Page 39 of Unravelling: Aria & Crispin
A long silence followed before her voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "But it was different for you, wasn't it?"
Crispin opened his mouth, but no sound came.
"You were ashamed of me." Her voice didn't break, but her heart was in every word.
"I was your dirty secret. Your quiet sin tucked behind closed doors while you smiled for pictures with someone else."
She looked away, towards the pale sky. "I told myself I was strong enough to endure that, but I wasn't. And I'm not."
*Daja-aunt
Chapter 23
Aria
She felt brittle, hollow. Her chest ached like a crater had appeared, deep and unseen. But her voice, when it came, was steady.
"I want a husband," she said, staring at her knees. "Someone who looks at me the way my Babi used to look at my Mami."
Crispin didn't move.
"They were traditional. They didn't hold hands, they didn't kiss in front of us. But he looked at her like she was the sun."
She paused. "I didn't understand what that look meant back then, but I do now."
Her voice thickened, just slightly. "I wanted a son like Erjon. Kind. Brave. But maybe with curly brown hair and deep blue eyes."
Crispin's breath hitched.
"And maybe a daughter, too. Like Lule. Confident, unafraid. Loud, if she wants to be. She'll be loved so much she'll never learn to doubt it."
Aria's jaw tightened. Every word was a stab to the heart.
"She'll always be the first choice, not someone's shame."
She looked down at her fingers, her voice low and sharp with rising emotion. Absently, she rubbed the calluses of her index finger and thumb together.
"For the longest time, I thought I wasn't worthy of you. That I wasn't good enough." She looked up. "And now I understand...it wasn't me, it's the other way around."
There was a flicker of fire in her eyes now. A flash of anger woven into grief.
"Cris..."
He startled. She rarely called him that.
Her voice was like the brush of a duckling feather. "I need you to do me a favour."
He nodded, hesitant.
"I need you to keep your promises to Helga."
A myriad of expressions crossed his face-confusion, disbelief, hurt.
"This thing between us," she said. "It has to end."
"Aria-"
"Please," she said, more firmly. "Please don't make this harder than it already is."
