Page 169 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Amelia was frozen for a moment. It was so clear now why he’d been angry when she’d walked in the door. What he’d been thinking.

She reached out, framed his face with her hands, her heart breaking for him. “Not everyone who waits for you dies,caro.”

He jerked away from her grasp, but she did not let him move away fromher.

“That isn’t what I said,” he growled.

“But it is what you were thinking.” She gave him another light kiss, couldn’t seem to help herself. He needed comfort. He needed warmth. He needed so much, and he was so determined to punish himself instead.

Well, the way she saw it, he’d had enough punishment. Maybe if she showed him the opposite, he would start to leave it behind.

Future over past.

And if that didn’t work, she would accept it. She would not drown herself in it. No, she had to exist in this world too.

But first she would try. For the both of them. She pressed her mouth to his, not light or quick this time, but a kiss full of promise. A kiss full of all themorethey’d had this morning, but with less frustration and anger tinging the atmosphere.

She expected him to resist. She expected a lecture, or maybe some more self-recriminations aboutherchoices, but instead he sank into the kiss, his shoulders slumping in something like relief.

He’d been worried about her. Oh, he’d likely convinced himself he was just worried he would cause more harm. He would turn it intohimbeing a problem, but that all stemmed from worry and care. He just framed it with him at the center because that’s all he knew how to do.

Self-centeredness was not the same thing as self-absorption. He could learn to not center himself in everything. And she would teach him.

He wrenched his mouth away from hers, tried to detangle himself, but Amelia held on. There was something here, and she wouldn’t make it easy for him to deny that.

She wasn’t about to make anythingeasyon him.

“You don’t have to stop.”

“This is madness,” he stated, but his hands were still in her hair. His eyes were fierce, but there was something lost behind all that fierceness. She could reach his lost, help him find his way. She knew she could.

“Youare madness.”

She laughed in spite of herself. He’d said it like an insult, but she’d never caused anyonemadnessbefore. It felt kind of powerful.

And if she had any power over this man, she would take it. Take it until he saw himself as a man worthy of something more than punishment. Take it until she led him from the dark to the light.

Diego did not know what had come over him. The living room had been one thing. A momentary lapse, relief that she had not died in some snowy wreck because he was cursed. He could have written that off.

But now it was the middle of the night, and he was in her bed, with her sleeping soundly beside him.

Everything had unraveled, beenupended, and she might think it had needed that, but he did not think so. Upending confused things. His focus, his penance, was complicated now. Confusing. Instead of the one guiding light through a changed life.

He needed to get back to his cabin. To his penance and solace. He needed to find that center of pain instead of the enjoyment he found in her. It had all gone too far, and he needed to stop before he hurt her as badly as he’d hurt everyone he’d loved before he’d known better.

For some, love was a balm. He thought for his parents it had been. Love had likely saved them from being awful people, even if it hadn’t helped them be good parents.

But for him, love had only ever meant confusion and pain. Deep emotions that the only way to deal with had been to separate. To isolate. So he didn’t disappoint. So he didn’t get cut loose.

He was meant to be alone. To stand on his own two feet. To stay far away from people who would be hurt by him.

Amelia would so easily be hurt by him.

And still, he did not return to his cabin in the morning or the next or the next. He spent his days at the castello, helping Amelia prepare for a damned ball he didn’t want anything to do with. Yet day after day, he looked at pictures of his parents, of balls past, of the castello as it had looked in his childhood.

Day after day he was reminded of all he had lost, and it was supposed to be pain and punishment and what he deserved.

But something was happening inside him. Something was twisting those memories. Less like bricks and more like soft stones to be brought out and touched, their smooth, shiny exterior meant to comfort instead of weigh down.