Page 101 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
I walk outside into the night, and stand beneath the stars, barely able to breathe.
“Dragos?”
Her soft voice surprises me.
“You can go back inside to the auction.”
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t want to tell her. I don’t want to tell anybody. Because those two things inside of me are fighting with each other. The desire to be bulletproof, like my father told me I had to be, and the desire to protect the boy who felt very small when his mother looked at him like something she hated.
I don’t want to tell her. And I wouldn’t have. Not in the past.
I would’ve shut her down; I would’ve lashed out at her. Like I did that night she left me. I would have pushed her away.
But I have to do something different now. Because that’s why we are in this marriage again. Because she’s decided to give me a chance to change. Which means I actually have to do it. Now. When it is so difficult. When I can barely breathe around the pain inside of me.
“I don’t know how to talk about these things,” I say. “I never have before. I’ve told you about what happened. I told you about my childhood. But it’s… Seeing this pain and other people. Realizing that it’s real pain. That the fear I felt was not small. And that it’s… It’s shaped me into what I am. No one ever loved me. Not ever. And I feel so much… Sorrow. For that boy. Whose parents only saw him as something to vent their rage on, something to mold and shape and manipulate.” I wince. “And then I manipulated you. What if this is the only way that I ever know how to relate to other people? What if I am actually doomed to repeat the same things?”
This is the deepest fear I have. That no matter how badly I want to change, no matter who I want to become, it’s too late for me.
I had a window into what I could be like as a new man, with a clean slate.
What if it was only ever a glimpse into a life I can never have?
“You aren’t,” she says softly, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Dragos, you’re not your father. I know you’re not, because you just dismantled everything he spent a lifetime building. Because you have actually decided that there is something more important than winning. You’ve decided there is something more important than amassing wealth. Control. He never did. He died hurting a child. He lived by the sword and he died by it. But you’ve decided to put it down. That is different.”
“But you… You want children. You want children, and I… My mother hated me. She saw me as something that got her stuck with my father, and she wasn’t wrong. She was killed because she was trapped with him. And how can I even hate her, even though she hurt me? She was stuck in a terrible life. With an awful man. One who was literally the death of her. Yet she made my life hell, and I never found that I could mourn her. I had no safe space in my home. My father acted like he was proud of me, but that didn’t come with anything better. It didn’t come with anything less… Painful. What if I don’t know any better?”
“We just have to keep trying,” she says.
I realize that it’s time for her art to go up for auction. Her parents are in there. We have to go back inside.
“Let’s go. We can talk about this more at home.”
“Can we? You won’t shut me down?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know if I’m going to like the answer to any of this. But I know the answer isn’t in hiding.”
She takes my hand, and we go back inside. The auction begins, and I feel badly that I have taken her away from this moment. Because her work goes for an astronomical sum. I consider bidding on it, but I don’t have to. And I know she would be happier if it isn’t bought by her husband.
Her triumph is happening right when I am falling to pieces.
It feels like a disservice to her. She married a strong, ruthless man who didn’t know how to give love in any capacity. But she has ended up with a man who wants to give her things he’s not sure he knows how to find. A man who is fraying at the edges.
Perhaps we are altogether too combustible to exist in any sort of peaceful capacity.
When the auction is finished, the event is a triumph. And there are several gallery coordinators in attendance who can’t wait to speak to Cassandra about her doing an installation. It has nothing to do with me. I’ve manipulated nothing. It’s just about her work. I step away and let her talk to them. I don’t loom, to the best of my ability. Because I’m trying to exhibit the differences in our marriage that I know she needs. I want her to have freedom. A life of her own, separate from me.
Well, I can’t say that I want that. But she does. And so, I need to give her space.
What I don’t expect, is for my mother-in-law to approach me.
“This is a spectacular event, Dragos,” she says.
She’s a small woman with a weathered look around her eyes. Her hair is gray and short. She’s wearing a practical black dress, and sensible flat shoes. I’ve never seen her in a dress before, and I can’t imagine she would wear one for anything other than her daughter.
“It is really all Cassandra’s work. All of the artists are her friends. And they produced amazing pieces for tonight. And of course the women, who have told their stories. They are powerful.”
