Page 185 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Because home washer, he realised.

And he’d thrown it all away, something beautiful, a gift.

‘I won’t come inside,’ he told her, even though he wanted to. He wanted in. ‘This is your place now. Your safe place from the hardness, Emma. From the worry of surviving. And I will not enter it.’ Tighter, his chest squeezed. The muscle that gave him life pounded without mercy. ‘Unless you want me to.’

‘Is that what you want?’ she asked. ‘To come inside?’

‘I have no right to come in. I have no right to ask anything of you after Japan, after I—’ pain seared through his gut ‘—left you.’

‘You were scared.’

‘And so were you, but you still found the strength to tell me a truth you knew I didn’t want to hear. And I abandoned you. I left you alone with those big, scary feelings. I left you alone with all thatlove.’

He placed his open palm on his chest and kneaded it, because something was happening in his chest. Something—

‘Your love felt like a heavy thing, Emma, and I’m sorry I did not hold it gently. It’s such aprecious thing. Myhands didn’t know how to hold such a thing delicately. So I dropped it. I hurt you. I didn’t know another way. I didn’t—’

They were all excuses.

He raised his eyes to the grey morning sky, but he wouldn’t pray. No one could help him. Not the rules. Not the playbook. They were meaningless. Because never had they warned him about Emma. Never had they warned him about love.

And he loved her.

He needed her.

She was his air.

He would end this agony.

‘I was wrong,’ he hissed. ‘Wrong to compare you to my mother. You arenothinglike her. You are notthem,my parents. But they live inside me, Emma.Theyare my demons. I let them dictate my reactions, my responses, to you.You were right about so many things. The rules. The risks.I never should have put my demons on your shoulders. Your beautiful shoulders that have already carried so much. Too much. I too want to exorcise them. Exorcise all those who would make me live this life in fear. But I am afraid, Emma.’

He fell to his knees before her then. On the pavement. And he looked up the stone steps at the life he wanted.

The wife he would keep.

If she would let him.

If she would let him in.

‘What are you afraid of, Dante?’ she asked. Still she stood in the doorway, unmoved, keeping him out.

‘I’m afraid of you, Emma,’ he admitted. ‘I am afraid of myself. And I’m afraid when I tell you. When I confess what it is I have done. What I am doing. What I feel. You will send me away. You will lock the door. You will not invite me inside.’

‘And what have you done?’

‘I have fallen, Emma. Hard. And my body hurts from the impact. From the pressure on my chest. In my heart. Because it bleeds. With feelings.With love. My heart wants to love you.Iwant to love you,’ he confessed, and he felt raw. Exposed. But he would not stop. He couldn’t.

‘I want to be on the inside, Emma. I want to be with you. I want to make this house our safe place. I want to come inside and be alone with you beside me. I want to bring all those things inside with us I have been trying to keep out. Emotion. Attachment.Love. Because I can no longer close the door on them. Because they live inside me. And they are stronger than the demons. They are in the process of exorcising them from me.’

A lightness spread over him, as he finally let it all out. Because he did. By God, he wanted all of those things.Neededthem.

‘I love you, Emma.’

And he waited for her to love him back.

‘I have loved you since the moment I saw you. I have loved you every day since. You are where I come when I want to be still. When I want to close the doors and lock the world outside. It isyouI come to. You are home to me. And without you, these last weeks, before your fall, I have been lost. I am homeless without you.’

He spread out the divorce papers on the ground before him. ‘I came today to bring you the divorce papers,’ he said, and his body revolted. It trembled with this choice. But he had made it this way.

---