Soraya
Jordan stood in the center of our bedroom, the room where I'd spent five years waiting for him to love me back, where I'd pretended not to notice when he turned away from me in the darkness, where I'd whispered "I love you" into the silence and received nothing but his steady breathing in return.
"Princess, you..."
The word ignited something feral inside me.
"Princess?" I whirled to face him, hot anger slicing through every word I spat. "That's all I have ever been to you? Princess?" Each word climbed higher, sharper, until I was nearly shouting. "Not your damn Queen? Not your Luna? Your princess?"
"Soraya, I didn't mean..."
"Then what did you mean, Jordan?" I took a step toward him. Then another. "Because from where I'm standing, 'princess' sounds like something you'd call a child. A placeholder. Someone you're fond of but don't actually love."
The word hung between us like a grenade with the pin pulled.
His jaw tightened. "That's not fair." He dragged his hands through his hair, looking confused.
"NOT FAIR?" The laugh that tore free from my throat was ugly, jagged. "You want to talk about fair? Let's talk about fairness!"
"I was here when she left you!" My voice cracked, but I kept going. I had to keep going.
"When she dumped your ass, when she left Eleanor on the porch like garbage and disappeared, I WAS HERE FOR YOU!"
"I was there, Jordan. I was always there."
"I know." His voice cracked. "Soraya, I know..."
"Do you?" I wiped at my face with shaking hands. "Because it sure as hell doesn't feel like you know. It feels like the moment she came back, the moment she decided you were worth her time again, five years just... evaporated. Like they meant nothing. Like I meant nothing."
My hands trembled as I pointed toward the door, toward the past, toward every moment I'd swallowed my own pain to tend to his. I was crying now, hot tears streaming down my face, but I didn't care. Couldn't care. Five years of sacrifices shattered like glass.
"I held you while you screamed her name in your sleep! I cleaned up Eleanor's vomit at three in the morning while you were catatonic with grief! I cancelled my acceptance to NYU's graduate program because you needed me!"
The memory crashed over me. That horrible morning five years ago. Jordan collapsed on the foyer floor, still in his funeral suit from burying his parents just hours before, and Eleanor screaming in her bassinet.
"I held you while you screamed," I continued, my hands shaking as I pressed them against his chest. Not pushing, just touching, trying to make him feel what I was saying.
"For three months, Jordan. Three months you couldn't even look at Eleanor because she had Magda's eyes. Do you remember that? Do you remember who fed her? Who changed her? Who got up every night when she cried?"
"Raya..."
"I GAVE UP EVERYTHING!" The shout ripped out of me, and tears followed. Hot. Furious. Finally unleashed. "NYU offered me a full scholarship for my dream course! My dream school, Jordan. My dream. And I turned it down because you were broken, and someone needed to take care of Eleanor, and I..."My voice splintered.
"I loved you so much I thought if I just stayed, if I just proved how much I loved you, eventually you'd..."
"Eventually I'd what?" His voice was barely a whisper.
"Love me back." The words came out small. Pathetic. True. "Eventually you'd love me back."
I stepped away from him, swiping at the tears on my cheeks. Through the blur, I caught our reflection in the dresser mirror—me, falling apart, and him, looking at me like I was something fragile he didn't know how to fix.
"She's my first love." He said it quietly, but each word landed like a stone in my chest.
I turned slowly to face him. "Say that again."
"Magda... she's my first love, Soraya. You know that. I've never lied to you about that."
"Right." I nodded, feeling something fundamental crack inside me.
"You never lied. Just omitted. Just let me believe that maybe, someday, I'd be more than second place."
I walked to the window, staring out at the pack grounds I'd helped manage for five years. "Is that the reason you never said it back?" My voice was steady now, eerily calm. "Is that the reason in five years of marriage, you never once told me you loved me?"
He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing, but he never said a word.
I closed my eyes. "I used to make excuses for you. 'He's healing,' I'd tell myself. 'He's not ready. He shows love differently.' But that's not it, is it?"
"Soraya..."
"Your heart was still with her." I turned to look at him. "Even after she abandoned you. Even after she left Eleanor, your daughter, Jordan, your child, on the porch like she was returning a package. Even after all of that, you still loved her."
"It's complicated," he managed.
"It's really not." I laughed, but it came out as a sob. "It's actually incredibly simple. You loved her. You married me. Those are two very different things."
The silence stretched between us like a chasm.
"I care about you," Jordan said finally, and the careful way he chose those words, care, not love, made me want to claw my own heart out.
"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't you dare say you care about me like I'm some stray you took pity on."
"You're my best friend, Raya. You always have been."
"Best friend." I laughed, but it came out as a sob. "Right. Of course. Silly me for thinking that marrying someone, sharing their bed, raising their child, running their pack might add up to something more than friendship."
"It does! It's just..." He dragged his hands through his hair again, frustration radiating from every line of his body. "It's complicated."
"Complicated." I repeated the word like it was poison.
"Let me simplify it for you. Your heart is still hers, isn't it? Even after she abandoned you. Even after she abandoned Eleanor. Even after she proved she didn't deserve you, your heart never left her."
"I don't... I didn't plan for this. For her to come back. For any of this."
"That's not an answer." My voice had gone dangerously quiet. "But I suppose the silence is answer enough."
The day crashed over me all at once: the pregnancy test, Grammy's death, the revelation of his lies. It was too much.
Jordan's composure finally cracked. "Then what do you want me to say? What words do you need to hear?"
"The truth!" I screamed. "For once in five years, just give me the goddamn truth! Do you love me? Not care about me. Not you're my best friend. Do you love me the way I love you? The way I have loved you since I was twelve years old?"
I shouted it, and damn the pack members who might hear. Damn propriety. Damn everything.