Now don’t I feel like the bitch?“I didn’t leave to hurt you.”
“I know. Nor do I blame you. Nor did I expect anything different. Nor do I expect that anything will come of this dinner more than the ‘closure’ you seek.” He still wouldn’t look at her, instead staring off at the little boats and weathered dinghies that dotted the stone wall of the channel.
“I haven’t decided yet.” She sipped her martini and realized she was drinking it maybe just a little too fast. Oh, well. She figured she earned it. And she figured she’d need it. “I don’t hate you, Gideon.”
Now it was his turn to look at her incredulously.
“I don’t.” She picked up the little spear that held the pimento olives from her drink and ate one off the end of it. “I should. Believe me, I know I should. You did absolutely terrible shit to me, G.”
“Still don’t know how I feel about that, but go on,” he murmured.
“You murdered my father, my best friend…you lied to me, manipulated me, torched an entire village in jealousy, and drove me to commit suicide. And then, too afraid to let me go, you…did this to me.” She gestured at herself. “You turned me into an undead whatever-the-fuck against my will. Then, while trying to ‘fix’ me, you spend hundreds of years making it catastrophically worse.”
He cringed, as if each listing of his sins was another nail in a coffin. “Believe me, I am acutely aware of all this. Do you think it hasn’t gone through my head, playing over again and again? I may not have suffered the blackouts you endured, but…I relived it all just the same.”
“That’s one of the three reasons I don’t hate you. See, I—” Their food arrived, and the waiter placed a giant pile of fried clams in front of her. “Oh, fuck yes.” She laughed, the waiter joining her. “Sorry, been away from Boston for a while. I missed this.”
Once the waiter was gone, she found Gideon ignoring his food entirely. He was staring at her, his expression confused and unreadable.
She smiled. “Eat. Fish ‘n chips has a short temperature shelf life. The colder it gets, the weirder it gets.”
With a long sigh, he picked up his knife and fork and listened to her advice. Dipping one of her clams into the tartar sauce—she’d need to ask for about twelve more containers of the stuff—she did the same.
“The first reason I don’t hate you is because you know what you did was wrong. It didn’t stop you from doing it, and it doesn’t change what you’ve done, but if you were stomping around telling me it was ‘justified’ or that you didn’t regret it, I wouldn’t be here.”
“But I would do it all again, Marguerite. If you lay dying in my arms, I would repeat my actions. I—” He gritted his teeth then shook his head, cutting himself off.
“Go on. Please.”
Every muscle in his body went tense and then slack. With a shrug as if to say nothing could possibly get any worse, he finished his thought. “I love you, Marguerite, more than anything. More than myself. And I can’t exist in this world without you. I would bind my soul to yours again in a heartbeat if it meant I would ensure we were, at least in some tragic way, always together.”
She wanted to tease him for his melodrama, but he looked like he was about to snap. Either in anger, or in tears, she didn’t know, and she decided she didn’t want to find out. “Hey.” She reached over the table, placing her hand over his where he was gripping his blunt dinner knife hard enough his knuckles were white. “I’m here.”
“I am a child. Nothing more than a weak, insipid toddler, throwing blocks because I can’t have my favorite toy. Eurydice is right.”
She smiled. “How is the big grumpy bird?”
“She’s lovely, and quite grumpy, thank you.”
She wormed her fingers into his, forcing him to let go of the knife and relax. He stared at their hands as though he didn’t recognize them. With a dumbfounded shake of his head, he lowered his voice. “Marguerite, I do not regret the terrible things I did—I regret that I had to do them.”
Silver eyes flicked to hers, edged in tears. She squeezed his hand gently. “Don’t you think I know that?”
Dumbly, he shook his head. “I don’t understand…How could you…”
“You’re desperate, not cruel. That’s the second reason I can’t hate you. Nothing you ever did to me was out of malice. It was just a man, clinging to smoke. You didn’t want to kill my father, you wanted to marry me. You didn’t want to kill Harry, but he got in your way. I really, really disagree with your methods, but you never meant to torture me. I know you love me, and I’ve never once doubted that.” She slowly let go of his hand. Namely, so she could keep eating her dinner. He begrudgingly went back to doing the same.
“And the third reason?”
She smirked. “A secret. For now. Maybe I’ll tell you later, maybe I won’t. Food and drinks first.”
Gideon downed his martini in one go and gestured for the waiter to get him another.
“You’ve been doing a lot of solo drinking, haven’t you?” She laughed.
“You have no idea.”
They ate in silence for a moment. With a sudden grunt, he tapped his finger on the wood surface of the table. “I neglected to say how sorry I am about Leopold. Harry. Whatever he wished to be called.”