Apollo said nothing.
I looked to his throat.
“I was trying to do right,” I said quietly. “When I got to this world. When I got a new start. I was trying to do right by finding a way to look after myself and do it not depending on someone to look after me. Finally, for once, being smart and learning to take care of myself. I depended on someone to look after me and he wasn’t up to that job and worse, he was what I needed to protect myself from.” My voice dropped lower. “I thought I had to learn from that. To be smart. To find a way to take care of myself.”
Finally, he let me go and spoke.
“I am not your husband.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“If you do, then you speak of him now because…” he trailed off on a prompt.
“Because you’re giving me everything he gave me except more and better. He gave me everything too and made it a curse.”
His voice was still cold when he stated, “And you assume I’ll do the same.”
“I don’t assume anything.” I lifted my eyes to his still blank ones. “I don’t think anything. I don’t know anything. Not even who I am. And that’s the point. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know how to be me. All I knew was living surrounded with negativity with two parents, one who was pissed at the world for what seemed no reason, one who was so gone, she was like a ghost. And my whole life, both of them seemed like they didn’t know I was around and clearly they didn’t care much after I was gone. Then I was living in fear with Pol and breaking free only to live on the run, hiding from him, afraid for a different reason and that was that he’d find me.”
“Maddie, your point,” he pushed and my heart sunk.
And it sunk because I was making my point, doing it honestly, sharing openly, and he still wasn’t listening.
So, I got down to my final point so this could be done.
“Well, I need to find me. And I need time to do that.”
His voice was arctic when he stated, “Alone time.”
“No, Apollo.” I shook my head again. “Just time.” I threw out a hand. “Do you have any clue what it’s like to live on the run, to live in fear, to know that if the man who seeks you finds you, you might have to take his life to save yours? Do you have any idea what it’s like to live for over a f**king decade knowing you gave into your weakness and made a mistake that you paid for not only in pain and misery but the death of your child?”
I crossed both arms over my belly and looked to the windows.
“This has been lovely, amazing, all of it, everything you’ve given me. Even fighting with you, because you showed me it was safe. I could say what I had to say without your fist connecting with my face.” I said softly. “But it takes more than fairytale worlds to fix what’s broken in me. And this is because I live every day knowing it was me who broke it.”
Suddenly, I felt him move and looked his way to see he was sauntering to the jade brocade cord with its golden tassel that was by the bed. He stopped at it and gave it a tug.
I then watched him move toward the windows and he did this to round the heavy handsome dark wood desk that was sitting at a diagonal in the corner, facing the room. Confusion filtered through my sadness as he pulled open a drawer and unearthed a sheet of paper.
He was picking up a quill (yes, a quill, I’d learned months ago they didn’t do ballpoints in this world) and opening a pot of ink when I got my shit together.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m being selfish. You need to go.”
“Quiet, Madeleine,” he muttered, scratching his quill on the paper.
I got quiet and watched. Back to the inkpot and to the paper. Ink. Paper. Another line. More ink. Another line.
I was so weirdly enthralled with this, caught up in my gloom, I jumped when a young boy came rushing into the room.
He looked at me, jerked his head down and up, then looked at Apollo.
“Sir?”
“A moment, Nathaniel,” Apollo replied and kept scratching.
The boy and I watched.
Finally, Apollo tossed the quill down, put the lid on the inkpot and grabbed the paper. Straightening away from the desk, he moved around it, eyes to the boy.