Page 152 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

And his lungs squeezed. Until nothing remained. Never had anyone cleaned him. Never had anyone wiped away the dirt from his skin. Even when he was younger, as young as he could remember, he had cared for himself. And when Amelia had arrived, he had cared for her.

But no one. not even his mother, had taken care of him.

‘There,’ she said, and turned off the tap, pulled his dripping hands closer. ‘They’re not broken. They were just dirty.’

She looked around the sink’s edge. Looking for what, he did not know, and did not have the words to ask. He was rendered speechless by her naive assumption the dirt on his skin didn’t go beyond the surface.

‘It’s more than that,’ he said eventually.

She lifted the loose fabric at her waist and patted at his hands dry.

‘More than what?’ she asked.

‘It’s more than dirt. The reason they won’t work,’ he admitted.

Her dress, crumpled with moisture, fell back down to her thighs. She raised her head, looked up into his face with her brown eyes and asked, ‘Then what is it?’ Her brow creased. Lines deepened in her smooth, flawless skin. ‘Why do your hands not work?’

He didn’t deserve her concern. Her kindness.

‘Tell me,’ she urged. ‘Why do you think your hands are broken?’

She’d always been honest with him. Since their very first meeting in New York. In her home. Here.

She slammed her truth against him, without apology, every time she could.

He’d offer her the same now.

‘Because of you.’

Aurora saw it. Felt it. How hard it was for him admit.

‘Because of me?’ she repeated.

‘I—’ His body strained. Every muscle beneath his cream clay-covered T-shirt buzzed with a restrained energy. ‘I haven’t…’

He swallowed thickly. And she swallowed, too. Knowing this time she wouldn’t get it wrong. She wouldn’t demand. She wouldn’t push him too hard, too fast, until he thought there was no other choice but to retreat.

‘You haven’t what?’ She let her fingers press into his skin and clasped his hands gently between them.

‘Since New York, since you, I have made nothing new.’ His hands tensed in hers, and she saw the fight he had with himself not to close them into fists. ‘My hands, they will not let me. They refuse me.’

‘I saw your work in the paper.’ She frowned. ‘Wasn’t that after…me?’

‘That was not new.’ He shook his head. His hair glided against the strained muscles in his throat. Over the pulse hammering there. ‘It was nothing but a stencil of something I had created before. It was paint by numbers.’

‘It was beautiful.’

The pulse hammered in his bristled jaw. ‘You do not understand.’

‘I don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not an artist. So tell me. Explain it to me,’ she said, and waited for the doors to close. To shut her out.

They didn’t.

‘Since I touched you…’ he breathed, and she felt the heaviness of it. His exhale. His confession. ‘My hands do not work the same. They do notfeelthe same.’

Her heart raced. But she kept her lips sealed. Waited. For him.

‘I have tried everything,’ he rasped. ‘All my life, my hands…they are everything. They are what I am. All I have to give. But they do not feel right, Aurora. And I cannot fix them.’