Chapter 72- Im not sorry #2
I listened because there was nothing else to do. Sometimes I held her because she asked. Sometimes she held me because I was tired. When morning came, I left.
It never meant anything beyond that. If she mistook kindness for affection, that was her mistake, not mine. I never asked her to wait for me.
I never asked her to love me.
I never asked her to build a future around a man who had already told her he would never give her one.
The only promise I ever made was that there would never be a promise. I do not know when she convinced herself she loved me.
I do not care.
Her feelings were never my responsibility. People act as though time should have changed my mind. As though sharing my bed somehow entitled her to my heart.
It did not.
She was my companion.
Nothing more.
There is a vast difference between wanting someone beside you for a night and wanting them beside you for the rest of your life. She never understood that. Or perhaps she refused to.
Either way, I will not accept blame for expectations I never created. She loved a future that existed only in her own mind.."
Her face changed with each answer.
I lifted one hand and placed it beneath her chin.
"Look at me."
She resisted for half a breath.
Then obeyed.
"That happened before you."
"It still happened."
"Yes."
"I do not like it."
"I know."
"I hate thinking about it."
"I know."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Do not sound amused."
"I am not."
I was.
Slightly.
Not because she was hurting.
Because her jealousy reassured something primitive inside me that had never accepted how easily she loved.
I forced the feeling down.
"She was familiar," I said. "That was all. Familiarity is not love."
Ophelia's gaze remained fixed on mine.
"I returned because I was empty and she did not ask me to be anything else."
The admission tasted worse than expected.
"Then I left because staying meant nothing."
She swallowed.
"I am sorry."
"For what?"
"That she thought it meant more."
I lowered my hand.
"I am not."
Ophelia stared.
I exhaled.
"I am sorry she suffered. I am sorry Nathaniel held her body. I am sorry grief destroyed whatever remained of him."
My voice sharpened.
"But I will not apologize for failing to love her."
The room became quiet.
I stepped away because closeness had begun making honesty harder.
"If that makes me the villain in her story, then fine."
Ophelia followed me with her eyes.
"I stayed faithful to my wife."
The words came harder now.
Not aimed at her.
At the accusation Nathaniel had left behind.
"I protected my marriage. I refused to let my past walk into my home and demand a place beside you."
I turned toward her.
"My wife and children will always come first."
Her expression softened.
Only slightly.
"I will not apologize for that either."
"You sound angry."
"I am."
"With me?"
"No...With the idea that another person's imagined future makes me responsible for destroying it...I did not ask Alexis to build a life around me."
My voice lowered.
"I did not ask her to wait. I did not ask her to love me. I did not promise that loyalty would eventually be rewarded with my heart."
Ophelia stood completely still.
"That was the life she wanted for us," I said. "Not the life I wanted."
Ophelia could pity a woman she never liked.
I could only acknowledge the tragedy and continue walking.
"I did not expect to fall in love with you," I said.
Her eyes lifted.
The anger left me as quickly as it came.
Perhaps because speaking of her made everything else less important.
"When you arrived, I wanted nothing from you."
"That is romantic."
"It is honest."
Her mouth twitched.
"I wanted to be left alone," I continued. "I wanted to endure the marriage, fulfill whatever obligations required the least amount of conversation, and return to my own misery."
"That is somehow worse."
The woman standing before me no longer resembled the frightened girl who arrived at the palace with eyes trained toward the floor. She had become so much that I sometimes forgot how small she once tried to make herself.
"I do not know when you became more than something I avoided."
Her smile vanished.
"I do not know when I began noticing whether you ate. Whether you slept. Whether you smiled at Elias more easily than you smiled at me."
Her eyes softened.
"I do not know when your approval began mattering."
I laughed once.
Quietly.
Without humor.
"I wanted you to trust me."
My throat tightened around the words.
"I wanted your affection."
Ophelia did not move.
"I wanted you to look at me without fear."
I stepped closer again.
This time, I took her hands.
"I spent years being looked at as something people survived."
Her fingers curled around mine.
"Then you looked at me and saw something I had stopped believing existed."
"What?"
"A man."
Her eyes glistened.
I tightened my grip.
"I chased that."
