Page 44 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

But instead, all she could think was that he wassucha liar, because she knew how it felt when they moved together in the dark.

She knew how he groaned out her name.

She knew what it felt like to dance through the heavens while holding on tight to him.

There was no question. He was lying, though she wasn’t sure he was aware of it. Dioni believed that Alceu thought he was protecting her, but it was clear to her that the person he was really protecting was himself.

And Dioni was so sick and tired of beingprotectedthat she really did let out a sound that was as close to a scream as she’d ever come.

It didn’t rattle the art on the walls, but it felt good, so she did it again.

And she thought of all the times in her life that she’d cheerfully acted impervious to insult, neglect, or indifference. She thought of her childhood years of staying out of her father’s way on the one hand, and bearing the guests’ intrusive commentary regarding her mother on the other. More, that she had beenexpectedto do those things.

Because Apostolis might have protected her as best he could. But he hadn’t been able to save her.

“He couldn’t save himself,” she muttered out loud.

It had taken Jolie to do that.

Dioni thought of the years, one after the other, on and on, that she had simply carried on and thought she was happy. Maybe she had been, because it hadn’t been a bad life. She’d lived at the hotel. She’d helped with the admin and had occasionally lent a hand in a staff shortage. She’d volunteered in the villages and danced intavernasin the summers, and she’d gone swimming in the sea whenever the fancy took her.

She had read books as she pleased, and she’d had her best friendright there, and her brother had always remembered to call her to see how she was. The hotel was always packed with guests, some of them wildly interesting, and so there had always been decent conversation, laughter, long walks to look at the stars, and all the rest of the sorts of things that could make any life spectacular.

But all of that paled next to these last weeks, here on this mountain with the man she loved.

Because it was one thing to be happy without knowing that there could be more. It was one thing to play at a life, even such a lovely one. It was another to truly feelalive.

And now she knew the difference.

She thought about her father as she rubbed her hands over the places where her son kicked at her, as hungry as she was. Already she knew that the love she felt for a baby she hadn’t even met yet far exceeded anything her father had ever felt for her. He hadn’t wanted children. He wanted an heir to pass the hotel along to, and so Dioni was nothing to him. A silly thing to flit about, a jewel in his crown, but not a crown he wore often. Or at all.

She thought about her brother, and how it had been so clear to her that Jolie was perfect for him, because she challenged Apostolis. She pushed him. She did not simply accept his magnificence like all of those women he had been linked to in the paper always did.

Or the way his younger sister always had.

And once again, setting a record for annual tears, Dioni cried.

Because she had always been alone, perhaps, but she had never felt that way.

Not until now.

She cried and she cried, until she exhausted herself. After an emergency raid of the kitchen to get some food in her, she sobbed some more. Then she slept on one of the sofas in her new living room and woke sometime in the middle of the night, the moon shining in to fill in all the corners of the room, and perhaps in her, too.

Because she lay there with her eyes swollen, feeling faintly ill and wrung dry, but something likereplete.

Dioni took one breath. Another.

She let the moonlight dance all over her, silver and sweet.

Then she shuffled into her small kitchen, drank a lot of water and ate a little bit of food, because the baby needed it.

She went back out to the couch and slept till morning.

And when she woke up that time, she was furious.

Dioni felt nothing but a kind of towering rage, except instead of clouding her, it brought nothing but clarity.

The kind of clarity that felt a great deal like a knife edge.

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