Page 77 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER TEN

T HUNDER BOOMED.

Aurora’s sleep-heavy eyes flew wide open.

Yellow-white light crackled and lit up the sky outside. Water ran in a river down the panelled glass. The heavy drapes were open, and the next streak of lightning illuminated the room through the two large windows. Everything inside the room remained still, undisturbed by the storm.

The room dimmed as the lightning receded, but Aurora’s restlessness remained. And it wasn’t the wind or the thunder that disturbed her.

It was…

Slowly she turned her head on the once plump white pillow now indented from her head, from the pressure of her straining body after Sebastian had crept into bed that night.

Slid beneath the heavy white linen, pressed his naked body against hers, and given her release.

Again and again, until her listless body had clung to his, and she’d fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She wasn’t clinging to him now.

She wasn’t asleep.

And it wasn’t the storm that had woken her.

It was him .

‘No…’ he mumbled, his restless head arched, his thick neck straining. ‘Please… No! ’

‘ Shush ,’ she soothed, and reached between them, under the sheets, and placed her hand on his chest. It was solid. His muscles were so taut.

‘Amelia…’ Sweat beaded on his forehead. His chestnut hair streaked across his furrowed forehead was black from the moisture soaking his body.

She pushed it back, cleared his forehead with a gentle swipe of her palm. ‘You’re dreaming,’ she said in a hushed whisper.

‘I’m sorry…’ Tremors raked through his body. ‘I’m so sorry…’ he croaked on a barely contained sob, and that broke something inside her.

When Michael had died, she’d had so many dreams. Dreams of all the things she should have done and hadn’t. She’d woken tear-drenched and raked with guilt. All alone.

He wasn’t alone now.

She couldn’t see what was doing it. Hurting him. But she could stop whatever was invading his sleep. She could make it go away.

‘Sebastian.’ She sat up beside him, stroked his broad bare shoulders. ‘Wake up.’

Lightning crackled.

His eyes opened, wide and haunted. He looked up at her but he didn’t speak. His face haggard, he stared at her, his breathing deep and uneven.

Emotion bubbled in her chest. Her eyes crowded with tears.

‘What was she like?’

‘Who?’ he rasped roughly.

She couldn’t help it. A tear slipped free.

He cleared his throat. ‘Why are you crying?’ His hand lifted to her cheek. The pad of his big thumb caught the tear. Wiped it away.

‘For you,’ she said. ‘And Amelia.’

His hand fell to his side. Focus returned to his glazed eyes with sharp intensity. ‘What did I say?’

‘You were dreaming,’ she explained.

His brow furrowed. ‘I haven’t dreamt of her for over a decade.’

He threw a hand over his eyes. Hid the shadows that had entered his eyes with the sound of his sister’s name.

And she wouldn’t let him do it again. Hide from her.

For two weeks, they had been together. They’d shared every meal. They had touched. Kissed. Every night, he’d climbed into her bed beside her, learnt her body and she his with a famished, ravenous intensity.

But talk? They’d shared words, talked about the baby, shared pleasantries about their meals…but she had still not passed the surface level of Sebastian.

And she wanted in. She wanted in desperately.

‘Don’t,’ she said, and reached for his hand, pulled it away from his eyes and drew it towards her. Held it.

His eyes shuttered. ‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t hide from me.’

‘I’m right here.’ He dragged his free hand through his hair. ‘Where I have been every day, every night, for two weeks? With you.’

He pulled his hand free from her grasp, shifted his hips backwards and sat up against the intricately designed wooden headboard spanning the width of the bed and reaching to the ceiling.

He turned to her, opened his arms wide. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

Thunder rumbled. More quietly now. The storm was moving. But Aurora understood she had a choice. She could crawl between his legs, sit on his lap and let him stir her tired body to life.

Or she could invite the storm inside.

Ignoring the heat stirring in her pelvis, she made a choice.

‘No,’ she said.

He turned from her, flipped on the beside lamp. The room filled with a soft amber artificial light. But he didn’t reach for her again. He dropped his hands into his lap covered by the white sheet, low on his lips.

He arched a brow. ‘No?’

She inhaled deeply, straightened her spine, and said more firmly, ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re hurting.’

‘I am not in pain.’

‘But you were,’ she pointed out. ‘And your body remembers it, even if you don’t want to acknowledge it. You still hurt enough for it to infiltrate your dreams.’

‘It’s only a dream.’ He dismissed her with a flippant wave of his hand.

