Page 77 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER SEVEN

T HEY ’ D BEEN YOUNG …impatient… It was a relationship that had never been destined to survive heady, crazy youth.

She’d turned her back on him eight years ago and he’d walked away without a backward glance, all his armour plating sliding into place the further and faster he’d walked.

And eight years had passed without him giving much thought to the repercussions of what had happened all those years ago.

He’d been shocked by her confession. Even now, a week and a half later, with sun, sea and sand just a fading memory, he was still shocked.

Multiple sclerosis! How could she have kept something that big to herself?

Yes, she had eventually confessed everything, but of course it was way too late for that now.

There’d been too much water under the bridge by the time he’d heard what she’d had to say.

She could have told him at the time instead of sending an anodyne text message breaking things off between them!

He had deferred a future to wait for her, making sure that she never felt pressured.

He’d been tough and cynical and had known that women could break a man.

He had resolved never to have that happen to him the way it had happened to his father, and yet…

He had met her and all those resolutions had flown through the window. He’d acted out of character and he’d enjoyed it; he had felt young, hopeful and normal , without the cynicism weighing him down. And still, she’d broken up with him, and hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him the truth as to why!

That really hurt. It made a mockery of the love she’d professed to have for him. With love, there was always trust. She hadn’t trusted him. He’d been right to walk away. He’d given himself to a woman who hadn’t trusted him against every scrap of better judgement.

He told himself that, because it would be easier to see the tableau in black and white.

But there was nuance to the situation and Leo knew that could be his undoing because she’d acted with the purest of motives.

Would he have put everything on hold indefinitely for her if she’d explained the situation to him?

If he had, it would have been a dreadful mistake because she was right—he’d worked hard for a future that was opening up in front of him, too promising to be denied.

But he hadn’t, so had guilt eroded the very future he’d embarked on?

He had genuinely meant it when he’d told her not to beat herself up for decisions that had been made a long time ago in good faith. The doors were shut between them but that was just the way things sometimes worked out.

The remainder of their time on Mustique had not been uncomfortable.

It should have been but, in fact, they had fallen into one another with the fierce desperation of two people who’d known the end was imminent.

Nothing more had been said about the past, and there’d been no more dwelling on what had happened between them.

They’d both known that the air had been cleared and that there was nothing left to talk about.

They’d parted company on Mustique, she to make the journey back to Canada and he to stay on for another day before flying to Europe to close several deals that had been put on hold.

‘I really thought long and hard about coming here—to do what we did,’ she’d told him, just before she’d boarded the little plane that would hop away from the island and take her away from him for ever. ‘But I’m glad that I did.’

‘Always good to scratch an itch,’ Leo had returned blandly, already giving the impression of someone whose mind was moving on.

She’d insisted on going to the airport on her own so that she could get her thoughts together about practical issues to do with the family home, now that it wasn’t going to be repossessed.

He hadn’t argued. Everything had been clear cut, in the end, so why did he still have this strange sense of emptiness inside him?

Leo looked around at the stunning minimalism of his Manhattan apartment. It was blindingly white and somehow he found that irritating. The memory of turquoise water, bright-blue skies and colour everywhere clearly hadn’t faded as anticipated.

His apartment had clear, uninterrupted views of Central Park and much of Manhattan from its perfect positioning twenty-two storeys up, and from the floor-to-ceiling windows that were spectacularly dramatic because there were no shutters or curtains to contain the sensation of the giddy heights outside pouring in.

On a clear day, the view was unsurpassable. On a cold winter’s night with a bottle of whisky on the table next to him, Leo couldn’t have cared less about the view.

His phone beeped with a text and he groaned.

He had responded to a handful of texts his ex, Aimee, had sent him while he’d been in Mustique.

The communications had been annoying but had seemed harmless enough.

She was sorry for having blown a fuse when they’d broken up…

She’d been round to his place to get some stuff she’d forgotten…

was that okay? Jimmy had let her in and mentioned that he was away… where was he…?

But now the trickle had become a flood and, if she wasn’t threatening hellfire, damnation and revenge, she was pleading for them to get back together.

He would have to deal with the situation soon, but the thought of doing that was exhausting and irritating at the same time.

He wasn’t mean-spirited enough not to realise that this was happening because he’d taken his eye off the ball.

His phone beeped again. He picked it up, glanced at the beginning of a message on the screen, frowned, sat up and opened it… He read the message quickly, then more slowly.

And, just like that, the tenor of his evening completely changed. He stood up, flexed his muscles, which had stiffened from lying on the sofa for too long, and then he smiled.

It seemed that catching curve balls was getting to be a way of life for him and this one was very interesting indeed…

Cassie was watching telly on the sofa in her apartment, feet up, busy wondering how all her money worries could be sorted only for her now to face different but equally stressful anxieties, when the buzzer on her intercom went.

She almost couldn’t be bothered to get it. Snow had started falling outside. It was as yet just wispy flurries, but flurries with a plan, and the plan was getting worse.

Mustique felt like a hundred years ago. Had she really swum in the crystal-clear sea, laughed with Leo and made passionate love with reckless abandon? It felt like a dream.

After she’d told him why she’d backed away from leaving with him eight years ago and why she’d stayed with her parents, morally and emotionally obliged to do what she’d known she’d had to do as the loving and dutiful daughter, she’d had a moment of wild hope that things would change between them.

That he would revisit the past, return to that fateful moment and see it from a different perspective.

Their time together in the bubble of his villa had been so special that she’d felt all those emotions from the past return in a whoosh, stronger and better than ever, because they’d lived life in the intervening years and were now wiser, more mature and, she’d hoped, capable of forgiveness.

If she’d learned to accept the anguish he’d caused when he’d walked off without looking back over his shoulder even once, then he might be able to forgive the way she’d decided not to start the adventure they’d planned together and see that, ultimately, she had done it all for him.

She’d certainly recognised that the feelings stirred up being there with him, making love with him and much more than that, had gone way beyond desire that needed satisfying.

She’d been so wrong. After the initial shock, he hadn’t raged. He’d told her that he understood. He’d also told her that nothing could ever reopen the door that had slammed shut between them.

And he’d told her about his mother. He hadn’t been the only one with a shocking revelation.

She’d had no idea how deep his feelings of abandonment had run but, back in the quiet of her flat with her thoughts for company, she had begun to wonder whether things would ever have worked out between them.

Deep down, was he too scarred by his past ever to have put all his trust in her? The fact that he had never tried to get in touch with her—not even once, even though he’d known at the time how big a deal it had been for her to have lost her virginity to him—told a story, didn’t it?

The fact that he had been so casual about ending things after their week together reinforced what she had begun to suspect—that he was not a man who could ever give himself to the vulnerability of loving someone else.

He hadn’t been able to resist killing what old demons remained by sleeping with her, and in fairness it had been the same for her, but killing those demons had opened up a different door for her.

For him, no door had been opened at all.

Sex was what he’d offered her, sex was what she’d agreed to—willingly and happily, and there were no regrets there—but that was all there was to it for him.

Cassie was so glad that she hadn’t done the unthinkable and poured out her heart and soul to him. She’d put a smile on her face instead, and had thrown herself into making the most of their final days on the island.