Page 54 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ulysses

It doesn’t take me long to get to the airport and even less time for the jet to take off.

It’s early but I order a Scotch anyway. Anything to blunt the sharp edges of what happened in my kitchen earlier this morning with Katla standing there, so pretty in my T-shirt, smiling at me, her blue eyes luminous. Telling me that she loved me…

I take a healthy swallow of the Scotch, relishing the burn as it goes down, trying to scour away the memory of those luminous eyes filled with sudden pain, her pretty flush paling as I told her I didn’t care. Before walking out like the coward I am, leaving her alone in my kitchen.

I’m a bastard for doing that to her. A bastard for letting things between us get to that point. I just hadn’t expected the chemistry between us to blossom into something brighter, deeper and so much more intense than I’d anticipated. Or so fast.

In just over twenty-four hours, Katla fell in love with me and…

well. I hope it will take her less time than that to fall out of love with me, for both our sakes.

Yet, no matter how many swallows of Scotch I take, I can’t get rid the memory of her pain or the tears in her eyes.

Of her confusion or the lie I told her as I walked out—the lie that I didn’t care that she loved me.

And it is a lie. For some reason, I do care, and I can feel the pain of that care like an arrow through my chest. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who values the truth so completely, and says it, no matter how hard it is for her.

I know it’s hard. Telling me that she loved me must have taken a lot of courage and I repaid that courage with a dirty, terrible lie.

I had to, though. I had to ignore her feelings, because I couldn’t give her hope that I’d change my mind.

Hope that the six months I wanted was starting to look like not enough time instead of too much.

I couldn’t let her believe that I could give her more than that, because I can’t.

There’s only room in my life for one woman and that’s Olympia.

She’s my sister, my conscience, and I give her all my meagre capacity for caring.

I don’t have anything left for anyone else.

Besides, love makes me do terrible things and, though I’ve put those days behind me, I can’t be sure that loving Katla wouldn’t catapult me right back to the past. If I’d tear down the world to save Olympia, what would I be capable of when it came to protecting and saving Katla?

I can’t allow it. I never will.

Pushing thoughts of her from my mind, I give the next couple of hours my complete focus as the jet touches down in Palermo and we take a helicopter to Rafael Santangelo’s villa in the south.

I thought I’d take him by surprise but, as the helicopter touches down on the green lawn in front of the villa, I’m shocked to see the slim form of Olympia standing there, ready to meet me. Of Rafael Santangelo himself there is no sign.

I leap out, noting that she’s not running to meet me the way she normally does.

Instead she stands straight-backed and alone, wearing a form-fitting, long-sleeved red dress that outlines the shape of her growing pregnancy.

She looks strong, standing there by herself, stronger than I can ever recall her looking.

My heart catches painfully when I approach and she doesn’t smile. Nor does she move to embrace me, the way she normally does.

Instead, she says, ‘I told you not to come.’

Even a day or so ago, I would have ignored her, crossed the space between us, taken her arm and drawn her into the helicopter whether she wanted to go or not.

But all I can hear is Katla’s voice in my head telling me that I was kind, protective.

That the boy I once was isn’t dead and why can’t I see that myself?

What I see now is that, yes, I could take Olympia away with me under the guise of protecting her but, as Katla told me just yesterday, I’d be doing that because I don’t want to lose the one person who loves me.

Because I’m afraid for myself. Afraid that without her I’m broken and that I’m stuck being a man I despise and don’t know how to change.

Afraid that, if she’s not with me, everything I’ve done is for nothing.

But that’s my issue to deal with, not Olympia’s, just as she has her own demons to exorcise. I can only do so much for her, I realise. She has to exorcise then on her own, without me to protect her from them, or else, I’ll just become another one of her demons.

So I stay where I am, meeting my sister’s gaze, golden like my own. ‘I had to come,’ I say. ‘You think you could tell me you’re pregnant, that you’re with some bastard—?’

‘That bastard is my husband now,’ she cuts in. ‘And this has got nothing to do with you.’

So, he married her. That’s the only thing he’s done right. Rage starts to simmer inside me, and I want to tell her that it’s got everything to do with me, but I force the fury away. Force myself to find the cool logic that Katla gave me.

Instead, I look at my little sister and see that the strength in her posture is also in her eyes. Strength that I never knew my scared, vulnerable and beaten Olympia had. Is it the prospect of impending motherhood? Or is it something else? Something that—God forbid—has to do with Rafael Santangelo?

Whatever it is, it comes to me suddenly that anger is not going to solve this.

That, in fact, it’s not my issue to deal with, not this time.

Olympia is alive and well and is expecting a child.

She has a life outside of mine, and I know that if I try to take her away from it the relationship we have, strained as it already is, will chip and shatter.

