Helen could deal with a life like that. She was born to wealth and was well known among our peers. If I’m called up I have no doubt that she’d have all the support she needed. My family and friends would rally around her.
I know that for Lucia it wouldn’t be the same. I can imagine her being shunned by everyone. By rights this is my home, everything is now mine since the death of my old man. But mom would most definitely get rid of her family, throw them out on the street.
I can ask my own mother to leave, we have more than enough properties here and abroad that she can have, but this is her home. Her old world prejudices aren’t easily shaken, I’ve tested those waters already and well know the answer.
I can face all that. Even the hate of my mother. But I can’t ask this… child to do the same. It would crush her. I’d watched my best friend go through something similar years ago. He’d fought and stood his ground, only to lose his wife three months later when she took her own life.
Back then I couldn’t imagine that anything could be so bad that it could lead to that. Even when he told me the stories of all she’d endured at the hands of our ‘peers’. I’d refused to believe that the people I knew and loved my entire life could be that shallow.
If they’d seen half the shit I’ve seen. The death, the degradation, the utter suffering when it could be avoided. They would learn to grab life by the balls and hold on. This petty bullshit they catered to, an outdated sense of propriety was baseless nonsense.
I’d seen more in this young girl, more grit, more guts, more compassion, than in all of them combined. But if I reached out and took what I wanted, I would be destroying other lives. Helen didn’t deserve this, but neither did she deserve to be straddled with a man whose heart was already taken.
2
I can’t let her go, but I must, and it’s tearing me apart. I’ve faced down death, put myself in the line of fire to save my men, but I have no answer for this. I’d even thought of taking her away from here, but the strings of duty and birthrights held me captive.
My love for her was like an albatross around my neck. She was the absolute center of everything that I am. My every thought, every deed since the day we met has revolved around her. I find myself doing things that I knew would please her.
Where I’d once been hard in my dealings, I find her warmth and compassion reaching out to me whether she was in the room or not. It got so I can hear her in my head, or imagine her tapping her little feet if she’s displeased at something I’ve done.
I don’t know where she’d heard that I was having nightmares when I first returned from the war, but one night I awoke to find her sitting in the dark next to my bed.
At first I thought she was a figment of my imagination. That she’d somehow followed me out of my dreams, but her cool hand against my brow brought me fully awake. “What are you doing in here?”
She’d sat back in her chair with her book and turned the page as if it was normal for her to be alone in my room with me naked in bed. “Somebody has to watch over you. Wanna talk about it?” I opened my mouth to tell her no, to get out, but instead it all came pouring out of me.
Things I hadn’t shared with family, peers, anyone. I unloaded in that dark room until I felt a weight lifted. Of course I kept the worst of it back, she’s too young for that shit. But I got out enough of the poison to feel human again.
I knew three weeks after we met that she was as in love with me as I was with her, poor little girl. But I knew from the beginning it would never be. She was too good for me and this lot. I won’t give them the chance to destroy her.
Someone looking in from the outside might find me weak, might think why not just take what you want and everything else be damned. Some may even encourage me to fuck her and move on. They’d both be wrong in their assumptions.
It’s not weakness that stays my hand, but love, pure unadulterated love, the likes of which I never knew could exist in the same world where I’d seen the most horrendous things men could inflict on one another.
But can I afford to lose her? Can I afford to let her go? What would that do to me? Better yet, what would it do to her? She pretends to be strong and worldly, but I see the innocence written so plainly in her eyes each time she looks at me.