Page 89 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘What happened?’

‘Your mother’s been feeling unwell for a few weeks—nausea, tiredness. We thought it was a virus until she started getting jaw pain. Now they say it’s a blocked artery. A “widow-maker”, they call it.’

Aston’s blood ran cold. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The main artery to the heart. It’s as bad as it sounds.’

His father collapsed into his chair, but Aston couldn’t sit still. He began to pace. He couldn’t imagine his mother and father not together. They’d had a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, something Aston had always believed was incapable of being duplicated. Whilst their relationship was sometimes fiery, they hadn’t spent a day apart in their thirty-four years of marriage.

‘But if there’s anything that will keep your mother alive it’s the thought of a wedding and having grandchildren. How’s Anastacia?’

Her name brought Aston to a stop. There’d been no press about the end of their relationship. He’d remained quiet about it, for her safety. She hadn’t said anything either. His parents wouldn’t know until he told them and accepted the consequences of his failure. His father looked up at him, his face somehow hopeful in the midst of everything. Aston should lie, so as not to add to his father’s concerns, yet the words choked at the back of his throat. His eyes stung. He shut them and pinched his nose, willing yet more grief away before it consumed him.

‘Son? What’s wrong?’

‘You have enough to worry about.’

‘Now you’re worrying me even more. No matter your age, you are always my child, and you canalwaystalk to me.’

So the words tumbled out of him about how they were over. Ana had left France and gone to stay with her sister...

‘I won’t marry simply to inherit Girard. If that’s what you want, the company’s all yours.’

He’d never wanted a wife yet, with Ana in his life, Aston realised he wanted nothing else. She was strong, caring, kind. Most people only saw her external beauty but, for him, it was the inner beauty she radiated. Losing her was like losing everything.

His father rubbed his hand over his face. ‘We were wrong, your mother and I. That ultimatum... If we could turn back time... But Everest, the rest of the mountains, the risks... It was more than not wanting to lose another child, we simplycouldn’t. There’s nothing more unnatural. We’d do anything to protect you, even if it was misplaced. As a parent, all you want is for your child to be happy, and yet you always seemed to be looking for something. We thought if you could find what we had...have... Then you arrived with Anastacia and we hoped...’

Aston stilled. He wasn’t sure what his father’s confession meant for him and the company. But to know that all of this had been futile... What if he could turn back time to a moment when Anastacia had never been his fiancée? What would he have done?

The answer was simple: no matter the pain, he would have done it all over again. He would always catch her if she ran to him. The ache of the realisation almost cut him in two. He acknowledged what he’d done and what he’d lost because he was a selfish fool and a coward.

‘There were things said in the heat of the moment.’

He wasn’t only talking about that fateful conversation with his parents.

‘Is there a way to fix it, with you and Ana?’

‘I broke something precious. I don’t know how to rebuild from that.’

His father stood and placed a hand on Aston’s shoulder. The weight, the warmth, was somehow comforting when Aston knew he deserved none of it after the things he’d said to Ana.

‘Saying sorry is a start, which is what I need to say to you.’ Simon looked at Aston and held his gaze. The look on his face was earnest. ‘I’m sorry, son. All we wanted was for you to focus on possibilities, not the life you’d been leading, where it seemed you were pushing yourself harder and harder without really enjoying what you were doing.’

They were the same sentiments Ana had expressed, and both she and his parents were right. He’d been living the life Michel wanted, not his own. He was exhausted. He loved mountaineering, but he didn’t need to conquer them all, and had no desire to stand on top of the world. He enjoyed adventure but hadn’t realised he could find it in a person too—in one shining light who cut through the darkness like the beam from a lighthouse.

Ana.

‘I hope the pressure we placed on you to marry didn’t cause this.’

Aston shook his head and gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘No, I did that all by myself.’

By not realising what was important. By trying to avoid love. All this time he’d fought the perceived constraints. Yet with Ana he’d found his greatest freedom. In trying to avoid pain and a loss of focus, both had found him anyway, enough to tear him clear in two. He hadn’t saved himself from anything. Right now, he was suffocating with it.

He’d been too ignorant of his own feelings to realise what was happening. Many climbers fell into serious trouble because of subjective hazards, those of their own making. Failure to analyse conditions, or their poor conclusions and judgement. Despite all his knowledge and planning, with Ana he’d fallen into that trap himself. Now he was reaping the rewards of his own failures. Aston realised that some hurts were too much to heal. He hoped that Ana might see her way to forgiving him—but only if he laid himself bare.

‘Do you love her?’ his father asked.

‘Yes.’

---