Page 46 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

He cursed under his breath. His panic and confusion increased tenfold until the grinding pain in his stomach felt like a monster, ready to rip him apart.

Was she punishing him for being a hot-headed bastard three days ago? For accusing her of things he had always known in his heart she was innocent of? He knew he deserved to be punished for hurting her like that, but why could she not forgive him, when she had forgiven so much else? So they could go back to where they’d been.

‘What more is there?’ he asked at last.

‘Love.’

The single word struck his chest. And seemed to ricochet in his heart—the heart he had guarded so carefully, protected so zealously, for so long. The heart he had never been able to protect from her.

‘Dios!’ he swore, suddenly terrified. ‘What nonsense is this?’

She flinched, much as she had done when he’d spoken to her so harshly on the launch, but instead of looking weary or hurt, he saw the spark in her eyes he had missed so much.

‘It’s not nonsense to me, Santiago, because I love you.’

Cerys’s heart broke at Santiago’s stricken reaction before he could mask it.

It had been so hard in the last three days and nights to contain her feelings for him, and deal with the death of all the hopes she’d harboured for their marriage. Containing the incessant yearning every time he looked at her with desire in his eyes, every time his palm settled on the small of her back—so protective, so possessive—to shield her from the press, to declare her as his. Or his fingers gripped her elbow, her hand, her wrist to keep the pretence alive that he was madly in love. All of it had been torture for her.

But knowing she still loved him, and knowing he couldn’t return her love, had been so much worse.

This morning, when she’d signed the marriage documents, while he stood beside her, so close and yet so closed off, it had hurt the most. Because instead of being a beginning, it had been the end. And the irony of that had seemed exceptionally cruel.

It had hurt too, hugging Ana goodbye and knowing she was unlikely to ever see Santiago’s sister again—because by the time she returned from her new boarding school at Christmas, their divorce would surely have gone ahead.

The pain had been even more brutal as she had watched thecastillodisappear from view that morning as the helicopter had lifted into the sky. Scanning the patchwork of vines, the woods she had roamed with Ana, the villa on the edge of the orchard Santiago had filled with wildflowers just for her, and knowing the place she’d wanted to make her home could never be one now, even though she had agreed to remain there until the divorce.

But when he’d told her on the boat ride here that she need not concern herself with Ana’s welfare any more, the thick fog she had used to anaesthetise her from the pain for days had been ripped away…

And his crude attempts at seduction had finally forced her to confront her own culpability.

How could she have been such a coward? So what if she loved him! Why had she let him set the agenda?

Again.

She wanted to leave the past behind. Their parents’ crimes had never been their crimes, and she was glad he understood that now. Glad he had finally admitted that he had accused her to protect himself.

But she had wanted to make a life with him… So why had sheeverbeen ready to settle for a marriage without love? To let him hide behind the shield he put around his emotions and never let her in, not all the way.

Was there still a tiny portion of that little girl lurking inside her who had always blamed herself for her mother’s desertion? The girl who had internalised her father’s rejection without even realising it.

Before meeting Santiago, she’d always been so wary of sex, so scared of allowing herself to be vulnerable, to commit to anyone. She’d yearned for a family but had always felt responsible for being alone. Because her father had never seen her when he looked at her, never loved her after her mum’s desertion, never made her feel valued or cherished. So, when Santiago had looked at her the morning after their wedding wearing the same expression her father had worn so often—with judgement and indifference—she’d internalised that too.

Surely that had to be why she had been so scared of fighting for what she needed.

From what Santiago had told her about his father’s affairs, she knew her mother had been wrong to think Álvaro De Montoya was a man who could love her. Their brief, selfish affair had been an illusion built on desire and desperation—and it hadalwaysbeen bound to fail.

But why had she given up on her feelings for Santiago so easily? When she knew in her heart Santiago was a much better man than his father had ever been.

She’d seen those precious glimpses of the boy his father had tried so hard to destroy. The playful, kind, protective man. The man who loved and respected his family so much he had blamed himself for his mother’s suicide. The fierce, possessive lover who had always put her pleasure above his own—and had been distraught at the thought that he had taken advantage of her. Even the obsessive workaholic who had fought so hard to provide a stable home for his family ever since he was sixteen.

But inside that man was also the boy who was terrified of taking a chance on love. Terrified of exposing himself again to the rejection he’d suffered as a child from the man who should have protected him.

‘If you love me,’ he said, his voice breaking, ‘why will you not agree to stay in this marriage?’

She placed her hand on his cheek, the five o’clock stubble abrading her palm.

‘Because I need you to love me back, Santiago,’ she said, finally demanding what she should have demanded weeks ago, when he had first proposed to her.

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