Page 117 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Shock widened her eyes, and she hugged her arms around her chest.

‘I thought you were going to die.’ He blinked hard and pressed a hand to his chest, and starkly said, ‘If I had lost you, I don’t know how I would have gone on. It took your near-death for me to come to terms with the fact that a world without you in it is no world at all for me, but even then, even knowing I couldn’t live without you in my life, I still could not bring myself to admit the truth and see you for who you really are rather than the warped version I’d always fed myself.

‘You are my life, Rose. My sun. My moon. My stars. The future I ran away from is the only future I want but I see now that it’s a future I can’t have. I know you still love me but I know now that the hurt I’ve inflicted on you is too deep to heal. I have destroyed any trust you had in me beyond repair. I thought all I would have to do was be patient and you would come to see that my feelings for you are true and unbreakable but I was lying to myself, just as I have always lied to myself about you, and I continued to hurt you just as I have always hurt you.’

Self-loathing filled him like rancid bile. ‘What kind of love blackmails to entrap a heart it had so cruelly rejected and abandoned?’

Her wide eyes flickered and closed.

He took what was possibly the biggest breath of his life. ‘My plane is on standby for you to take the girls home. I will instruct my lawyers to file the divorce papers immediately and have primary custody made over to you.’

There was a long moment of stunned silence before she gave a dazed shake of her head and choked, ‘No, Diaz. No. You can’t do that.’

‘Yes, I can. I see it now.’

‘No.’

‘Rose,yes. It has to be this way. Our history will always be an open wound and there will come a point when it will infect our daughters too. They need stability and they need their mother.’

Her face crumpled. A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘But you’re their father. They need you.’

‘I will always be their father and they will always have me,’ he insisted with a firmness he had to force his vocal cords to make, ‘but this arrangement is the best one for them and the best for you. You deserve the world, Rose, and you deserve your freedom, and this is the only way I can give it to you.

‘I will still be involved in their lives but this means you can start again and live your life as you choose, and one day find someone who can love you how you deserve to be loved without years of toxic history poisoning it. But if…’ He had to swallow to say the next words. ‘If you find you are pregnant, then I will be there for you in whatever capacity you need me to be.’

All those weeks of making love unprotected. Never mentioned between them. His arrogant hope that it meant Rose wanted nature to send her a signal that they were meant to be together and tie her irrevocably to him.

Still shaking her head, she burst into tears, different tears from her earlier sobs, formed by a different kind of pain, a pain he shared right down to his marrow. Without any forethought, he hauled her to him.

‘It has to be this way,mi amor,’ he said into her silken hair, squeezing his eyes to hold back his own threatening tears. ‘My feelings for you have always been extreme and my reactions in fighting it extreme, and I want you to know that I am beyond sorry. I’ve behaved monstrously to you and now I have to put things right, as much as I can.’

For the longest passage of time they did nothing but hold each other tightly, Rose’s tears slowly subsiding into dry heaves.

He kissed the top of her head. ‘I love you, Rose. I will always love you.’

‘I love you too,’ she choked.

Disentangling their arms, they gazed into each other’s desolate eyes.

‘Please go,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t drag this out.’

Chest and shoulders still heaving, she made a short nod and pressed her fingers to her lips and then pressed her fingers to his mouth. Her voice was barely audible. ‘Goodbye, Diaz.’

He trailed his thumb along a high cheekbone for the final time. ‘Goodbye, Rose.’

* * *

Diaz hauled his leaden legs up the stairs. He’d drunk enough bourbon to tranquillise a horse and could only hope it would have the same effect on him.

He craved oblivion. If not for his daughters, he would crave to never wake up.

The villa was deafening in its silence.

With drunken, blurry eyes, he found the nursery door.

He didn’t know if it was better or worse that much of the girls’ stuff had been left behind. The items left were for when they came to visit him.

From now on, his daughters would only be visitors in his home. He would no longer share the daily routines with them. No longer share their daily life.

---