Page 78 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘Aurora…’ He held up his hands in the air as she settled herself, her thighs on either side of his. The baby was big and round between them. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You need to talk about them, like I did,’ she said. ‘You need to talk about her. Amelia. You need to face your demons, and—’

‘My demons are my own.’

‘You can’t control them.’

‘I can.’

‘No, not until you face them,’ she said, realizing now it was the truth. ‘Or they will own you. Mind, body and soul. Forever.’

She could almost touch it, see it, standing between them. A real-life demon blocking the connection between them that could be so much stronger if he allowed it to flow freely.

If only he talked to her.

Really talked.

‘No. Aurora, I can’t give you this. I have given you everything else, but I can’t give you this.

’ His hands moved, and he stroked her hair.

He coiled his fingers in it and tugged, not enough to hurt, but enough for her to feel the tension, the strength, in his hands.

‘I will not put the images that haunt my dreams into your pretty little head. I won’t dump my trauma into your innocent mind. I don’t want you to know it.’

‘But I want to know you, and whatever has happened is a part of you.’

‘It’s not a part you need.’

‘So you’ll keep it all to yourself?’ she asked, undeterred.

‘You’ll continue to lock yourself away? I could have done that,’ she almost shouted, but she didn’t.

‘I could have done what you did. Locked myself away in Arundel Manor with my grief and my guilt. But I didn’t. I am here, with you, because I didn’t.’

‘We are not the same. You don’t know—’

His jaw locked.

She searched his eyes. Those amber-and-green-filled depths. And she wanted to break down the walls surrounding him, but only he could do that.

‘Then tell me,’ she urged. ‘Tell me everything.’

And she waited…

Hadn’t she just revealed her own wound? Her own guilt? Hadn’t they both tried to be something they weren’t, something they shouldn’t have had to be, for other people?

Their stories were so similar and yet so different.

His throat squeezed tightly.

She made it sound so easy to make a different choice. There were no different choices for him. But she was here, so soft, so determined to…help him.

No one had ever wanted to help him. Esther… He was money for her, pure and simple. Over time, she’d grown loyal. Loved him. Maybe. But Aurora… She had no reason to demand this of him, other than that she naively thought this would change something in him.

It wouldn’t change anything. So why not tell her?

It might make her leave.

His stomach tensed. If he didn’t tell her, she might leave too. Either way, it was a chance. A risk he wouldn’t take.

It was only a story…

‘There is no official story of my life before…’ He was unsure where to begin.

‘Tell me the unofficial one.’

‘I have told no one about it,’ he said. ‘No one knows about the before.’

‘No one?’

He shook his head. ‘As far as the world knows, I’m Sebastian Shard, born the moment my agent Esther discovered me on the streets. Already a man.’

‘But that isn’t true.’

‘No,’ he said honestly. ‘I was young, once. But I never really had a childhood, was never allowed one. I was never allowed to play with any other children. I was locked in a basement.’

He felt Aurora’s gaze narrow. ‘A basement?’

He nodded stiffly. ‘I decorated it. I drew, I painted, on any surface I could from the moment I knew how. I turned it into our secret place,’ he said, remembering the mural of a never-ending horizon of deep reds and burnt oranges.

He swallowed thickly. ‘Mine and Amelia’s.

Until the basement was gone, until we moved into a house with a man. A man who told me to call him Daddy.’

‘Your stepfather?’

‘He was never a father to me.’ His necked corded. ‘He was barely a man.’ His hands clenched on the bedspread. ‘He was my mother’s pimp,’ he spat.

‘Your mother was a prostitute?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted, and it hurt to tell her.

For her to know the shame he felt. ‘We always lived in a shared house before… There were women everywhere. I knew what it was when I was seven, maybe eight. Maybe younger… Those women weren’t my aunts.

It wasn’t a shared house. It was a brothel. Run by my mother.’

Her eyes flew wide open. ‘She was a madam ?’

‘Yes.’

‘Surely someone knew? A teacher? A doctor? Someone who could have taken you out of there? Put you into foster care? A family home?’

‘It was a family, of sorts.’ His blood heated. ‘Before him.’

‘Someone had to know there were children inside of a brothel!’

‘There is no record of me. My home birth was undocumented, as was Amelia’s. There was no one to know. We didn’t exist officially.’

‘But a midwife?’ she asked. ‘Surely a midwife was there to help your mum give birth?’

