Page 74 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

He turned to her. And there she waited for him to respond. Silently she stood in his space. With her naivety. Because so naive was she, she’d stumbled on the truth. His art was how he breathed. It was his life. How he gave back to those who were forgotten.

And she’d taken it from him.

He held out his clay-covered hands to her because he wanted her to see. To know.

‘My hands are broken.’

Her lips parted, her eyes dropping to his hands. ‘What do you mean, they’re broken?’

‘They do not work.’

She stepped closer. The pads of her naked feet warned him to move away. To drop his hands. But he couldn’t. He was rooted to the spot.

‘Why not?’ she asked, and he saw her hands rise, saw them inch towards his, raised between them. Softly she took each of his hands in hers. She smoothed the clean pads of her thumbs over his dirty knuckles.

And it was everything. Softness, he knew he didn’t deserve. But knew he had missed it. The feel of her on him, her touch, having her close, it was everything he had missed every day she had been here. Every day she had been away from him.

‘Aurora…’ He tried to tug his hands away.

She held on, drew his hands closer, until they hovered above the baby inside her.

‘Let me see,’ she said.

Her eyes moved over his clay-covered knuckles. And he let her look.

She took his right hand, turned it over, gently ran the tips of her fingers over his palm.

It was agony.

It was pleasure.

It was everything he should not allow himself to be feeling. But he couldn’t pull away. He did not want to.

She took his left hand and did the same, and the trembling in his core changed. It burst inside his veins. His adrenaline spiked, flooded his chest.

‘Come with me,’ she said, and then she was leading him by the hand across the wooden floor, their bare feet padding in unison, toward the deep porcelain sink on the far left wall.

And he let her lead him there. Because he could not speak. He could not breathe for the fire eating his flesh alive from the inside out.

‘Here.’ She twisted the tap, but still she held his hand. Still she held on to him as the water gushed into the sink.

She reached for the soap on the waterlogged dish and placed it in his palm. And then she reached for his other hand and put it on the top of the soap.

And then…

He could not breathe.

She closed her hands over his, wrapped them in her much smaller ones. She pulled their joined hands beneath the water and slid them together. Lathered the soap and worked the suds between his fingers.

Aurora cleaned him. His hands. His knuckles. His skin.

And his lungs squeezed. Until nothing remained. Never had anyone cleaned him. Never had anyone wiped away the dirt from his skin. Even when he was younger, as young as he could remember, he had cared for himself. And when Amelia had arrived, he had cared for her.

But no one. not even his mother, had taken care of him.

‘There,’ she said, and turned off the tap, pulled his dripping hands closer. ‘They’re not broken. They were just dirty.’

She looked around the sink’s edge. Looking for what, he did not know, and did not have the words to ask. He was rendered speechless by her naive assumption the dirt on his skin didn’t go beyond the surface.

‘It’s more than that,’ he said eventually.

She lifted the loose fabric at her waist and patted at his hands dry.

‘More than what?’ she asked.

‘It’s more than dirt. The reason they won’t work,’ he admitted.

Her dress, crumpled with moisture, fell back down to her thighs. She raised her head, looked up into his face with her brown eyes and asked, ‘Then what is it?’ Her brow creased. Lines deepened in her smooth, flawless skin. ‘Why do your hands not work?’

He didn’t deserve her concern. Her kindness.

‘Tell me,’ she urged. ‘Why do you think your hands are broken?’

She’d always been honest with him. Since their very first meeting in New York. In her home. Here.

She slammed her truth against him, without apology, every time she could.

He’d offer her the same now.

‘Because of you.’

Aurora saw it. Felt it. How hard it was for him admit.

‘Because of me?’ she repeated.

‘I—’ His body strained. Every muscle beneath his cream clay-covered T-shirt buzzed with a restrained energy. ‘I haven’t…’

He swallowed thickly. And she swallowed, too. Knowing this time she wouldn’t get it wrong. She wouldn’t demand. She wouldn’t push him too hard, too fast, until he thought there was no other choice but to retreat.

‘You haven’t what?’ She let her fingers press into his skin and clasped his hands gently between them.

‘Since New York, since you, I have made nothing new.’ His hands tensed in hers, and she saw the fight he had with himself not to close them into fists. ‘My hands, they will not let me. They refuse me.’

‘I saw your work in the paper.’ She frowned. ‘Wasn’t that after…me?’

‘That was not new.’ He shook his head. His hair glided against the strained muscles in his throat. Over the pulse hammering there. ‘It was nothing but a stencil of something I had created before. It was paint by numbers.’

