to repair him. His eyes froze and turned hard once more, and he pulled his hand back as if burned.
"Lily," he replied, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and grief, "I can't— I can never love you the way you must be loved. I can give you pieces of me—moments, not forever."
My heart ached to hear him. I saw an avalanche of feeling—desperation and yearning, most of all an agony of need to hold on, even vow to be broken. "Then show me those pieces," I whispered, and my voice barely reached him. "Though flawed, even though they are all fragments, I want them. I want you, all that you are—even the shattered parts".
He loomed over me, his own eyes burning with such turmoil within that I could not be still. "I am cautioning you, Lily," he said slowly, his own tone filled with hope and urgency. "I am too broken to provide for you the depth of my soul. To love you to capacity would be to risk all that I hold in regard—my empire, my identity, my very self."
I had a sob of rage on my cheek and brushed it off. "I'm not scared of losing you," I said to him, though my voice was shaking. "I'm afraid of never getting to know the real you."
We sat there forever in the light of one lamp. The unspoken confessions shuddered between us, glass-thin brittle. I saw him struggle—a look of all the lies, all the wounds he had so tenderly locked away. I knew then that what I wished to believe in him was not a leap in the dark but the fragments he had shown me, even shattered.
He blinked, shutting out the intensity of my gaze. When his eyes opened again, his face was a tapestry woven of pain and guilt and hope. "I'm sorry," he breathed, and it was not an apology, but a penance—a wishing to be forgiven. "I'm sorry that I can only give you half of me. I'm sorry that isn't enough."
My heart constricted on the words, and I knew despite the warning bell, I could never believe half-truths. "It is enough," I said firmly, taking a step forward to stand us together again. "Because I do not desire a perfect love—I desire the true love, broken as it is, imperfect as it is. I desire to stay here with you, to assist you in mending it, piece by piece."
For a moment, his guard fell around him, and I caught something in his eyes that might have been trust. Then, as if he was afraid of what trust would compel him to do, his eyes wandered away again. "You see," he spoke very softly, "that to love me is not the same as to love a whole one." I fear that by letting you in completely, I will lose you and I will lose myself too."