‘It’s your mind, consciously or subconsciously,’ she said tightly, ‘and it’s telling you—’

‘It tells me nothing I don’t already know.’

‘But I don’t know,’ she reminded him. ‘And I want to. I want to know what your sister was like?’

‘What does it matter what she was like?’ he snarled, baring perfectly white teeth. ‘She’s dead.’

‘But you’re not.’ She swallowed. ‘And your sister lives inside you. In your dreams…’ She blew out a breath, wanting him to understand, to let him know she understood, even if she didn’t know all the facts, but she didn’t know how to do it. How to show him.

‘Do you talk about her?’ she asked. ‘Ever?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t talk about Michael either. I thought it would hurt too much.

It did hurt in the gardens when I told you a little of him, of our relationship, and what happened to him.

But I didn’t tell you everything, and I…

I think it hurts more not tell it. To not talk about him. All of him. Not just his death.’

‘You want to talk about him now?’

She nodded.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Michael.’

‘He was…’ She sucked in a lungful of fortifying breath. ‘He was my big brother, and I loved him. I looked up to him. I envied him in the earlier days.’

‘Why would you envy him?’

‘He was always so… free .’

‘Free?’

‘He never put on a show. He never pretended to be anything other than what he was. Cheeky, naughty . Innocent things when we were young. Speaking out of turn. Playing pranks.’ She swallowed. ‘Harmless things, really.’

‘Did you play pranks, too?’ he asked gently.

Her chest tightened. ‘Once.’

‘And what happened?’

‘It was silly,’ she said, remembering. ‘I collected worms from the garden and put them in the new nanny’s bed. I didn’t like her. She was mean.’

‘She hurt you?’

‘Only with words. But our parents assumed it was Michael, and I let them believe it. I let him take the blame, and he did. Not once did he tell them it wasn’t him.

And I started to lean into that. I wanted them to love me,’ she confessed roughly.

‘I pretended to be the golden child that day, and it became my role. I dedicated myself to it. To being perfect.’

‘You are perfect.’

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t. I leaned into Michael’s misbehaviour to amplify my own goodness, because I wanted their approval, but they always withheld it anyway. Michael’s behaviour grew worse…’

‘How?’ he pressed softly. ‘How did it get worse?’

‘It was light stuff at first,’ she said.

‘Parties. Smoking. Cannabis.’ She swallowed, remembering finding him in the gazebo, reeking.

‘He said it was a one-off. Then he promised he only did it when he needed to relax. When he had to come home to them . He was lying. He smoked it all the time. I could smell it. But I believed him. I believed it was harmless. That his habit wouldn’t progress. ’

‘But it did?’

‘He took harder stuff, until I couldn’t see him behind his bleary red eyes.

’ Aurora scrunched up her nose to stem the burn there.

‘My parents put so much pressure on us. On Michael, and he escaped it, them, with gambling highs and drugs. But the Michael I grew up with, who protected me from our parents’ put-downs and took them all for himself, was gone, long before my parents abandoned him.

Before I did. He was gone before he died. I realise that now.’

Pain lanced her through the chest. ‘But the night my parents threw him out, he begged me to believe he could change, would change.’ A tear fell, and she let it fall.

‘I didn’t believe him. I let him go off on his own because I didn’t want to risk my parents’ wrath, their displeasure.

I wanted to be good. To be loved. To be the golden child.

And then Michael died. Alone , because I had been manipulated into being the daughter they wanted.

’ She hissed, disgusted at what she’d let herself become to please her parents.

Who, she realised now, would never have been pleased with her.

Not obedient Aurora. Not rebellious Aurora.

‘Don’t cry.’

‘How can I not?’ she said. ‘I didn’t believe him.

I didn’t give him a chance, not even one last chance to change, because I was too afraid to stand by his side and fail with him.

And what did I achieve not lobbying for him one last time?

Nothing. I became the heiress to the Arundel name and fortune because I was the only one left.

And they thought I’d look after it when they were dead, how they wanted it to be looked after.

But after you…after New York, I realised I didn’t have to do it their way. I could live my life how I chose to.’

‘And what choices did you make for your life?’

‘I chose to continue being the person I became the night I met you,’ she confessed. ‘To be brave and bold in the choices I make now.’

She searched his eyes, and she saw nothing but shadows.

If he wouldn’t let her in, she’d climb inside herself. Talk to the shadows he wouldn’t recognise still took up too much space in his mind. His dreams.

She moved her body until she was on her knees. Her blue dotted nightgown rose to her thighs as she crawled onto his naked lap.