Page 159 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

‘Not you. Never you,’ she said the words she’d just been thinking aloud. But it was too hard to know what to say next. Her thoughts were so mixed up, her heart all over the place.

‘I’ve tried calling you,’ he said, his words blank of emotion, while she was jumbling with them.

‘I know.’

She looked down at the carpeted floor, ashamed she hadn’t been mature enough to answer. But she hadn’t wanted a ‘dear Jane’ phone call. They were not a couple. He didn’t need to explain his life to her. He didn’t owe her an apology.

‘Is that why you’re here?’ she asked softly, lifting her gaze to his and forcing herself to hold it.

‘You gave me little choice.’

‘You don’t need to explain.’ She fidgeted with her hands now, in a way her father would have immediately reminded her to stop doing. ‘You’re allowed to move on with your life, Javier. I’m not holding that against you.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s fine. I was…glad to see that you weren’t somewhere out there, missing me miserably,’ she lied. Because she’d wanted to know he felt as cut up by this as she did. She’d wanted…she’d wanted the exact opposite of everything she’d told him that morning. But it was too late.

She’d pushed him away and he wasn’t someone who forgave easily.

Especially not after what he’d been through.

‘Were you?’

Was she imagining the hint of scepticism in his voice?

She didn’t lie again. ‘Are you well?’ Her tone sounded so brittle she was surprised the words didn’t turn to dust in the air between them.

‘I didn’t come here for small talk,’ he said darkly, crossing towards her then thinking better of it and stopping a few feet short. She inhaled deeply and caught a hint of his fragrance in the air. Her stomach looped and twisted.

‘You don’t need to explain,’ she repeated.

‘When you’re done telling me what I need, perhaps you’ll let me talk?’

Her jaw dropped at the move from deference and back to equal footing—which she far, far preferred. She even liked arguing with him, because at least then their emotions were on display, rather than the cool hospitality she’d been extending a moment earlier.

‘Go ahead,’ she said, voice quivering.

‘The photos were misleading,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have sex with her.’

The words almost seemed to rush out of him, but it wouldn’t have mattered how he’d said it. Her brain would have processed it with the same sense of giddy relief and reward anyway. Her heart would have rejoiced in her chest, as it was doing now, thumping hard to her ribs. But caution was still called for. She knew he wouldn’t have flown all this way to lie to her, but that also didn’t mean he still believed he loved her.

‘The media is having a field day, writing about how I broke your heart. I just wanted to be sure you knew the truth.’

‘And what is the truth?’

His eyes bore into hers for a long time. ‘I went out with Maria fully intending to bring her home with me.’

It was like a dagger thrusting into her chest.

‘But the second I saw her, I knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wasn’t ready.’

I wasn’t ready. Which wasn’t to say he wouldn’t be ready. Or wasn’t now.

She let out an uneven breath. He’d been so brave in proposing to her that morning and she’d been a coward, hiding behind formality and their stupid agreement, made when neither knew the other well enough to understand how much their relationship would come to mean. She’d hidden from her own heart and had regretted it ever since. But now he was here and she couldn’t keep hiding. She couldn’t be a coward any longer.

‘What we shared mattered to me, Astrid. I didn’t want you to believe the opposite—that I’d gone back to Spain and put you in my rearview mirror. It wasn’t like that.’