Page 228 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

‘She will.’

‘I thought you said she couldn’t?’

‘She’ll adopt.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because in the end, it’s what she suggested with me.’

Charlotte shifted in her seat, a little surprised by that. ‘And you said no?’

‘I didn’t think it would work.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ he said, still not shutting her down, even when his features had grown taut with tension and he was wrapping his fingers so tightly around the stem of his champagne flute she thought it might snap. ‘I knew that even if she were able to adopt, the baby would only be a reminder of what I hadn’t been able to give her. I have no doubt we both would have loved them, but I don’t think it could have saved our marriage. Not after so much loss and resentment.’

‘Did she resent you?’

‘Yes.’

‘She said that?’

He paused. ‘She didn’t have to.’

Charlotte closed her eyes against a wave of pity and something else. Something that moved like a groundswell through her, a surge of recognition and understanding that made her pulse erratic and her head spin.

Because there was not a thing Dante could say that would change how she felt. There was not a single part of her that would ever get over him.

She toyed with her fingers as piece by piece, she began to understand something that she’d probably known since the very first moment she met him. Or at least, since that very first kiss, that very first night when he’d held her and she’d glimpsed a light, in the distance, a shimmering promise of what could be, if only she were brave enough to reach for it.

She’d been as brave as she could allow herself to be—trying to reach for Dante, whilst also holding herself back. Telling herself that everything they shared could be boiled down to a casual physical relationship when it was, with hindsight, so much more.

‘You’ve never told me about your past, you know,’ he said, conversationally, like the whole world wasn’t exploding down around her ears. She barely even heard him over the cacophony of noise.

‘What?’

‘Lovers, boyfriends, a trail of broken hearts left in your wake?’

She blinked rapidly. There were no such men, because she’d always been incredibly careful. And that caution had extended to keeping her relationships utterly temporary.

Not once had she been tempted to prolong a fling.

Not once had she woken up buzzing with a need to find her phone and text someone. To see them again.

Not until Dante.

She glanced towards the pool, staring at the flickering candles, her throat throbbing with the sensation that her heart had taken up residence there.

‘You’ve never asked.’

‘We agreed we wouldn’t talk about any of that.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Yet, here we are,’ Dante murmured, then, with an exaggerated grimace. ‘You know my darkest secrets.’

‘My darkest secret is that my most significant relationship is with Jane,’ she said, a half-smile on her lips when she thought of her best friend.