Page 255 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

‘It will be difficult,’ he admitted evenly, in what he knew was the understatement of the century. They’d both known it would be difficult to return to how things had been. ‘But we are both professionals, and—’

‘I can’t go back to how we were. Not now.’

His heart was thumping so hard it was a struggle to hear his own voice over it. ‘Would you like to take a few days’ paid leave? That might be the best thing for both of us—a short reset and then we...’

But she was shaking her head.

A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘A few days is not going to reset my feelings. I’m sorry.’

‘Okay, paid leave for the week, until our trip to Rome on...’

But she was still shaking her head. More tears spilled down her distressed face. ‘It can never work, Marcello. Not for me. Not now.’

‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ he chided through the scratching in his throat and the hot pulse raging in his head as his planned route to a dotage with Victoria in his life and her grandchildren pushing them around on wheelchairs began evaporating before his eyes.

‘Marcello,please.’ Victoria put the coffee cup on the table and wiped the tears away, wishing with all her splintering heart that she could turn back time a week and a day, to the morning her phone had woken her at five a.m. Wished she could put herself back in her bed and ignore his call.

But she’d never been able to ignore him. The pull of hearing his voice or seeing a written message from him had always been too powerful to resist. Marcello had become her whole world long before she’d even realised it.

And now she had to walk away from it.

A pulse was throbbing on his unshaven jaw. ‘Victoria, we will make it work as we said we would. Whatever you need to readjust, I will provide it, and then—’

‘But there is no way, don’t you see?’ she implored. ‘I can’t spend twelve hours a day every day by your side feeling the way I do. I just can’t. It would kill me.’

His head reared as if she’d slapped it.

‘What...?’ His voice trailed off, and he stared at her as if looking at her for the very first time.

As much as she wanted to turn her stare away, she forced herself to hold the lock of their eyes. Forced him to read what was in hers.

Shocked understanding flared.

He shook his head slowly, as if in disbelief.

She simply held his gaze until, without uttering a word, he staggered over to the bed and sank onto it, cradling his head in his hands.

‘Now do you understand?’ she whispered.

The silence was so total that when he dragged his hands down his cheeks she could hear the scratching of his fingers against the stubble.

He tilted his head back slowly. Blew out an equally slow breath.

Feeling sicker than she’d ever done in her life, Victoria sank onto her knees before him and captured his stubbly cheeks in her hands. She could feel the barely suppressed tension breathing out from his pores.

‘You don’t have to leave,’ he said raggedly, turning his mouth into her palm. ‘We can find a way to make it work.’

‘The only way it can work for me is if you love me—’

His eyes squeezed shut as he let out a long groan. ‘No, Victoria, don’t say it.’

‘But I do love you,’ she told him quietly. ‘I think a part of me has always loved you.’

The strong throat she loved nothing more than burying her face into and breathing in the scent from moved, but nothing came out. It made her broken heart splinter a little more to know she would never breathe in his scent again.

‘Do you think I wanted this to happen?’ she choked into the silence. ‘I spent eighteen months pretending to myself that you weren’t the sexiest man alive and that my feelings for you were strictly platonic, but the way you took care of me during my illness...’ She closed her eyes to hold back another wave of tears and tried with all her might to stop her voice from breaking. ‘How could I not have fallen in love with you after that? And loving you has changed everything for me. A family of my own has always been a distant thing and now I find myself longing for it, and I’m longing for it withyou. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and have your children and raise a family...’

Pain flaring in his eyes, he snatched hold of her wrists and pressed his forehead to hers. ‘Bella, if I could give it to anyone it would be you. But I can’t.’

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