Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

expression in his eyes completely unreadable. “Okay,” he says softly,
standing up and tugging me with him. “Let’s go inside.”
He falls eerily silent once we’re indoors, taking me to the living room and
sitting me on the couch. He wraps a plush blanket around my shoulders, then
shimmies back into his dress pants, zipping them up and perching on the
coffee table directly across from me.
I swallow thickly, awareness prickling on my skin, realizing he’s likely
waiting for me to go first. I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it.
“I’m in love with you, Elena.”
Snapping my mouth shut, I sit back against the couch, smothering a smug
smile. “Well, as far as apologies go, that’s a good place to start.”
He sighs, a small laugh falling from his lips, startling me in how...
genuine it sounds. In all the weeks I’ve spent with him, I’ve never heard an
actual laugh come from those vocal cords, and the onset of it now causes
butterflies to erupt in my chest.
Dragging a hand through his hair, he looks up at me, those dark eyes
softening to their natural, warm brown, intoxicating in their soft depths. “I’ll
admit, it doesn’t feel like any amount of apologizing will ever absolve me
from the sins I’ve committed against you. Not that that means I’m going to
stop trying, but still. I just want you to be aware that I know everything I say
will feel inadequate.”
Reaching out, he hooks a finger over the ring he gave me the day we
married, a small smile splaying on his lips. “I don’t deserve you, you know
that?”
“Relative, but go on.”
“When I was a kid, I grew up shrinking myself, making space for my
mother and her illness. It needed the attention, needed the focus, so that’s
where the majority of everyone’s time went. They came to visit my mother,
came to talk to my mother, and I just slunk to the shadows, trying my best not
to begrudge her any more than I already did.”
He pauses, shaking his head. “Cancer’s a funny disease, in that it inspires
jealousy in some people. There my mother was, slowly decaying, and I had
the fucking nerve to resent her for leaving me. Like she had a choice in the
matter.”
My heart aches, breaking with each word he speaks, my hands itching to
comfort, to relieve his pain, but knowing I need to hear this, too.
You cannot love a person fully without knowing the darkness etched into