Page 31 of King of Ashes
“God, Vian, stop whining. It’s unbecoming.”
If she stabbed me, it would have hurt less. I place my hand on my chest, afraid the organ is bleeding to death.
I don’t let her finish. Pulling up to the front of the house, I turn off the engine, and jump out of the Jeep. I slam the door closed and walk away.
“Vian!” The anger in her voice surely has more to do with the fact that when I hurt, she hurts. It’s guilt. Something she hasn’t dealt with because she was never cruel to me before.
“Don’t turn your back on me. Why are you always doing that?” she cries out, stopping me in my tracks.
I turn on my heel and jab a finger at her. “I’m not the one doing that shit. It’s you, fucking you, who sends me away.”
We gathered a small audience, but I slant them a look and they scatter. No need for a reminder that we’re a catastrophe in the making.
I rake a hand through my hair and notice Conrad at the top of the stairs shaking his head at us.
We’re a mess. And maybe we should have remained a separate mess. Just thinking that severs the strings to my heart falling in the graveyard of my chest where she roams, filling my days and haunting my nights.
“Goodbye, Zara.” We can’t return to how we were. Fuck, we aren’t the same people anymore. I barely survive her as she is, but if she ever finds out the truth, I will lose her for good. Then what? I should have remained in the shadows and watched over her.
If only I could let her go, but I am a selfish bastard.
She forgot about me. She has a life, a purpose, and has flourished without me. This woman desires a different man than the one I am, which proves crippling. What am I even trying to achieve? Upend her balance and thrust her into the hell of what-ifs I am in? No, I love her too much for that.
“What does goodbye mean when we’re married, Vian?”
“It means whatever you want it to mean,” I say before climbing into the Jeep and heading toward the private airstrip.
8
ZARA
Over the past week, I’ve buried myself in work—anything to forget my internal turmoil. Because ofhim. Ever since he left, a part of me has slowly withered away. He’s a virtual stranger, my husband only on paper, but his power to affect me is undeniable. Missing him debilitates me. There’s an invisible cord around my neck, cutting off my air supply, and only his presence can ease the chokehold.
The faceless man in my dreams now wears Vian’s face. With every encounter, Vian erases him and fills the holes in my mind with himself. It’s terrifying. I believe myself to be a rational woman, but he turns me into an emotional mess, challenging a part of me I’ve lost contact with.
Instead of dreaming about him, Vian popped up. It was his face looking back at me. If I lose that part of the man I loved, as blurry as it is, it means abandoning the hope of remembering.
I went through every specialist there was. Tried every therapy. Nothing helped. Not even the diagnosis was clear—whether the head injury caused my memory loss or my brain deliberately shut down, keeping a traumatic experience hidden from me in an attempt at self-protection.
I could accept self-preservation or go insane. I chose the sensible option.
If memories define a person, then I am nothing more than an empty shell with years of my life stripped away. I’ve always perceived that loss as a phantom limb—feeling it there but knowing it’s not attached to me, like a shadow: amorphous, something I can’t touch but that hurts all the same. Pain has accompanied me like a constant, stubborn, omnipresent companion.
My head trauma healed, but the memories never returned, making me wonder whether something else happened. Every attempt to uncover my past led to a dead end.
I toss and turn in bed, chasing sweet oblivion, but restlessness, coupled with thoughts of my husband, steals my sleep. Him and his undeniable capacity to make me forget everything else when we’re together.
I know I hurt him with my unfortunate choice of words. He doesn’t deserve my cruelty when he has been nothing but supportive—too good, triggering me to think he is after something or, worse, hiding something. Trusting him blindly would be stupid.
He’s a conundrum and, apparently, a virus that has infected me. I’ve tried and failed to erase him from my system.
Picking up my phone from the nightstand, I glance at it, but there are no texts or calls.
My chest tightens at his goodbye. Fuck him if he thinks I am too much. I might be a mess, but I am his mess to deal with. I didn’t put a gun to his head to make him say yes. He agreed to be my husband, and if I don’t get some sleep soon, I don’t know what I will do.
He has become a strange source of comfort. Needing him is the most dangerous thing I have done, but trusting him with myvulnerabilities feels out of my control. Maybe it’s because being on my own has become tiresome.
I have Conrad, but even with him, I don’t share everything, keeping a professional distance.
