Page 68 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8
‘Commendable. But why do that if it’s unnecessary? Why deprive yourself of something that is...right here for you to take?’ Her voice shook as she stepped closer, offering herself with her heart on a platter.
A platter he stared down the blade of his nose at. And for the tiniest moment, he wavered. His Adam’s apple bobbed in a thick swallow.
Then his gaze flicked over her shoulder. There was nothing but the vast stretch of ocean behind her so she knew he was looking anywhere but at her. Avoiding her.
So she moved into his eyeline. ‘Look me in the eye when you respond, Jario.’
He may have flinched. Or it may have been her longing imagination that this affected him as much as it did her. Because when he deigned to reconnect his gaze, there was nothing but implacable resolution. ‘Whatever you thought you’d get at the end of this, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. My mother’s visit may have been unscheduled but it’s also timely—’
‘Why, because you can safely hide behind her pain instead of moving forward?’
His face shuttered with a finality that struck true terror into her heart.
He doesn’t need you. He never did.
The searing realisation served an immediate purpose. It cauterised her bleeding heart, enough for her to lift her head and look him in the eye without crumbling. ‘I guess we’re done here.’
His gaze dropped to her belly, a flash of hunger and resolution etching into his face. ‘For now, at least. But if you are pregnant, we’ll see each other again.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEFIRST-CLASSTICKETwas woefully wasted on her because after two sodas and a mouthful of vichyssoise, she asked not to be disturbed, flattened her bed and pulled her blanket over her head. Then she spent the next fifteen hours swinging between silent tears, hopeless rage at herself for falling in love with the most incredible man on the face of the earth, and pulses of rage at Jario for being devastatingly irresistible. For leaving her with the lingering promise that she might see him again. But mostly for showing her far too many glimpses of what could’ve been between them if their circumstances hadn’t been so impossible.
But...had they?
She pushed the misleading voice away. Ithad been why she’d been tempted down the wrong path. She vowed never to listen to it again.
Especially when it disregarded her deep focus over the next week on the final practice sessions on her violin and stayed with her, insisting her job wasn’t quite done. That even if her love had been rejected, her one avenue of solace still remained to her.
It drove her to hunt down her father for the tough conversation they needed to have.
And for the first time in her life, perhaps coming too late, she saw naked emotion in her father’s eyes when she said, ‘I’m leaving, Dad.’
He swallowed, red-rimmed eyes filling with...fear. ‘What?’
‘I’ve tried, but I can’t do this anymore. Maybe you love me in your own way. Maybe you don’t. But...it’s time for me to take care of myself.’ At his heavy silence, she turned towards the door, then immediately turned back. ‘You shattered his family. And you never owned up to it. I don’t know that I can live with that. I don’t know howyoucan.’ Tough words that hurt her throat and made her heart bleed for Jario. For herself.
His demeanour crumpled almost immediately, his hand shaking as he dragged it down his face. ‘I know.’
‘You said you tried. If that’s true, you need to tell him that.’
He nodded again, his expression downright miserable. ‘You’re right. I know I haven’t been the best father.’
She couldn’t refute it, so she pursed her lips, swallowed the lump wedged in her throat. After a moment, his rheumy eyes rose to hers and a sad smile curved his lips.
‘I see you’re not disagreeing.’
‘If there’s any hope for us, what matters is what you do from now on.’
Panic flared briefly in his eyes, then he gritted his jaw and nodded. ‘One way or the other, it has to end, right?’
Words echoing far too closely to what Jario had said sent a shaft of trepidation through her, but she nodded anyway. ‘Bye, Dad.’
The San Francisco Harmonic auditorium was packed.
The constant buzz of excited voices, which was nowhere as soothing as the vibrations of his yacht’s engines, pressed in on him, attempting to dislodge his sanity. But Jario held on.
He’d stepped off his yacht and onto dry land for the first time in years three days ago. His first instinct had been to track Willow down, but he’d needed to do a few things first.