Page 132 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

“I love you, Matias.”

And then everything broke apart.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HEDIDN’TKNOWwhat to say to that. There was no joy in it. There was... Nothing but pain. She was offering him something that felt like treasure, but he could not reach out and grab it.

It was darkness. All of it was darkness.

Because he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t want it. How could he?

How could he when he was... He was responsible for all of this. For the loss of his sister. He didn’t deserve to absolve himself of it. He didn’t deserve to have that surgery tomorrow to have everything fixed.

They were going to cut his brain open. Perhaps he would bleed out on the table. Perhaps that would be the ultimate justification. What had not finished him during the accident would finish him then.

She couldn’t love him.

“Auggie... If I have given you the impression that this was something that it wasn’t...”

“Don’t. Don’t be the charming playboy. Don’t lie to me. Don’t deflect.”

That made him angry. “I’m trying to be kind to you.”

“You cannot break someone’s heart kindly, Matias. Do it with honesty. Do one damn thing with honesty. Do you even know what that is anymore?”

“I... I damn well do. I know that the honest truth is my life is a mess of my own making. And if I never managed to clean it up it will be my just desserts.”

“That’s a lie. It just is. And I don’t know if you’re telling it just to me, or to yourself as well, but it is a lie. You loved your sister. Do you know how I know? Because you feel that great and terrible grief. The one that is nothing simple. Loving her hurts as much as losing her, and that is love. Hard and sharp and nothing simple. You would never have chosen to lose her. You would do anything to fix it. Look at you. You have sacrificed your entire life in the name of trying to fix it in some fashion. You are heartbroken, and that tells me everything I need to know about you. About whether or not you’re actually worthy of anything.”

“No, I... It doesn’t matter. There is one thing. One thing that I’m here for. One thing that I was put on this earth to do in the wake of losing her.”

He was scrambling to find new reasons. To find a new way to push her back.

Because what she was offering was... It was too painful. Too bright. A light pushing through the darkness, and he was far too accustomed to the darkness.

Far too accustomed to the mess that he had made of himself. The facsimile of a human being he had created. His body was one he simply existed in. His soul was long since gone.

He had never been his own person. He had been a creation of his father...

He still was.

All of this was his father’s doing. Every last bit of it. From him going to shame his sister for drug use, to this. All of it. The blindness. The accident. He was his father’s creation. And that was worse than being at fault for the death of his sister. A mindless drone who walked the earth for no other reason than that that man had created him. Physically, and emotionally.

He was nothing more. And Auggie was... She was everything. She knew herself. Truly. She lived a life that helped make things better for other people. She had loved her mother in a real intentional way. That she had created a life that outshone his own in every way.

He had never felt like less. And he could not respond to this thing that she was giving to him.

“Auggie, I am not the man you should give that to. I have never proven that I could be more than my father’s pawn.”

“So what? You’ll die that way because you started that way?”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s the generational curse. Maybe it’s the best thing that can happen. My father’s line will end with him. Whether I live long or short, perhaps that is the best way for it to be.”

“No. I’m not having this. I’m not listening.”

“I have surgery tomorrow and I cannot see, and I am not myself and...”

“You are yourself. You were the most yourself that you had ever been. This last week, that was a taste of it. Of living. Why can’t you choose that?”