Page 244 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

He thrust a hand onto his hip.

‘Well, I will walk away, sign whatever I need to in order to give up my stake in it, if you promise to at least go andtalkto her.’

The bottom seemed to be tilting out of his world.

‘I thought you wanted the company badly enough to do anything?’

‘I want my best friend to be happy more,’ she said with a withering and derisive scowl. ‘I would give up anything for her, as she would for me. Did you even know that’s what she was planning to do?’

He didn’t move.

‘She was coming home to tell me that she loved you, that she thought I’d love you, too, that she wanted us to be friends. She knew it might mean losing you, but she was going to put you and me first, because that’s the kind of person she is. And if you truly don’t see that,’ she said, stalking back towards the door and wrenching it inwards, ‘then you don’t deserve her.’ She left without a backwards glance and Zeus had the unfamiliar and unwelcome experience of having been hit by a tornado.

For the first time in a week, Jane left the flat. She didn’t feel like it. In fact, she desperately wanted to stay buried under her mountain of duvets and keep crying, but there was also a restlessness to her grief, or perhaps to her cravings for Zeus, that had her yearning to move her body. To feel blood rushing through her, to feelaliveonce more. So, she pulled on yoga pants and a loose shirt and set out for a run, targeting her favourite route through the Heath, uncaring that the day was hot and the breeze non-existent. It felt good to sweat. It felt good to be so hot it was almost a form of torture. It felt good to fill her lungs with air and expel it so hard and fast everything burned.

At least now she knew she was alive. She ran for almost an hour before turning back towards her flat, and when she reached her street, she was so focused on the harsh ache in her lungs that she didn’t notice the sleek black car parked in the narrow road, right outside her front door. As she got near it, though, the driver’s door opened, and the sound caught her attention. She glanced across and stumbled, gasped, because there was Zeus Papandreo, looking intimidating and perfectly unbreakable, looking just as he had in her dreams, looking right back at her, and she stopped walking, with no idea what she could say, nor why he was here, but just knowing that she wasn’t ready.

She couldn’t face him.

‘I’m— I need—’ She pressed her fingers to her lips and took a step backwards, her face pale.

‘Can we talk?’

She shook her head instinctively. On the one hand, she was desperate to talk to him some more, to do anything to spend time with him, but on the other, their last encounter had left her so badly bruised, she couldn’t go through it again.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered, dropping her head and staring at her feet. ‘I want to, and I probably owe it to you, but I can’t go through any more of that.’ Her voice was barely above a mumble. ‘I can’t fight with you again.’

‘I don’t want to fight with you.’

A tear slid down her cheek. She flicked a glance at him. ‘I don’t believe you.’

His eyes slammed shut on a wave of emotions she couldn’t interpret. ‘I don’t blame you.’ He sighed. ‘Listen, Jane, I was very angry that morning. I should have taken some time to get more facts, but I didn’t. I took it out on you. I’m sorry.’

She shook her head quickly. ‘More facts wouldn’t have changed your mind. I did everything you accused me of.’

‘You didn’t lie to me,’ he said, stepping closer towards her. ‘Not about us. Everything we shared was real, and true, just like you said.’

She shook her head again. It was all too much. She didn’t want to hear this, only to have him walk away and marry someone else. Did he have any notion how that idea had tortured her? The thought that he’d been engaged to someone else the whole time they’d been together? Having sex, as he’d so crudely put it. She took another step backwards, as if to repel that idea, and his features sharpened into a look of regret.

‘Oh, Jane,’ he sighed softly. ‘If I could take back that morning—’ he held his hands up, palms towards her, in a gesture of conciliation ‘—believe me, I would.’

She bit into her lower lip, heart popping like fizzing candy. She wanted to believe him, but how could she?

‘The idea of having been lied to byyou, the idea that I had been so damned foolish and mistaken what we were for something else entirely, it just made me feel so stupid. So angry. So hurt. And I took all of that out on you, instead of letting you explain. Instead ofhearingwhat you were saying.’

‘You did—’

‘No, I mean really hearing you. Hearing you when you spoke about Charlotte’s life, and how my father’s choice to shield her from the world was a daily abandonment she has had to live with. How you saw that and moved in to mop up the pieces again and again, because even though she is strong and courageous, you see the same vulnerabilities in her that you feel in yourself. I wish I’d listened to you when you’d explained that she’s your best friend, that you felt obligated to help her, even when you questioned the wisdom of her plan. And mostly, I wish I’d believed you when you said you wanted to change her mind, that you were planning to tell her that this was all wrong.’

Jane’s eyes widened with shock and surprise. ‘How did you—’

‘Charlotte,’ he said, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘You got your wish. We ended up meeting, spending some time together these last couple of days. She made me see what a monumental ass I’d been. Which is why I’m here.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. I suspect that even without Charlotte, I would have come to my senses eventually. She just dragged me there ahead of schedule.’

Jane blinked at him, her gut throbbing.

‘I was never engaged to anyone else, Jane. I said that because I was lashing out. It is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. To know that I hurt you, that I inflicted that wound on you, because of my own pain, is something I will always be unbearably ashamed of.’

She groaned, dropping her head forward, because hehadhurt her. Those words had tortured and tormented her every minute since. The prospect of him marrying—even when she’d contemplated that before.