Even when it humiliated me.
Even when I believed she would never love me.
Even when every gentle thing she offered felt temporary because nothing soft had ever remained in my life.
"I chased you," I said, "because once you gave me something worth wanting, I could not return to wanting nothing."
Ophelia's lips parted.
No words came.
"I never felt that for Alexis."
The name sounded smaller now.
Unimportant.
Not because her life had no value.
Because she had no place inside this truth.
"I never felt it for anyone after my first wife."
Ophelia's gaze dropped briefly.
Ten years.
Ten years after loss.
Ten years of anger, loneliness, and relationships that required nothing because I had nothing left to offer.
"Then you came."
I lifted one of her hands and pressed it against my chest.
"I did not choose you because you were kinder than Alexis."
Her palm rested over my heart.
"I did not choose you because you suffered more beautifully."
Her eyes returned to mine.
"I chose you because I loved you."
My voice broke slightly.
I hated that.
I continued anyway.
"There is no fair explanation beyond that." Love was not earned through years of patience. It was not awarded to whoever endured the worst.
It did not belong to the person who wanted it longest.
That truth was cruel.
It remained true.
"If Alexis loved me," I said, "then I am sorry it hurt her." Ophelia's fingers tightened against my chest. " but I could not give her something that did not exist."
Silence settled between us.
I leaned closer.
My forehead rested against hers.
"I have no intention of loving another woman."
Her breath touched my mouth.
"It took me ten years to love someone after the first."
I closed my eye.
"For you, I would not try again."
Her hand moved slightly over my chest.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I would die before I built this with someone else."
"Achille."
"It means there is no woman waiting behind you."
My voice lowered.
"No replacement."
"No former lover with a claim."
"No second life I am secretly imagining."
She breathed in slowly.
"It is you."
I lifted my head enough to look into her eyes.
"Or it is no one."
The words seemed to strike something inside her.
Her face crumpled only slightly before she controlled it.
I touched her cheek.
"If loving you makes me the villain in their story," I said, "then I will wear the title without shame."
Ophelia's brows drew together.
I did not allow her to look away again.
"I would rather spend the rest of my life hated because I could not return another woman's feelings than make you endure the humiliation of watching me pretend to spare hers."
Her lips parted.
I continued before she could defend someone who was no longer there.
"I owed Alexis honesty."
My voice remained calm.
It cost more effort than I wanted her to know.
"I gave her honesty."
The memories returned without invitation.
Alexis standing too close. Alexis looking at me as though years of familiarity had transformed into a promise simply because she wanted one.
Letters arriving after I had already made myself clear.
Messages delivered through servants. Silence mistaken for encouragement because she refused to accept what my words had already told her.
"I never owed her my heart."
Ophelia became still.
"Her games did not work," I said. "The letters she wrote I did not read them."
Her expression changed.
"She wrote you?"
"Yes."
I saw the question forming.
reading them would have invited something into my life I had already refused.
Because every response, even a cruel one, would have given Alexis another moment to imagine that our history still deserved discussion.
Because by then, I had a wife.
And no letter written by another woman deserved more consideration than the vows I had already made.
"I burned them."
Ophelia stared at me.
"Every one?"
"Every one I received."
"You did not want to know what she said?"
"No."
The answer came without hesitation.
"There was nothing she could write that would change the truth."
I lowered my hand from her chin but kept my gaze on hers.
"I made my position clear from the beginning. She was never mine. I never called her mine. I never offered marriage. I never promised that if she remained patient enough, useful enough, or loyal enough, I would eventually wake one morning and discover love where none existed."
Ophelia swallowed.
"I encouraged her to find someone who could give her what she wanted."
"Nathaniel," she whispered.
"Perhaps."
I had not known about them.
That still irritated me.
Not because Alexis had chosen another man.
Because Nathaniel had apparently stood beside her, watched obsession hollow her out, and fed it until her grief became useful to him.
"If Nathaniel encouraged her to keep waiting for a future I had already refused," I said, "then that belongs to him."
My voice hardened.
"Not me."
Ophelia's eyes remained fixed on mine.
"Not you."
Silence settled between us.
I let it.
Some truths needed space after them.