Page 110 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

I am…dysfunctional. I don’t know how to take care of another person. My entire life has been all about taking care of myself, and even though he won’t admit it, I know Ciro is the same. But he wants to try this. He wants to do something different. And I’m having a difficult time disentangling that from the love that I feel for the unborn child inside of me, and the need that I feel for him. It was so much easier to be detached. To think only of the greater good before I felt my child move inside of me every day.

And before Ciro and I had made love.

Now things feel muddy. Muddled. And that’s my fault. But what if you could just have it?

I’m just tired; that’s the problem. I’m tired of fighting everything all the damn time. One of the reasons I capitulated the way that I did back at the house is because I… I want it. I want it, and I’m tired of fighting against addiction. I’m tired of fighting to be the bigger person, the better person. I want to surrender. To him, to my driving need for him physically, to my desire to have a more comfortable life, and this secret need that I’ve never even let myself acknowledge to have a family.

A family.

The very idea seems radical.

“Where are we going?”

“London,” he says.

“Not Rome?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve made my home in London these past years.”

“I…”

I feel a pang as I say goodbye to my Italian dream. To all of the things that I was going to be. Am I just going to be this man’s wife now? This baby’s mother?

And even as I have those thoughts, I realize that there is no justice in it.

I’m not going to look at it the way that my parents did. Where I was secondary to what they wanted, which in their case was getting a fix, and of course, a career is better than that, but still, I’m not going to perpetuate that cycle. Yes, I wanted things to be different. But the fact is, this child exists. It’s all gone wrong from the way that it was originally planned. But I’m not going to sink into hopelessness. I’m not going to sink into despair. That has always been my superpower, and I’m going to make it serve me now.

It isn’t the same, though, because I’m not the same.

I cared about one thing when Ciro found me. My career.

Now I care about way too much and that feels terrifying in a new and horrible way.

“I just didn’t picture you in London,” I say.

“Why not?”

“I guess because I don’t really see you as British. But I suppose you’re as British as you are anything.”

He laughs. “Yes, though my father would’ve been very insulted by that.”

He almost smiles. My heart lifts. He is so beautiful. And my desire for him feels intensely complicated by everything.

“So…when are we going to have the wedding?”

“When would you like to?”

“I don’t know. After the baby is born?”

He looks pained by this.

“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you have opinions about children being born out of wedlock.”

“I can’t help it. There’s Catholicism that runs deep in my veins, even if I don’t practice it personally, and the idea of an illegitimate child—”

“You kill people,” I scoff. “Also, you were just going to take the baby and send me on my way.”

“But that was different. That was before we…”