‘When I was a child, there were always women around in various stages of dress,’ he explained. ‘There was enough of a collective of experience that there was no need for outside help.’

‘How is that possible?’ She frowned. ‘This isn’t the dark ages. Children aren’t… Their existence isn’t…unknown.’

‘Children are missing to the system all the time, Aurora. And their existence is obsolete because it isn’t on some computer,’ he said too harshly.

He couldn’t help it. He was angry at her for pushing him, angry at himself for telling. But it pulsed through him. A small part of him itched to tell the story he never had told anyone. To her. To have her understand him.

‘It’s not a pretty story. I don’t know how to tell it without the ugly bits.

I don’t want the ugly bits in your head…

I don’t want to talk about it while you are on my lap.

’ His hands moved of their own volition.

Touched her soft upper arms, and he stroked them.

Soothed the ache in his fingers against her silky skin.

‘You are so soft,’ he said. ‘So innocent.’

‘Then tell me the pretty bits first.’

‘There were no pretty things about my life,’ he said. ‘Until you.’

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Tell me about Amelia.’

‘She died,’ he said thickly. ‘When she was three.’

‘What about the three years she lived?’

‘She…’ Emotion clogged his throat.

Fingers, feather-light, stroked his cheek. ‘It’s okay to remember her.’

Was it? Was it okay to think of her tiny fingers? Fingers that had clung to him, trusted him. He had left her alone to die.

He closed his eyes. Shut out the trusting eyes clinging to his. He would not fail the trust Aurora placed in him. Never.

Lips, so smooth and soft, kissed his cheek. ‘It’s going to hurt,’ she breathed against his skin as her lips moved to the tip of his nose and over to his other cheek.

‘It will hurt to remember her happy,’ she continued, and Aurora kissed him again. ‘It’ll hurt to know that, however happy she was, she died. But you have to remember more than her death, Sebastian.’

She kissed his eyelids now. His right one, then his left. And Sebastian trembled.

‘You have to remember.’ Her lips feathered his forehead. ‘Remember how she lived. How she was part of your life. How she still is. Face whatever guilt it is you feel, and let yourself move on. Forgive yourself.’

His eyes flew open. He caught the wrists moving from his chest to hold his face. He wouldn’t let her cradle his cheeks and push her innocence inside his skin with her gentle fingers.

He was not innocent.

He released her wrists and caught her waist.

‘Sebastian!’

He ignored her. He could not have her on his lap. He could not feel her warmth when his blood ran so cold.

He lifted her, made his hands be careful, and placed her on the bed beside him.

‘Sebastian,’ she said. ‘Please.’

And it hurt him for her to beg. For him to break his promise to never to let her beg for anything from him. But this time, she was wrong. This …he could not change. He couldn’t undo what he’d done.

‘I will never forgive myself,’ he hissed.

His chest was so tight. ‘She was beautiful. Innocence personified. She was the definition of it, with her curly black hair, her little button nose that squinched with her squinting big blue eyes when she laughed. And she laughed all the time. In our room we shared. A room with everything we needed, a kitchen. A bathroom. And I fed her. I burped her. I loved her! ’

‘I know,’ she breathed heavily.

‘You do not know. You do not know what it is like to have something precious given to you. Something so innocent you cannot help but love it.’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘Soon we’ll both be given something precious. Something we will both love.’ She placed her hand on her belly. ‘I feel the baby all the time. Its tiny hands. Its feet. I understand that kind of love. The consuming nature of it. I understand how much you loved her.’

He dragged his hands through his too long hair. Pushed it back away from the skin that crawled with self-hate. Self-disgust.

He closed his eyes. Shut out Aurora. Her misted big brown eyes.

He didn’t deserve her compassion. And he’d tell her why.

And then he’d open his eyes. Watch her tears disappear.

Watch the shame he felt reflected in her eyes with the ugly images he’d now put into her beautiful, determined, naive, and stubborn mind.

He was not naive.

‘Love is never enough,’ he hissed, his eyes still closed.

‘I was given a responsibility. To take care of her. And I did. I held her. I provided for her every need from the moment she was born. Because in the rooms beyond ours…the other rooms, filled with women. With men. Drinking. Having sex. Doing drugs. It wasn’t safe for her there.

But we were safe in our room. She was safe with me . ’

‘How old were you?’

He squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘I was twelve, and she was brand new. And she’d relied on me. And for three years, I kept her safe. I protected her. Until one night, while she was asleep in her crib beside my bed, I—’