Page 180 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘You deceive yourself, Aurora,’ he said. ‘You do not know me. You only know what I have allowed you to know.’

‘I know you. I know this. These cruel words you’ve said to me, are…’ She waved at the walls, looking for a way to explain that she knew what he was doing and she wouldn’t accept it. ‘Your words are nothing but a defence. Arrows you’re choosing to fire at me,’ she summarised for him and for herself. ‘But you have missed. They have only nicked the surface. They have only inflicted flesh wounds. I am not scared. I will not run away.’

‘Then you are more naive than I thought.’

‘I am not naive,’ she said. ‘I see you.’

She would not accept this fake Sebastian when the real one, the real Sebastian, was just beneath this cruel exterior of detachment.

He was not detached. And he loved, she knew, deeply. Intensely. Desperately.

She knew he loved her. Knew it as true as she knew his baby grew inside her.

‘The painting in New York… A boy in rags, his skin covered in grime… But his eyes shone. So bright.Vivid.They hid nothing. They let all who looked at him understand what he wanted. What he needed. If only they could look beneath their initial reaction to his condition. If they could look past the bruises beneath his tired eyes. Beneath the filth. It was there for anyone to see. For anyone to give to him. They didn’t see it. But I did. I recognised it.’

‘There was nothing to see in that painting. There was nothing to decode,’ he said roughly. ‘Nothing other than what it offered.A painting!’

‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ she asked, a path clearing between all those conflicting emotions inside her that had been fogging her thoughts. ‘You know I know, don’t you?’

‘You know nothing.’

‘I do. I understand everything now. You need it still, the same thing that poor boy did, but you’re scared to admit it. That the boy you were still lives inside you. And he still aches for it. Yearns for it more than anything else. He is searching for it. Begging for it. Something divine… I saw it in his eyes. And I see it in yours.’

‘What are you talking about, Aurora?’ he hissed. ‘You are talking in riddles I do not want to understand. I do not need you to understand what the painting meant to me.It means nothing!’

‘It’s standing right in front of you,’ she said, ignoring him. She knew it. Understood him more in this moment than she ever had. His search had been the same as hers. The want beneath the facade of her smiles. Her silenced voice. They both wanted it. And they could have it. They could have it all.

‘I’m standing right in front of you. All you have to do is reach out and claim it. And it is yours. I am yours.’

‘I have had you already, and taken all you had to give me.’

‘Not this.’

‘Not what?’ he growled.

‘Acceptance,’ she husked.

‘I do not need your acceptance.’

‘You have it.’

‘I do not want it.’

‘Reach out, Sebastian. I am giving it to you. Acceptance. Love. Unconditional love.’

‘Love is never enough.’

‘It will be enough for us. We will have love. We will have everything we have never had before.’

‘I do not…’ He swallowed, and she watched the heavy drag of his Adam’s apple in his throat. ‘I do not love you. I do not want your love. What do I have to do to make you understand?’

‘I won’t let you do this, Sebastian.’ She trembled. ‘I won’t let you stand there and pretend you don’t care. I won’t let you pretend—’

‘It was all a pretence,’ he said. ‘I do not care. I do not love you.’

‘You do,’ she countered breathlessly. ‘You care. You love.You love me.’

‘No.’ He swept past her. ‘It is done,’ he concluded. ‘We are over. It’s finished.’