Page 127 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

She couldn’t leave it much longer. If they weren’t so wrapped up in their euphoria they would notice her waistline had thickened. That morning, she’d caught sight of her naked figure and seen a small but detectable curve in her belly. Not quite a bump but definitely a precursor to one.

She’d come within a breath of calling Alexis to tell him.

There had been no contact between them. Not a call, not a message. Nothing. Radio silence.

She continued not thinking about him all the way to the Acropolis stop, all along her route on the Dionysiou Areopagitou walkway and past the church of St Demetrius, still not thinking about him when she disappeared through the trees onto the running route. The thickening clouds meant she didn’t need to seek solace from the heat of the rising sun. But this was her route, the safe, comforting, familiar path she always took, and she pounded along it to the old quarry, still not thinking about him as she passed the crag and took the landscaped path to the top of the hill.

When she reached the marble Philopappos Monument, she took a long drink of her water and, before she could stop herself, she turned her gaze in the direction of the district where Alexis lived, easily seeking out his apartment block. She’d looked out at it from this very spot an average of five times a week since their weekend together. This was the first time she’d looked at it with dark clouds looming over it.

Was he there or had he already left for work?

Don’t think about him.

Was he choosing which of his many, many, many snazzy suits to wear for the day?

Don’t think about him.

Still unable to wrench her gaze from the direction of his apartment, she absently rubbed at her belly and the weird bubbling sensation that had just started in it…

Like flutters. Bubbling flutters…

Her eyes widened and she pressed harder. That was her baby. She could feel her baby. She could feel her baby!

Still pressing into her fluttering belly, she excitedly unzipped her side pocket and pulled out her phone. She needed to call Alexis. He needed to know this momentous milestone…

A fat raindrop fell on her nose. Another landed with a splat on her chin. In moments, the heavens opened with a load roar and seconds later Lydia was soaked to her skin, still holding her belly, water pouring off her phone.

Cursing, she wiped the phone on her soaked T-shirt and tried to unlock it but her fingers were too wet for her fingerprint to work and the deluge too heavy for facial recognition to work either. Excitement turned into panic. She couldn’t remember the pin code she hadn’t used since she’d first set the phone up. Hardly able to see at all through the waterfall of water, she tried every pin code she’d ever had, her need to speak to Alexis and share the news and hear his voice, right now, growing stronger with each failed attempt…

Her screen locked itself at the exact same moment the fluttering bubbles stopped.

‘Please,’ she sobbed to her baby, rubbing vigorously with one hand as she manically shook her phone in a futile attempt to bring it magically back to life. ‘Please, do it again. Please. Please…’

Oh, God, she was crying, and no sooner had she realised her face wasn’t just wet with the rain but with her tears, a keening wrench sliced through her chest, the greatest pain of her life ripping her heart in two and bringing her to her knees with a howl.

Call him?Callhim?

Lydia didn’t need to hear his voice. She neededhim. Alexis.

She shouldn’t be calling him to share the news. She should be there with him, living the experience with him, in his apartment, in the bedroom he’d turned into a beautiful sanctuary for her because he loved her. Alexislovedher. He loved her and she’d closed her eyes and ears to it.

She couldn’t close her eyes and ears to it now. Each and every heavy raindrop fell on her like a mark of condemnation: condemning her for walking—running—away from him like a frightened child instead of fighting for them, and all because she couldn’t handle what she felt for him and had never believed that she was enough for him; condemning her, too, for burying her head in the sand ever since, and all because the truth was too terrifying to contemplate, that to admit her real feelings for him meant admitting that she’d thrown away the best person in the whole wide world because she was a coward.

Another long, interminable day had bled into another long, interminable night, and now, with another long, interminable day to look forward to, Alexis stared out of his bedroom window at the torrent of rain lashing the streets. Finally, the weather matched his mood. Good. Why should he be the only one to suffer? The darkness of the rainclouds was nothing on the cloud that had lived in his heart since he’d returned to an apartment empty of Lydia.

She’d taken everything of hers. His cleaning crew worked such magic that not even a strand of her hair remained. The only item of hers he still possessed was the lipstick that had fallen in the back of his car that first night. He’d taken to carrying it around with him.

Time, they said, was a healer.Theywere liars. All time did was rip the gaping wound in his heart wider. He’d never imagined missing someone could be a physical pain.

How the hell was he supposed to move on when Lydia’s ghost lived within the walls he slept in and in the very air he breathed? Somehow he had to find a way because this pain was beyond endurance.

The rain poured harder than ever but Lydia no longer cared. She lifted her face to it and accepted the drenching she deserved.

The safe, comforting, familiar path she’d taken on this run was the path she’d been taking all her life because she was too much of a coward to divert from it. Too much of a coward to forge a life, a real life, for herself. Too much of a coward to fight for the man she loved because she’d never had to fight for anything before, not even for herself. Yes, everything Alexis had said had been the truth, all except for one thing. Shedidbelieve in him. It was herself she’d never believed in. The great Alexis Tsaliki, a force of nature who burned brighter than the sun and who could have any woman he so desired, loved her. He wantedher. Just her. She was enough for him.

How could she have walked away after everything he’d done for her and everything he’d said? How could she have left him knowing that to leave him would be to destroy him? And destroy herself too.

She loved him.