Page 71 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

For a millisecond before the shutters came down, Aurora had seen it written all over his face. Etched into every sculpted bone. Fear.

And she understood it.

She had known it.

She turned back to the windows overlooking the green- and autumn-tinged forests and valleys of the highlands. And with the view in front of her, she set about folding.

‘Like this,’ she said, and reached for a romper from the pile. She folded the arms in first, and then the legs, before putting the two halves together. And his eyes watched every pull and push of her fingers with intent.

She started a new pile in front of the unfolded ones.

‘Your turn,’ she said, and she didn’t know why she felt so breathless as he spread the romper in his hand, flat on the surface beside her, and copied what she’d done. But he did it faster, with the precision of practised hands. As if by rote…

She frowned. Maybe she’d been wrong…

Her eyes lingered on the tightness in his shoulders beneath his black jumper. His thick, corded neck.

No. She wasn’t wrong.

She collected another.

Side by side, they folded.

The silence was thick with something domesticated, but somehow it wasn’t a task performed for duty. It didn’t feel cold.

A closeness, a vulnerability, pulsed in the air between them.

She swallowed. ‘I was scared the first time I saw them,’ she whispered.

‘Saw what?’

‘How small they are.’

‘The baby’s clothes?’

‘These suits are so small. So delicate,’ she explained.

His hands halted in their task. Only a momentary pause before he continued, but she saw it. And her hands itched to reach for his. Too smooth her fingertips over the veins on the backs.

‘Babies come in all sizes,’ he said dismissively. ‘Why would you be scared of slips of cotton?’

‘I’ve never held a baby.’

He didn’t respond.

‘It sounds stupid, but when I found out I was pregnant…’ She exhaled heavily. ‘I was in a such a bubble. The life growing inside me felt so permanent.’

He placed a suit of the palest blue-and-white stripes onto her little pile. ‘The baby will be permanent.’

‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ she said. ‘In my head, I knew that my pregnancy would end , but the moment I held that little suit, I laid it on my stomach, trying to imagine—trying to make it make sense that it would be a real baby with needs, Sebastian. And…’

She swallowed down the confession in her throat, not sure she wanted to admit that she’d wanted someone with her when the reality of the baby hit her.

But she hadn’t had anyone. Her family was dead.

Her parents were not like the parents in books or TV shows who rubbed their daughter’s back and told her everything would be okay.

But she didn’t want to be alone anymore, and he didn’t have to be either.

‘And?’ he pressed gently.

‘I was scared when I realised the baby would come and I had no experience of something so small, so precious. But then I remembered I didn’t need the experience. I was a child once. An unhappy child. And I—’

‘Will do things differently?’

‘It’s all I can do.’ She waved at the room she’d readied for their baby.

‘My brother and I had a room like this. A nursery. It was a cold room full of disapproving looks. This room will never be like the one I shared with Michael, with nannies who did their job. They kept us clean, fed us and kept us quiet.’

She swallowed tightly. ‘But my parents, they wouldn’t have known where to start if they’d had to change our clothes or give us a bath.

We didn’t exist in their worlds. We were barely seen, and God forbid we were heard.

But I will know where things are, because I’ll have put them there myself.

I’ll know which toy the baby likes to play with in the bath.

What their favourite comforter is at bedtime. ’

The pulse in his cheek throbbed.

‘What I’m saying is,’ she started again, realizing she wasn’t explaining herself very well, ‘it’s okay to be scared.’

‘What makes you think I’m afraid?’

‘Because I saw it in your eyes.’

‘We are not the same. We have not lived the same lives,’ he told her. ‘We do not feel the same fear.’

‘But you do feel it?’ she asked.

He didn’t respond.

‘We could make up the crib together. It will help. The more things I ready for the baby, the more confident I feel,’ she explained. ‘And I have ducks. Duck comforters, duck sheets. Lots of ducks.’

His gaze narrowed. ‘Where is the crib?’

‘It hasn’t arrived yet, but it should soon.’ She waved at the empty space set aside for the antique one she’d fallen in love with online. ‘It will go there.’

‘You mean the baby is to sleep in here?’ His eyes darkened. ‘Away from you?’

‘Not initially, but—’

‘The baby should be with you at all times. It’s your job to watch them. To make sure they sleep on their backs and not their sides. It is your responsibility not to close them in another room and forget them.’

His Adam’s apple dragged up and down his throat. He turned on his heel.

‘Sebastian?’ she called after him. Confused.

‘Play with your ducks, Aurora,’ he called over his shoulder.

She wouldn’t go back to the cold existence of doing what everyone else thought she should be doing. She wouldn’t be seen and not heard. She needed no one’s approval on how she chose to do things. How she chose to live her life. But—

‘Why are you so upset I’m putting a crib in here? It’s a nursery!’

‘I’m not upset.’

‘Then why are you leaving?’

He stopped in the doorway but didn’t answer.

It made no sense.

He made no sense to her.

‘I don’t want to be alone anymore,’ she confessed raggedly to his back.

His step faltered.

‘You kidnapped me,’ she said, standing taller, making her voice clearer. ‘You took me from the life I was readying to live with the baby and put me in your world instead.’ She moved closer to him. Invaded his space. ‘And still I’m alone. Lonely. When you are right there.’

She’d known he needed time initially, as she had, to acclimatise. To settle. And she had settled. She’d opened all the doors, looked in every room, threw off sheets over furniture so beautiful, she’d marvelled it had been hidden, the dust-cloths collecting years of dust.

‘I shouldn’t have to be alone, Sebastian,’ she said, her voice raw, because she knew what she wanted now. What that more was that had been so elusive when he’d asked her about it.

She wanted a companion to be by her side through the small tasks and the big ones to come. She wanted to be there for him too… So why not use the time they had before the baby arrived to cultivate something they both so obviously needed?

Friendship.

He turned to face her, his eyes falling to her stomach. ‘In time, you will never be alone again.’

‘I want your time, Sebastian.’

His eyes lifted to hers.

A low hum of heat gathered in her abdomen.

They could be more than friends.

They could be lovers.

She ached for it. His hands on her body. The fullness of him inside her.

A heated shiver licked at her skin.

‘Have dinner with me?’ she pushed.

His jaw was a throbbing line of stone, and the silence lasted too long.

It was too full, too intense.

‘At eight,’ he said abruptly, and nodded, a single deep dip. He walked out the door without a backward glance. Again.

He was as broken as she was, wasn’t he? They’d both lost so much.

She wrapped her arms around herself, but still she shivered.

If they couldn’t at least be friends…

She’d leave.