“If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. ‘One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.”

“He stopped and pointed an accusing finger at her. “I didn’t ask for this. But I felt something in that back room with you, and it’s stayed with me ever since. I want to be with you. I need to be with you.” His tone was both angry and helpless.”

“His hands uncupped himself and he stared downward. It was a long while before he spoke, and when he did, his words were slow and considered … and as ceaseless as his quiet tears. “I wish I were whole. I wish I could have given you young if you’d wanted them and could conceive them. I wish I could have told you that it killed me when you thought I had been with anyone else. I wish I had spent the last year waking up every night and telling you I loved you. I wish I had mated you properly the evening you came back to me from the dead. I wish …” Now his shimmering stare flipped up to hers. “I wish I were half as strong as you are and I wish I deserved you. And … that’s about it.”

“They forbade me to leave the island.” He brushed my hair back from my forehead. “ I thought it would be better if I stayed away, but I was wrong. Without you, I was lonely and miserable and empty. Every night I could think of nothing but you.”“ I know exactly what you mean” I saw one of the zookeepers peering into the bushes. “They’re coming. You should go.”“No.” he put his arms around my waist. “I’m not going to leave you again.”

“I did not do it. Yet now I wish I had.’ He turned to face the hall, that sea of pale faces. ‘I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here.”

“We could go back," he said. In the dome light of the car, his face looked hard as stone. "We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each other's bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you." His nostrils flared, and he looked suddenly proud. "I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you." "Sounds like a marriage," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But my voice was too shaky. "Yes," he said.”