‘It was beautiful.’

The pulse hammered in his bristled jaw. ‘You do not understand.’

‘I don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not an artist. So tell me. Explain it to me,’ she said, and waited for the doors to close. To shut her out.

They didn’t.

‘Since I touched you…’ he breathed, and she felt the heaviness of it. His exhale. His confession. ‘My hands do not work the same. They do not feel the same.’

Her heart raced. But she kept her lips sealed. Waited. For him.

‘I have tried everything,’ he rasped. ‘All my life, my hands…they are everything. They are what I am. All I have to give. But they do not feel right, Aurora. And I cannot fix them.’

They both looked down at his hands. To the source of his pain.

‘You are more than your hands,’ she breathed.

‘ I am not !’ he roared. The pain in each word ricocheted through her chest until it landed inside her heart. And she hurt for him. Desperately.

And she did what she knew she shouldn’t. She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles.

‘Aurora…’ he husked deeply. But he didn’t tell her to stop, so she didn’t. She did the same to his other hand. Kissed each knuckle, each joint that wouldn’t work for him the way he wanted them to. The way he knew they used to work.

She was no artist. But she was human. A woman who had to learn to change, to adapt, to her growing body. To teach her mind to think differently, to react differently, because she had changed, was changing, physically, emotionally, all the time…

She raised her eyes to his and said the only thing she could.

‘If they do not work the same, if your hands do not feel the same,’ she said, ‘then they are changed, Sebastian. Listen to them.’

‘They are not changed,’ he said, rejected her idea. ‘They are my hands. The same hands I have always had for forty years. I will always have them, as they are.’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘New York, it happened to us both. I’m changed because of it.’ Her gaze dropped to his lips. ‘I am changed because of you. Perhaps you are changed because of me, too.’

‘It is not the same,’ he said. ‘You are pregnant.’

‘I’m not talking about the baby.’ She released his right hand. ‘I’m talking about in here,’ she said, and brought his left hand to her chest. She held it flat against the drum of her heart.

‘After…after we were together,’ she continued. ‘I knew I could never go back. I could never go back to the Aurora who said “please” and “thank you” for all the things I didn’t want. I would never again hold my tongue in fear of offending someone else with my opinion. Or be someone I’m not.

‘I listened to my body—to my mind,’ she continued, wanting him to understand he wasn’t broken. He was never broken. He was changing. ‘I let the changes happen. I am letting them happen right now, here, with you.’

‘I do not want to change. I can’t.’

‘You can.’

‘No. I can’t.’ He pulled his hand from her chest, and she felt hollow without it. Her skin, her breasts ached for his touch.

But she let him go. She let him retreat.

‘I’ll call someone to escort you back down the tower staircase.’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ she said. She wouldn’t leave. Not yet.

‘Fine. I will take you down myself,’ he said.

‘I won’t let you send me away again,’ she said. Even though his need to see her safe, the fact he cared about her, touched her deeply.

‘Talk to me,’ she urged. ‘Tell me, why? Why won’t you embrace change? Your body wants it. Your hands need it,’ she told him, a tremble taking hold of her core. She suppressed it.

‘I won’t let it happen,’ he said. ‘I will not change. Not for my hands. Not for you.’

‘Why is it so difficult for you to spend time with me?’ she asked, forgetting everything she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do, forgetting the pep talk she’d given herself about not pushing him too hard.

But he needed to be pushed. ‘Why do you keep fighting my attempts to build a bond between us? Why are you fighting the chemistry between us? You don’t have to. ’

‘I do,’ he growled, not with just his chest but his whole body.

‘Because you don’t want to get hurt again,’ she concluded for him. ‘Because your family died? People die, Sebastian. My brother and my parents are dead. Death doesn’t mean you have to push people away. You don’t have to push me away.’

His chest swelled. ‘But I must,’ he said roughly, and his fists clenched at his sides. His body turning into solid, immovable stone.

‘Why?’

His nostrils flared. His jaw squared.

‘Tell me,’ she pleaded. ‘Make me understand why you can’t let us be what I know we could. Together, in all the ways couples can be together. Why are you fighting this so hard?’

And she fought with every fibre of her being not to lean into him. To keep her distance.

‘I have to, because if I don’t, I cannot keep you safe, you or the baby. I couldn’t keep her safe.’

‘Who?’

‘Amelia.’

‘Who is Amelia?’

‘My sister.’ He nodded, and she knew he was remembering everything he’d said the night they’d met.