he hadn’t smiled in a long time.
“I don’t care about your aversion to talking about the past. It’s not that far in the past, and I need to understand.”
“Aye, I see that. But you don’t need to know everything. You’re not part of my life now, Lia. We’re not friends. We’re not lovers. We’re not engaged.”
“If you had to leave, I would’ve gone with you.”
“No,” he said swiftly, searching for any route that would get through to her. “When I proposed, I thought it was love. I thought I loved you. Turns out, I didn’t.”
The color drained from her face.
“But when I left…” she started, but then just stopped. Like she didn’t even have an avenue to try and argue it. Like it was almost expected.
Which it probably was. He had left her days before their wedding.
That was something he should apologize for; he could do that without explanations. But softening his position now would be a bad idea. Inside, he was already as soft as peat; it wouldn’t take much for him to sink into the dreck. He’d apologize another day, after she’d accepted things.
“Is there anything else you want to discuss?”
Speak now, or forever hold your peace… She didn’t even have to say the words this time.
“I guess I don’t have anything else to say,” she said, the words hanging there, sucking the air out of the room as she extended her left arm a bit, eyes fixed on the hand she’d let slide out from the cuff she’d tucked it into for warmth. “Just…”
He followed her gaze down to her hand. And the glittering diamond ring still perched on her finger. Where he’d slid it almost a year before.
The ice he’d felt cramming into the back of his neck earlier returned, a single, hard throb in his head stopping him from saying anything else. Why would she still be wearing that?
“I came to give this back.” Her voice wobbled, then cracked, the sound as sudden and startling as a gunshot. “This beautiful ring we designed together, and the lie that it represents…”
Lia had other things she wished she had the strength to say, but as soon as she got feeling back in her face, she might be able to be proud of herself for still breathing after having him say the worst thing he could have to her. But all she could think of was to return the ring.
She flexed her hand, noted the way it trembled, the way her body could respond while mentally she still scrambled for anything to say. Her heart rabbited away. She heard her breath as if through a stethoscope, but it was as if every part of her brain was focused on keeping her upright and breathing. All emotion. No reason.
West stared at the ring, his jaw bunched and his brow beetled, but he didn’t say anything.
Take it off. She was supposed to take it off now.
Forcing her arms to move, she latched on to the exquisite trigold engraved band and pulled.
In the first days, when she hadn’t been able to locate him, the ring had been a comfort to her. When she discovered his empty flat, she’d clung to the promise she’d still trusted in and wanted to protect.
Her hands were cold enough that the knuckle, which always snagged it, had contracted, and it took nearly no effort for the ring to pop free. But everything still wobbled. Her hands. Her voice, when she finally found some words, the last she hoped she’d ever have to say to him. “I can’t carry it anymore, or the weight of your broken promises.”
The last word was whispered, no strength left to fake, all swept away with the sudden, sickly warmth washing over her face and down. Lightly stinging in her eyes and cheeks, then like a fever in her throat where muscles tensed, opened, hollowed so that when she breathed in it sounded strangled, choking…
Oh, no…
She was going to cry. As if she needed one more ounce of humiliation. The cascade of physical processes had already begun, the ones she could feel and which let her know it was too late to stop.
She thrust her hand out to him, the ring on her quaking palm.
He started to say something, but stopped dead a split second before her chin began the quiver and tears spilled.
Focusing on the process of it was the only thing she could think to do.
Useless Science Fact Number One: tears from grief and pain were chemically different from those summoned by dirt or onion fumes.
Useless Science Question Number One: How would these tears have dried on a microscope slide? Spiky or like a web of fractals, like that strange theory she’d once read which hypothesized that different tears produced different crystalline salt structures.
She looked away from his eyes, not wanting to see him through the wavering watery line, or the horror there. But that coping mechanism fritzed and she had to reach for any other information to sedate her emotions.
“Lia?”
What else?
Something…
Prolactin.
Useless Science Fact Number Two: prolactin was somehow present in tears—a hormone initially believed only to govern lactation and the reason babies instinctively suckled. There was no way to stop it.
“Lia?” He said her name again, confusion present in his voice. As if she shouldn’t experience grief. Like she wasn’t a human who’d gone through loss in the past, who wasn’t having her third round of grief in a handful of months, just because he’d wanted to share those old pains with her, or know her. Never wanted to let her close enough to love her, just close enough to fool her into thinking she’d finally found someone who would.
Lia never cried.
Ophelia had, but only when she was alone. She needed to be alone now.
He said her name again, but she could only shake her head, her eyes fixed on the little closet at his shoulder.
Why was he still standing there? Didn’t he have any decency? Couldn’t he see that she…
The ring. He hadn’t taken it; she still felt it weighing her palm down.
When she gave it to him, he would go…
She thrust it forward, finally looking again at his face, his horrified face.
Enough. He had to go.
She opened her mouth to tell him, but a short, choked hiccup came out instead, and in her own horror, she slammed her free hand over her mouth to hold it.
“Lia?”
He had to stop saying her name like he could make her stop feeling by him being horrified by it.
One
