They didn't go home. They couldn't. Her apartment felt like a glass cage. His felt like a temporary workspace. They drove aimlessly for an hour, the silence in the car a heavy, toxic thing.
"Pull over," Eunice said, her voice dead.
Karlman pulled into the parking lot of a bleak, roadside motel—a place with a flickering neon "Vacancy" sign that promised nothing but anonymity. He parked in the farthest, darkest corner.
He turned to look at her. The queen from the gala was gone. In the sickly green glow of the dashboard lights, she just looked... broken.
"They were right," she whispered, the same words she'd said after the doctor's visit, but now they carried a new, terrible weight.
"Eunice, don't. Don't do this."
"No!" Her voice was a raw, ragged sound. "I'm done being defiant. I'm done 'not letting them win.' They have won. Look at us. We're hiding in a motel parking lot because we're too humiliated to go home."
She turned on him, her eyes finally filling with the tears she'd refused to shed. "Look at what this has cost. My family. My money, Karlman. My entire legacy, gone. My friends. My reputation. Your company. Your family. Your faith. And for what?"
"For us," he said, but the word sounded hollow, even to him.
"For us?" she laughed, a bitter, painful sound. "What 'us'? The 'us' that can't even have a child? The 'us' that's been diagnosed as a genetic dead end? The 'us' that's 'highly unlikely'? We're not a dynasty, Karlman. We're not even a family. We're a... we're a mistake. We're a biological error."
"That is not true—"
"It is!" she was sobbing now, hitting the dashboard. "It's the one thing that makes sense! My father, your father, the ministers... they all said it. 'Against God's will.' 'Unsuitable.' 'Detrimental.' 'Cursed.' We thought they were being hateful. What if they were just... right? What if the universe, God, biology, whatever you want to call it, is screaming at us to stop? And we're just too arrogant and too stubborn to listen!"
"So what are you saying?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet. "What, you're going to go back? You're going to beg your father for forgiveness? He'll take you back, you know. He'd love it. You, back in your cage. Is that what you want?"
"What I want," she screamed, "is for my life not to be in ruins! What I want is to not be a... a pariah! What I want is a baby! The one thing... the one thing... I can't have with you!"
The words hung in the air, brutal and final. She had finally said it. The unspeakable truth.
Karlman recoiled as if she'd slapped him. He stared at her, his 'A-type' analytical mind processing the data. The woman he loved. The woman he had given up his world for. And she had just told him he was the one thing standing in the way of her happiness.
He leaned back against the headrest, a profound, bone-deep exhaustion settling over him. He felt twenty-three. He felt young. He felt like a boy who had followed a fantasy and found himself in a nightmare.
"You're right," he said, his voice flat. All the fight, all the fire, was gone. "They were right. My father... he said you were a temptation. A sin. That this would lead to ruin. Here we are. Ruin."
He ran his hands over his face. "Maybe this is the test. Maybe the test is... if I'm smart enough to walk away. To let you go. You... you can be fixed. You can go back. Your father will forgive you. You'll find someone 'suitable.' You'll use a sperm donor, you'll adopt... you'll have your family. You can still have your life."
Eunice stared at him, her tears freezing on her face. This was it. The breaking point. The end. She had pushed him, and he had let go.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the sound of their two-person nation collapsing. They sat in the dark for minutes that felt like hours.
Finally, Eunice spoke, her voice a shredded whisper. "And you?" she asked. "What would you do?"
"Me?" Karlman gave a hollow laugh. "I don't know. Go back to my parents, beg forgiveness for being 'yoked to darkness.' Maybe they'd let me back in. Or maybe I'd just... build another algorithm. It's all I know how to do."
He pictured it. The return. The "I told you so" in his father's eyes. The crushing, silent obedience of the fellowship. He pictured Eunice, back in her high-society cage, married to a man with a "strong chin" and a "suitable" genetic profile.
The image made him physically sick.
"I can't," he said, his voice cracking. "I can't go back. I can't... you're the only part of this that makes any sense. You're the only person I've ever... I can't... see. You're the only one who sees me."
He turned to her, his eyes blazing in the dark. "So, okay. Let's look at the data. We have no money. No family. No friends. No church. And no kids. The entire world says we are a 'no.' We are a failed experiment."
He reached over and took her hand. His was ice-cold. So was hers.
"They took everything from us, Eunice. Everything that was around us. They took the house, the money, the 'legacy.' But they're not in this car. Right now. It's just you. And it's just me. They haven't taken us."
He gripped her hand tighter. "The choice was never about a baby. Or a church. Or a goddamn trust fund. The choice was you. It's always been you."
Tears were streaming down his face. "So I don't care if we're cursed. I don't care if we're a 'biological error.' I am not letting you go. I'm not walking away. They can have the rest. They can have it all. I'm choosing this. I'm choosing the ruin. Because it's our ruin."
Eunice looked at their joined hands. She looked at his face, raw with a desperate, defiant love. The fire she thought was dead, the 'A-type' defiance that had been beaten out of her, sparked. A tiny, hot ember.
He was right. They had taken everything. And she was still here. He was still here.
"Okay," she whispered, her voice shaking. "Okay. They want a war? They get one. They want to define us? We'll define ourselves. We're not 'cursed.' We're just... free."
"What do we do now?" he asked.
Eunice's mind, the strategist's mind, kicked back in. The grief was still there, but now it had a purpose. It was fuel.
"Now," she said, wiping her tears with her free hand, "we get married."