Page 238 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8
As the sun rose, she pushed out of bed, showered and dressed with care.
Her bags were at Dante’s and while she could have sent someone for them, she wanted to prove to both of them that she was okay. Or maybe she just wanted to give that to Dante, because she knew how he’d be beating himself up, worrying about her, worrying that he’d hurt her like he’d hurt Jamie and even though it was true, that her heart was breaking, that wasn’t his fault.
He just didn’t love her.
It was as simple as that.
Ignoring the aching in the centre of her chest, she left the apartment and looked left, then right and lifted her hand to hail a cab.
He ran.
He ran faster than he’d ever run before, his legs burning, his eyes filling with stars, because the cab driver had dropped him at the wrong end of the street and he’d been too distracted to notice at first. And now that he knew what he wanted to say to Charlotte, he had to say it then. And there. It was a long, straight street, and he picked up speed quickly, so he saw her emerge from her front door, hail a cab and slip into it. Saw the cab slide away from the kerb and drive away from him.
He swore, his lungs burning from the exertion of running like this, but there was no way he was going to let her go. No way in hell. Not now, when he finally understood himself.
Finally, there was an intersection, and blessedly, a slow-moving learner driver was paused hesitantly at it. Dante put on an extra burst of speed, reaching the cab and thumping the driver’s window with his open palm.
The guy pressed a button, so the glass dropped. ‘Y’alright, sir?’
‘I need a moment with your passenger.’
The driver flicked a glance to Charlotte in the rear-vision mirror.
Dante turned his attention to her and through the still closed glass of her window said, ‘It’s important.’
She’d been crying, he realised. Her pinched face was still pale but it was tear streaked now and her lips were a bright pink, like she’d been biting them incessantly.
‘Charlotte,’ he said, the word like a desperate, anguished plea.
The car behind them honked, jolting her into action. She said something inaudible to the driver, then pushed out of the car, so the driver was free to move forward into the intersection.
The driver of the car behind gave them a rude gesture as he passed.
Dante didn’t care.
‘When I told Jamie about us, I was still clinging to what we’d agreed our marriage would be. I didn’t even feel bad telling her, because it was something you and I said frequently to one another. While I had no intention of broadcasting it to all and sundry, I truly didn’t see any harm in one person knowing the truth.’
Charlotte’s jaw clamped. ‘I don’t need to know.’
‘And then, as soon as I said it, I regretted it,’ he insisted. ‘I felt like I’d betrayed you.’
‘You did betray me,’ she whispered, eyes blinking furiously now. ‘Our relationship isourbusiness.’
‘But don’t you see, Charlotte? I’ve spent more than six months furiously denying, even to myself, that we evenhavea relationship.’
She closed her eyes. ‘I know.’
‘I think you and I are both guilty of that. How many times did we proclaim that this is “just sex” when it hasn’t been that since our first night. And maybe it wasn’t even then?’
Charlotte wasn’t saying anything back, but she wasn’t storming off either.
He grabbed her arms and held her. God, how he loved her. How he needed her to understand that.
‘When you suggested this marriage, I ran a mile, because I was so terrified of admitting to myself how much I wanted to say “yes”. And then, I saw you with someone else and realised what I was in danger of losing. I knew I had to put my fears aside and go through with it. But even then, I was pretending it was just about your company and my grandmother. I pretended our marriage would be a means to an end. A pleasurable one, but certainly not a marriage with the power to destroy me. Not a marriage that could make me wither away, like my first marriage did.’
She made a sound—a groan or a soft, aching plea.
‘All along, you’ve been so different. Different to anyone I’ve ever known. I can’t get enough of you. I can’t walk away from you. Hell, I haven’t been able to stop thinking of you since the first moment I met you. Charlotte Shaw, without me realising it, without me intending it, you have become the most important person in my world. You have become my absolute everything. There is no one else I want to marry more than I do you and not for any reason other than the fact I am completely, unquestionably, unfathomably in love with you. All of you. Every part.’
