Page 151 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
‘The heart of you,’ she said, gesturing to the walls, to the clay, to the splodge splattered on the floor at her feet. ‘This is where you live.’ She dropped her hand to her sides slowly. Gracefully. ‘Your art… It—this—is your heart.’
‘There is no heart here anymore,’ he growled.
‘It’s everywhere,’ she corrected him.
He looked at the studio. Tried to see it through her eyes. How the space looked active and alive with unfinished thoughts. The art on the walls was from long ago. A time when he’d accepted his art was all he was. All he had to give. But now…unfinished pieces littered every corner. The mound of clay he couldn’t sculpt mocked him from its spot on the floor.
He turned to her. And there she waited for him to respond. Silently she stood in his space. With her naivety. Because so naive was she, she’d stumbled on the truth. His art was how he breathed. It was his life. How he gave back to those who were forgotten.
And she’d taken it from him.
He held out his clay-covered hands to her because he wanted her to see.To know.
‘My hands are broken.’
Her lips parted, her eyes dropping to his hands. ‘What do you mean, they’re broken?’
‘They do not work.’
She stepped closer. The pads of her naked feet warned him to move away. To drop his hands. But he couldn’t. He was rooted to the spot.
‘Why not?’ she asked, and he saw her hands rise, saw them inch towards his, raised between them. Softly she took each of his hands in hers. She smoothed the clean pads of her thumbs over his dirty knuckles.
And it was everything. Softness, he knew he didn’t deserve. But knew he had missed it. The feel of her on him, her touch, having her close, it was everything he had missed every day she had been here. Every day she had been away from him.
‘Aurora…’ He tried to tug his hands away.
She held on, drew his hands closer, until they hovered above the baby inside her.
‘Let me see,’ she said.
Her eyes moved over his clay-covered knuckles. And he let her look.
She took his right hand, turned it over, gently ran the tips of her fingers over his palm.
It was agony.
It was pleasure.
It was everything he should not allow himself to be feeling. But he couldn’t pull away. He did notwantto.
She took his left hand and did the same, and the trembling in his core changed. It burst inside his veins. His adrenaline spiked, flooded his chest.
‘Come with me,’ she said, and then she was leading him by the hand across the wooden floor, their bare feet padding in unison, toward the deep porcelain sink on the far left wall.
And he let her lead him there. Because he could not speak. He could not breathe for the fire eating his flesh alive from the inside out.
‘Here.’ She twisted the tap, but still she held his hand. Still she held on to him as the water gushed into the sink.
She reached for the soap on the waterlogged dish and placed it in his palm. And then she reached for his other hand and put it on the top of the soap.
And then…
He could not breathe.
She closed her hands over his, wrapped them in her much smaller ones. She pulled their joined hands beneath the water and slid them together. Lathered the soap and worked the suds between his fingers.
Aurora cleaned him. His hands. His knuckles. His skin.
