Page 171 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘We talked about this.’ She exhaled heavily. They had talked about it the morning after he’d told her about Amelia. Lay in bed together. Naked. Holding each other. ‘We decided to do it together for Amelia,’ she reminded him. ‘And we are doing it.Today.’

‘I’m no speechmaker, Aurora,’ he said. ‘I don’t stand in great halls, or on podiums, in front of people like them and talk. I do not talk about myself.’

‘This isn’t about you,’ she said, knowing it was a half truth. It was the only part he would hear. The only reason he would do this was for her. But she understood he needed it far more than Amelia did now.

‘They don’t care,’ he scoffed. ‘They want what my hands create. They want my work. They don’t care what Amelia endured. People like them, privileged and elite, ignore what happens in houses like the one I grew up in, houses next door to their own. They pretend that what happens inside those houses doesn’t happen. But they know, Aurora. How could they not?’ he said, his top lip lifting to expose gritted white teeth. ‘They fear what lives in the dark, so they choose to be ignorant. To ignore it. They ignored Amelia’s suffering.’

She wanted to touch him. Reach out and hold his hand. But he had to trust her enough to take it.

‘I wish I’d stood on a podium,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d made my parents listen one last time. Made them realise Michael needed help. He needed love. Unconditional love…’

Her heart raced.

Love.There it was in her mind. On her tongue. And it didn’t feel wrong to think it. To feel it.

She was in love with him.

She pushed it down. Today wasn’t about her.

‘I wish,’ she breathed, ‘I had used my voice before now. I wish I’d realised sooner the shame they made me feel about Michael, his condition, his addictions… It was nothing to be shameful about. It was an opportunity to expose the awful atrocities not only the rich experience, but the less fortunate.’

‘They don’t care, Aurora.’

‘Then make them care.’ She puffed out air. ‘Stand in front of them as Sebastian Shard and tell them the causes they are donating to are worthy. The people that experience these awful things are worthy.’

Thatyouare worthy, she added silently, because he wouldn’t want to hear it. Nor would he accept it.

He had to believe today was for Amelia.

His lips firmed into a flat line. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ he asked.

‘Without shame,’ she said, swallowing all the emotion in her chest that was threatening to clog her throat. ‘You, Amelia…the children who have experienced, are still experiencing, the same things that you did…they have nothing to be embarrassed about. It isn’t their fault the world is ugly sometimes, that it exposes them to unspeakable things.’

‘But it was my fault that she died,’ he corrected her. ‘Am I supposed to tell them that? That I locked her in?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you want to tell them your and Amelia’s story, tell them. You did nothing wrong.’

‘And what?’ he snarled. Baring his perfectly white teeth. ‘Stand up there and shame you. Tell the world that the baby inside you was put there by a man who abandoned his family. Left them to—’

‘You abandoned no one,’ she interjected sharply. ‘You haven’t abandoned us.’

His cheek pulsed. ‘I want them to know you will be my wife.’

‘Sebastian…’ Her heart danced. She wanted to be that. To be his wife. She wanted to be his.

But not like this.

He thrust his hand into his pocket. He withdrew his hand, clenched in a fist, and held it out between them.

‘Marry me.’ He opened his hand, and there in his palm sat a ring of twisted silver, at its centre the bluest stone she’d ever seen.

‘It is the same colour as your dress the night we met,’ he said. ‘Siren’s blue.’

Her hand lifted. She couldn’t stop it. She touched this ring that would bind her to him.

In name.

Her heart smashed against her ribs. She wanted more than twisted silver.