Page 111 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
His throat closed. Like he’d left his sister to die, too. Unprotected. Alone.
‘I came here,’ she continued when he didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. ‘Hoping, despite my parents’ view of homelessness. Their ugly view that those who end up alone and on the streets somehow—’ her slender shoulders rose and fell, drawing his attention to her taut collarbone and the hollow in its centre ‘—deserved it. Like my brother.’
‘Your brother?’ he asked. ‘Was homeless?’
She nodded. ‘I thought investing money—their money—would help.’ She scraped perfectly white teeth across her bottom lip. ‘But it’s not enough. It’s too late. My rebellion here, taking a stand against my parents’ views on the world means nothing. Not for Michael.’ She sucked in air through flaring nostrils. ‘He’s dead.’
‘When did he die?’ Sebastian asked. And it was raw in his throat. Not the question, but the similarity of their fates.
He’d donated the art tonight, and all the proceeds would be going back to the community he’d lived with for a decade. But she was right. It wasn’t enough. Not for the people on the streets. Not for the dead.
‘A year ago,’ she confessed. ‘And I left him there to die, on the streets, because my parents said it had to be that way. That he couldn’t be saved. That they’d tried. But they hadn’t tried, not really. They disinherited him. Turned their backs on him. And so did I.’ Her slender throat convulsed. ‘I… I should have been there for him.’ Her black lashes swept down. Shutting him out. ‘But I wasn’t.’
His stomach dropped.
He hadn’t been there for his sister either.
‘Why not? Why weren’t you there for him?’ he asked, echoing the questions he’d asked himself too many times, over too many years, and always his answers were too weak—too selfish.
Her mouth grappled with what to say next.
‘Why were you not there for your brother?’ he pushed, because he wanted to hear it. Her justification for her failures. He’d never been able to justify his. His guilt was his punishment. A punishment he deserved. And he wanted no parole. No early release. This was his life sentence. To allow himself nothing but the pain, without reprieve.
‘I wanted to believe them,’ she admitted, and her eyes opened.
‘Believe who?’
‘My parents. I wanted to believe that their tough love—’ she said, the wordlovein inverted commas ‘—would wake him up, bring him back, the old Michael. But it didn’t. It brought him back in a coffin.’
His throat closed. Amelia never had a coffin. She didn’t have a grave.
‘He’d broken so many promises,’ she continued, ‘and the night my parents put him out on the streets, I didn’t believe him when he said he’d change. I didn’t believeinhim. And I… I…if I’d stood up for him, if I’d sided with him, and he’d broken another promise to my parents, to me… My parents, they would have…’ She expelled a heavy breath.
‘Your parents would have what?’
‘Taken me off the pedestal that they’d put me on,’ she confessed. ‘They would have kicked it out with both feet and left me on the floor too. And I was scared. I wasn’t brave. I’m not brave. I’m still hiding behind this mask, in this hideous dress.’
‘It isn’t hideous.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No.’ He swallowed thickly. ‘I don’t know who your parents are. I do not know whoyouare. When I said you didn’t belong here, I meant here, with me. Because I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘I’m in no position to help you.’
‘Who did you lose?’ she asked.
He frowned. Was it so obvious?
‘Everyone,’ he confessed. The word was a heavy thing in his mouth. On his tongue.
‘Everyone?’ she husked.
He wouldn’t tell her. He would not unload his burden onto her. The horrible thing he’d done. No. Besides, he’d held it close to his chest, kept it to himself, for so long, he didn’t know how to tell it. The fire. The crib.Amelia.
‘It was a long time ago,’ he dismissed, but the words scraped against his throat. ‘Twenty-five years ago. Tonight.’
‘Does it still hurt?’
‘Every day.’
