Warped

“I’m here because he loves you.”

Megan laughed a little, even as tears of desperation streamed down her face. “I used to think that, too,” she said. “Star-crossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet, kept apart by warring families. But you know what? It’s bull shit. If he’d really loved me—I mean, really, really loved me—he wouldn’t have left. And he did."

Alturis gave a dismissive wave with his knife. “You don’t know how men work.  We leave what we love.  It makes us feel powerful.”

“That’s ridiculous."

"So you say, because you are a woman."

“You mean sane.”

“The truth is crazy sometimes."  Alturis chewed thoughtfully on his salad, before he added, “Or maybe he didn’t want you to see him bald. A man wants to be remembered with hair.”

“He didn’t know he was going to be bald, did he?”

“Well, look at his father--bald as a pig’s bottom,” Alturis said.  “Sometimes, the fear alone is enough.”