Page 187 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Of course, making her own didn’t mean shehadto leave. She could hear him out. It would be best to hear him out so she’d have no regrets.

So this could be a clean break. So she could have a clean future.

Without him. Your future is without him.

Slowly, she lowered herself back into her chair, holding on to this little mantra. His grip on her arm didn’t loosen, and she had to lean forward to make sure he wasn’t hurting himself by holding on to her.

“I thought I was dying. Perhaps I was. But these voices were just…just like when they’d been alive. My parents and Aurora bickering. Your father giving me orders I didn’t know how to follow. I knew it wasn’t real, but it felt so real. I could…feelthem.” He shook his head, pain etched across his bruised features.

Amelia’s heart felt bruised too. She desperately wanted to reach out, touch him, skin to skin, some reassurance, but she did not. “Perhaps you were saved by the ghosts of Christmas past.” She suggested this both because she couldn’t help but believe there’d beensomekind of otherworldly help he’d received, but also because she expected him to scoff.

Instead, he shook his head, but then it changed into a kind of nod. “Hell, none of it makes sense, so why not?” He closed his eyes for a moment, as if the pain was too much. But when he opened them, his dark eyes were intent and sure. “But the past is gone. And I have not lived in the present. I have lived in guilt because it was easier. I have always taken the easy way, Amelia.”

She opened her mouth to defend him, then snapped it shut. She would not defend him to himself. No, he had to make some strides on his own.

“Somewhere along the line, I learned that it hurt less to retreat, to not try, to believe the worst in myself rather than someone else believe the worst in me. Somewhere along the line, hurtinglessbecame my only goal. And then after they all died, and it felt like my fault, I thought it only made sense to make myself hurt more. And more and more. I never questioned it. I have only understood all or nothing.”

Though she’d known this, it was something else to hear him say it, admit it. In a raspy voice, his body in a hospital bed. It made it impossible to deny that this horrible event might have finally gotten through to him.

“You showed me something else,” he continued. “Both pain and joy. Forgiveness and responsibility for my own decisions. You showed me there could be all these different things, and they are hard, yes. Which is why I felt as if I could not… I did not think I could handle this dichotomy. I did not want to try.”

She had known all this. Had known that his inability to try things stemmed from his own issues. She had tried to tell him all this, but he hadn’t listened.

Except, if he was saying it now, hehadlistened. It had just taken time—and maybe a horrible car accident—to get through to him.

“I woke up to their voices. I thought I was going to die. Which I thought may be my due, but I did not want to leave you. Not just because I did not want you to be hurt, but because we had never had a chance. And this was my fault, all my fault, but instead of guilt and pain, I want tochange. To work.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Unable to stop the tears that fell now as he said the rest, his gaze intense and direct, his hand still clutching her wrist.

“None of it matters. The voices, being saved, if you cannot forgive me and bear with me as I try to…heal. I want to…live again. In love this time. Not in penance.”

Amelia’s chest felt as though it had been cleaved in two, but inside that pain was a warm, beating heart that loved him. And that hadn’t changed with rejection. She could not erase the fact she loved him.

“I love you, Amelia. I do not deserve you, but I will work to. I cannot change my past, my choices, my consequences, but you have showed me I can make new choices. I would like to. With you. If you’d let me.”

Amelia could not find words at first. Her eyes were full of tears, her throat tight with them.

Now it was her turn to make a choice, and the only one she wanted to make was him.Them.

But what if…

She frowned at the sound of a bell, which sounded like the one on the tree at the castello that sometimes tinkled when she didn’t think it should. She looked around the room but saw no evidence of any bell.

Her gaze fell back to Diego. There was a knowing in his eyes, and a warmth around the both of them.

Was it a ghost? A sign? Just a trick of sound and light?

She supposed it didn’t matter.

She had lost her mother and her father far too young, with no second chances. How could she deny a second chance with love when she had it?

“We both have some work to do,caro, but I love you, Diego. A good Christmas present foundation to build our Christmas future on.”

His mouth curved ever so slightly, his eyes fluttering closed, clearly exhausted. “I suppose we shall have the ghosts for each.”

EPILOGUE

AtthenextChristmas Ball, guests were in for a treat. They were invited to a wedding.