Page 199 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

‘I hear Juliet and Louanna chatting most mornings,’ she told him.

‘Are they partners?’

‘No!’ She thumped his chest lightly. ‘They get up before me, that’s all. I hear them discussing their music, and people I don’t know. It just reminds me...’

‘Of what?’

‘Growing up, I had my own room,’ Susie explained. ‘While my sisters got to share.’

‘Gotto share?’ he checked. ‘Wouldn’t you want your own room?’

She laughed. ‘We don’t all live in mansions. It was a three-bedroom home. Usually the eldest gets their own room, but the twins wanted to be together,’ she explained. ‘All my friends said I was lucky.’

‘But you didn’t feel so lucky?’

‘It sounded as if they were having a party every night. And then came discussions about boys and make-up and...’

‘What about birthdays?’ Dante said.

‘What about them?’

‘I think Gio said you were close in age to the twins?’

‘They’re just over a year older.’ She took a breath. ‘So our parties were all lumped together. It was a case of two against one,’ she said. ‘I always wanted to have a fairy party or dress up...’

‘What did your sisters want?’

‘To go to the cinema, or the zoo, or...’ She thought back. ‘I remember this man with reptiles came to the garden.’ She shuddered. ‘I was very young.’

He laughed. ‘What’s your first memory?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Come on...’

‘I was in my pushchair...’ Clearly, he wasn’t up on the names of baby paraphernalia. ‘A stroller? And I saw a lady smiling and saying nice things about me to my mother. Then the twins came out of the shop with my father and she just started admiring them...’ She gave a muted laugh. ‘I threw my dummy out.’ He frowned. ‘Pacifier?’

‘Ah...’ He smiled. ‘For attention?’

‘I threw it again and again. See? I’m not nice.’

‘Are you jealous?’ he asked.

She was about to defend herself—to answer as she had before and say of course she was not—but she felt hot tears splashing out, along with the truth.

‘So very jealous.’ She left his arms and sat up, almost leapt out of bed, as if startled by her own truth. ‘So damn jealous... The twins, the twins, the twins...’ she parroted.

And out burst almost twenty-five years’ worth of stored bitter tears.

‘Hey...’

Emotional outbursts did not move him, but feeling her crumple, seeing the wet tears, hearing the choking voice, he was both horrified and stunned that their light, playful conversation had turned so dark.

Dante had been provoking her for the truth, but the depth of her pain stunned him. And yet he was oddly pleased to hold the real Susie, to feel this hot ball of emotion in his arms.

‘You can be jealous,’ he told her. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s wrong, though. I love them, but...’ She was really crying now. ‘There was a school play...’