Page 165 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
‘But that isn’t true.’
‘No,’ he said honestly. ‘I was young, once. But I never really had a childhood, was never allowed one. I was never allowed to play with any other children. I was locked in a basement.’
He felt Aurora’s gaze narrow. ‘A basement?’
He nodded stiffly. ‘I decorated it. I drew, I painted, on any surface I could from the moment I knew how. I turned it into our secret place,’ he said, remembering the mural of a never-ending horizon of deep reds and burnt oranges. He swallowed thickly. ‘Mine and Amelia’s. Until the basement was gone, until we moved into a house with a man. A man who told me to call him Daddy.’
‘Your stepfather?’
‘He was never a father to me.’ His necked corded. ‘He was barely a man.’ His hands clenched on the bedspread. ‘He was my mother’s pimp,’ he spat.
‘Your mother was a prostitute?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, and it hurt to tell her. For her to know the shame he felt. ‘We always lived in a shared house before… There were women everywhere.Iknew what it was when I was seven, maybe eight. Maybe younger… Those women weren’t my aunts. It wasn’t a shared house. It was a brothel. Run by my mother.’
Her eyes flew wide open. ‘She was amadam?’
‘Yes.’
‘Surely someone knew? A teacher? A doctor? Someone who could have taken you out of there? Put you into foster care? A family home?’
‘Itwasa family, of sorts.’ His blood heated. ‘Before him.’
‘Someone had to know there were children inside of a brothel!’
‘There is no record of me. My home birth was undocumented, as was Amelia’s. There was no one to know. We didn’t exist officially.’
‘But a midwife?’ she asked. ‘Surely a midwife was there to help your mum give birth?’
‘When I was a child, there were always women around in various stages of dress,’ he explained. ‘There was enough of a collective of experience that there was no need for outside help.’
‘How is that possible?’ She frowned. ‘This isn’t the dark ages. Children aren’t… Their existence isn’t…unknown.’
‘Children are missing to the system all the time, Aurora. And their existence is obsolete because it isn’t on some computer,’ he said too harshly.
He couldn’t help it. He was angry at her for pushing him, angry at himself for telling. But it pulsed through him. A small part of him itched to tell the story he never had told anyone. To her. To have her understand him.
‘It’s not a pretty story. I don’t know how to tell it without the ugly bits. I don’t want the ugly bits in your head… I don’t want to talk about it while you are on my lap.’ His hands moved of their own volition. Touched her soft upper arms, and he stroked them. Soothed the ache in his fingers against her silky skin. ‘You are so soft,’ he said. ‘So innocent.’
‘Then tell me the pretty bits first.’
‘There were no pretty things about my life,’ he said. ‘Until you.’
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Tell me about Amelia.’
‘She died,’ he said thickly. ‘When she was three.’
‘What about the three years she lived?’
‘She…’ Emotion clogged his throat.
Fingers, feather-light, stroked his cheek. ‘It’s okay to remember her.’
Was it?Was it okay to think of her tiny fingers? Fingers that had clung to him, trusted him. He had left her alone to die.
He closed his eyes. Shut out the trusting eyes clinging to his. He would not fail the trust Aurora placed in him.Never.
Lips, so smooth and soft, kissed his cheek. ‘It’s going to hurt,’ she breathed against his skin as her lips moved to the tip of his nose and over to his other cheek.
