Page 98 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

‘You are here in body but not in spirit. Not when you hold yourself back and then push me away at the first opportunity.’

‘What do youexpect?’ she cried. ‘I gave you everything before and look where it got me. Can you really blame me for wanting to keep something back now?’

Her heart bumping painfully, Rose closed her still-stinging eyes and willed herself not to cry.

The silence that enveloped them, so complete she could have heard a feather falling, was finally broken by a deep sigh.

Footsteps neared. The bed moved as he sat beside her.

Quietly, he said, ‘Of all my regrets, how I left you that morning is my greatest.’

Taking a tremulous breath, she met his stare.

The frustrated anger had vanished. ‘I know building a sustainable relationship between us is going to take time but it will never work if you hold yourself back.’

‘But I need time, Diaz,’ she whispered. ‘We both knew we wouldn’t find harmony overnight. You can’t expect me to just forget everything that’s happened between us or stop being on my guard for the next time you turn against me.’

‘That will never happen.’

‘It just did. You promised not to push me.’ She sniffed back a threatening tear and clutched at the sheet. ‘I know I overreacted. You’re not a bully and I never should have said that, and for that I’m sorry.’ She raised her shoulders helplessly. ‘It’s just that everything’s all so overwhelming. The past still feels so present…’ She shook her head, frightened to finish, frightened he would see just how deeply she still felt the wounds of the past.

A large hand palmed her cheek. ‘I overreacted too,mi corazón, and for that I too apologise. I did promise not to push you. I know I need to be patient.’ He gave a low, rueful chuckle. ‘This might come as a surprise but I sometimes struggle to find patience.’

A floating atom of amusement danced into her veins and she covered the hand on her cheek without thinking. ‘I might have got that impression on occasion.’

The atmosphere between them lightened perceptibly.

With a loosening of his shoulders, Diaz turned his hand to thread his fingers through hers, and pulled it down to rest against his chest.

Gazing into the blue eyes no longer threatening him with fire and brimstone, he took a long breath before admitting, ‘I think it is possible I sometimes struggle to deal with rejection too.’

There was a flare of compassion he didn’t deserve.

‘Anyone with your parents could be forgiven for that,’ she said with a softness he also didn’t deserve.

Somehow surprised and yet not surprised that she’d associated rejection with his parents, he tightened his hold on her hand.

It shouldn’t be possible that such a small gesture as the taking of a hand could lift a weight off a heart or possible that, after all the years of bad feeling between them, they should know and understand each other better than anyone else ever could.

He’d behaved like a spoilt, entitled ass, he realised heavily. He’d known it would take time to break Rose’s barriers down, but in his arrogance he’d compressed the definition of time into nothing. At the first hurdle, he’d assumed the worst, just as he always had with her.

‘Did I tell you they’re now coming next weekend?’ he told her.

‘Not this weekend?’

‘They had a better offer.’

Another flare of undeserved compassion. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I. I try to accept them as they are, as my grandmother always told me I should, but they are such selfish bastards and I don’t understand how they can be that way.’

‘At least they want to see the girls,’ she said with a light shrug. ‘My father will never meet them.’

‘He’s said that?’

‘He doesn’t need to. Neither of us have suggested it and we never will. We’re strangers to each other. When Mum was alive she’d make me video call him every two weeks but since she died we don’t even video call twice a year.’

He knew this. Of course he did. And yet he’d never really thought about it before or considered what it must have been like for Rose to have been so comprehensively rejected by her father. At least Diaz had never doubted that his parents loved him in their own selfish way.

---