Page 67 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘The baby is no one’s but mine.’

He moved closer until her neck ached from looking up so high. ‘Answer me.’

She placed both hands on her stomach. Held it. Protected it.

‘Why would you care if it was yours?’

‘Because if it is, you should have told me,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You should have found a way to tell me that you are carrying my child.’

She stiffened her spine. ‘You made it clear you didn’t share your life with anyone,’ she reminded him.

‘Not even a lover who had only moments ago trembled with the force of everything you shared. You didn’t want to share your life for a moment longer than you had to.

You didn’t care that I needed to be held. ’

She noted the way his pulse hammered in his bristled cheek.

‘You care for nothing, and no one, remember?’

‘I remember,’ he answered.

She did too. She remembered everything. The feel of him. How good it was. How beautifully it could have ended between them. How he’d sent her away with her flesh still burning. Her lungs still panting. Her body, her mind, still needing .

She’d made the right choice for her baby. To not even attempt to seek him out. To try her best to forget him.

‘So why would I tell you I was pregnant?’ she asked, wanting to hear his response. Why he thought it was okay to stand here, in her house, asking if he was the father of her child, when he didn’t care? ‘Why would I think you’d care?’ she continued. ‘Why would a baby be any different?’

His eyes searched hers. ‘So it is my child?’

She couldn’t lie.

‘Yes.’

His eyes dropped to her stomach. ‘My baby,’ he husked, and placed his hand on her stomach.

The possessive rasp of his voice, his touch, curled around Aurora. Her body responded to it, wanted to lean into it. Into him.

But why would she do that? He’d only push her away again.

She stepped back, and his hand fell away from her stomach, but his eyes did not leave hers.

‘Were you ever going to try and find me?’ he asked, his voice a low growl of accusation. ‘Have you even tried to figure out who the man was who took your virginity and put a baby inside you?’

‘No,’ she admitted tightly. She wouldn’t let herself feel guilty for her choice.

‘I was never going to tell you, even if I could have found you,’ she said honestly, and squared her shoulders.

But still, she felt so small in front of him.

His eyes watching her from up there with all that hair her fingers yearned to touch.

‘But now I know.’

She clenched her fists. ‘It changes nothing.’

‘It changes everything, Aurora.’

She swallowed, trying desperately to moisten her throat. Her name in his mouth did things to her, the way his tongue caressed it so gently, so smoothly.

She shook her head. ‘Not for me.’

She wouldn’t let it change anything.

She tore her gaze from his, no longer able to stand the intensity.

Looking down, she saw that the blackberries she had been carrying had been crushed. All save a few.

She reached down for a survivor.

‘They are ruined,’ he said, and then he was on his knees, catching her wrist.

Her heart thundered, but she made herself look up into the face. It was too close to hers.

‘Like us?’ she accused. ‘You…that night…you ruined it.’

‘I did,’ he admitted, swiping his thumb against the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. And it zinged.

‘Do you think of that night?’ She swallowed. ‘Do you think of me?’

She watched the heavy drag of his Adam’s apple.

She didn’t know why she needed to know. But she did.

She wouldn’t let herself regret the question. He was here when she thought she’d never see his face again. Never lay eyes on the defined structure of his noble nose, his sculpted cheekbones, sharpened by the lines of his chestnut beard.

Her stomach somersaulted. Her body was taut with too many conflicting emotions.

‘I think about that night,’ she admitted, filling the too heavy silence. ‘I think about you all the time, and…’

‘And what?’

Heat bloomed in all the places it shouldn’t.

‘If you could change it?’ Her skin hummed too loudly beneath his gentle, but firm, hold. ‘If you could change the way you ended us, would you?’

Something flashed in his eyes. And she recognised it. It was need. Want.

She’d imagined all the ways their night could have ended, and she’d longed for every one of those alternative endings. To be taken in his arms. Taken to his bed, where they would have explored each other. She’d craved it. A different end, as she’d lain on her bed feeling rejected. Broken.

‘No.’ His fingers tightened around her wrist, pinching deeply. ‘I wouldn’t change it.’

She stood, none too elegantly. ‘Why not?’ she asked, unable to mask the hurt and vulnerability in her voice.

‘There are no redos in life,’ he said, and stood tall in one fluid motion. Swallowed the space that surrounded them until there was only him. ‘I am not here for a repeat performance. I am here because of the child,’ he declared.

Heat flushed her cheeks and spread down her throat. What was wrong with her? Why did she still want a man who obviously did not want her?

Was it pregnancy hormones? Pheromones? Or was it something more basic? Something more primal that flooded her body with a need to be closer to him because the baby inside her was his?

She didn’t know the reason, and she didn’t want to know.

‘The child,’ she hissed, ‘is growing inside me.’ She curled her fingers into her palms until her nails pierced into flesh. ‘We are a goddamn package!’

His eyes blazed. ‘Then you and the baby will come with me. Now.’

The possessive demand made her toes curl. She ignored her traitorous feet.

‘No,’ she refused. ‘We won’t.’

‘It is no longer a choice.’

‘Who do you think you are?’ she spat. ‘Coming into my home and demanding things from me? I don’t even know your name.’

She took in his chin, squared and sculpted with determination.

She did know him, though, she realised.

‘At least, I didn’t. I know who you are now,’ she said.

His soft, pink lips thinned into a colourless line.

She nodded to herself. ‘You’re Sebastian Shard.’

His gaze narrowed. ‘Does knowing who I am change things?’ His lips twisted into something ugly. ‘Because I’m rich? Because I’m famous?’

‘ I’m rich,’ she countered. ‘Probably not as rich as you, but… Of course it changes things.’

‘Why? It will not change the facts. You are coming,’ he said, his voice low and deep, ‘with me.’

‘Sebastian,’ she tested it, rolled the syllables on her tongue.

Understanding formed in her consciousness.

‘You are Sebastian Shard. A man who gives his art freely. A man who donates works worth millions to causes that will help thousands.’

‘Knowing public facts about me,’ he snarled, ‘means nothing.’

‘But it does.’ She nodded to herself. ‘You’re the idol of the underdogs. A homeless man turned billionaire. An artist. A…recluse.’

Maybe she understood him a little more now. His actions, his words… He hid himself away from the world. And yet on the anniversary of a death that hurt him still twenty-five years later, he’d sought company and found her.

She’d made him want and need things he’d denied himself for a lifetime.

She remembered the bulge of tension in his body. The moment she’d thought being with her caused him physical pain.

The intensity of their connection had overwhelmed him. So much so that he’d withdrawn from her and retreated into himself. Back into his reclusive life.

But what did it mean? That he was here now when he could have stayed away…

And Aurora would never have known who he was.

Never have known he was the father of her baby.

Did he deserve a chance to prove he could be the father her baby needed?

She’d lived most of her life without choices. Could she really deny him that?

‘We leave now.’ His hands went to her waist, and he drew her in.

Sebastian was unconventional. His arrival, his demands. But a part of her liked it.

Hadn’t she sworn to live her life fully? No half measures? Hadn’t she vowed to herself, after New York, to accept nothing less than what she wanted?

And she wanted to go with him. Some part of her was pleased he wanted to be a part of her child’s life, to be involved. She’d prefer that…

‘I’ll come with you,’ she decided, because he deserved a chance to prove he could be the father their child needed. And if she went with him, it would give her the opportunity to figure out if his determination to be part of his child’s life was true.

His hands tightened on her waist. ‘It was never a choice, Aurora.’ He lifted her, and on silent feet, he carried her out of the door.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe neither of them had a choice in any of this.

Maybe fate had already chosen for them.