The arrow in my heart worms its way deeper with that thought, sending pain spearing through me. I’ve already left one woman. I can’t put at risk my relationship with this one, especially when it’s the only one I have left.

So all I say is, ‘Congratulations, little one. Are you happy?’

Her eyes widen, as if she’s not expecting me to say that, then she blinks and her expression eases. ‘Thank you. And as to happiness…that’s a complicated one. I think so.’

‘I hope you are,’ I tell her. ‘That’s all I ever wanted for you, I hope you know that.’

She stands there a moment, staring at me in surprise, then abruptly she walks over to me and puts her arms around me.

‘I know this is a shock, Ulysses. But, when it’s all over, I promise to tell you everything.

’ She hugs me tighter then looks up at me.

‘You’re really not going to drag me back to Greece? ’

I hold her slight form gently. ‘No. This is your life now, Olympia. You should live it.’

She smiles at last and for a second I feel better, the arrow in my heart blunted for the moment. Then she frowns. ‘You look tired. Is everything okay?’

No, it’s not okay. I turned my back on a woman I shouldn’t have.

I let her go even though she told me she loved me.

Even though she looked at me as if I was worth something, as if I was precious to her, and it’s been so long since I was precious to anyone.

Now I’m wondering if I’ve made a terrible mistake, but it’s too late now. It’s too late to go back…

‘Yes,’ I say out loud. ‘I’m fine.’

But Olympia’s gaze holds mine and I can see she doesn’t believe me.

It’s not the time to tell her about Katla, though, and I know she’d be furious at how I walked out on her.

The strong, confident woman she is now would definitely not let me leave without a lecture. And I have no stomach for that now.

‘Goodbye, little one,’ I say, giving her one last gentle squeeze. ‘Keep in touch, hmm?’

‘Ulysses,’ she says, gently but very firmly. ‘What is it?’

For some reason, I say, ‘I met someone.’

Olympia’s eyes widen as she hears the emotion I tried unsuccessfully to keep from my voice. ‘A woman?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But…it didn’t work out. I had to let her go.’

Olympia blinks. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘It’s complicated,’ I tell her. ‘I have you to look after and—’

‘Ulysses,’ my sister interrupts impatiently. ‘Wait. So you met a woman and it didn’t work out because…what…you have to look after me?’

My heart is tight and I can’t seem to draw a breath. ‘Yes,’ I force out.

She stares at me, her gaze searching my face, reading me the way Katla reads me. Then she lets out a long breath. ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispers. ‘It’s happened. You’re in love with her.’

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. It can’t be true. I don’t have the capacity to love someone else, not when Olympia takes everything I’ve got to give.

And yet… I think of the pain I felt when I told Katla I didn’t care. The pain I still feel at the thought of her standing in my kitchen telling me her truth, telling me she loves me, and knowing what that must have cost her.

My ice queen. My volcano—rare, beautiful and brave. Cool as water and hot as lava. The only person ever to look at me and see the truth of me, no matter what I did in the past, no matter the boorish bastard I was to her when I met her…

I can’t speak, but Olympia reads the truth in my silence.

‘You’re an idiot,’ she says succinctly. ‘And I don’t appreciate being used as an excuse.’

‘I’m not—’ I begin, but she doesn’t let me finish.

‘I’m not the only one who’s been stifled by our past,’ she says. ‘You have been too. You need to get a life, Ulysses, and I mean that quite literally. I’ve found mine, now it’s time for you to find yours.’

I’ve grown used to not listening to my sister’s histrionics, because she’s nothing if not dramatic.

But there’s quiet truth to what she says that resonates inside me.

I have stifled her—I know it—and now I can also see that I’ve stifled myself too.

The life I live, the life I have now, is narrow, tied as it is to her, and it is empty.

As empty as my villa when I came on Christmas Day to find Olympia gone.

Except it wasn’t totally empty. Katla was there with me.

My chest is tight, the arrow in my heart burrowing deep. ‘I will hurt her, little one,’ I say. ‘You know what I was. You know what I’ve done. I can’t drag her into that with me.’

Olympia looks heavenward. ‘Men,’ she mutters under her breath. ‘So don’t drag her into that. Leave that behind and create something else with her.’

‘It can’t be that simple,’ I tell her, because it isn’t, is it?

My sister looks up at me and her expression softens. ‘Actually, I think it is.’ She smiles. ‘Don’t run away from it, Ulysses. If I can be happy, then you can be too, can’t you?’

Happy. I can’t even remember ever feeling…happy. Except…maybe I do. Watching Katla show me the spiral in that shell… Listening to her give me a piece of her soul as she told me about her little collection… Feeling her kisses on my face as she whispered that she was honouring me…

I was happy. With her.

‘Olympia,’ I say roughly.

‘I know,’ she says, still smiling. ‘Go get her.’

So I do.