Page 215 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

She tilted her head a little. “It turned you into the person who came to the river that night.”

“The person you ultimately rejected,” he said, but there was no heat in his words. Instead, it sounded like he was considering what she was saying.

“The person I married.”

He flashed her an unexpected smile. “And it only took a heavy dose of manipulation with a side of semi-kidnapping.”

“It wasn’t your best look,” she said with a wry smile. Then she sobered a little. “But I haven’t always done the right thing, either. I didn’t give you a chance that last night by the river. I was angry and…” She bit her lip. “I came back night after night to apologize, and then I heard about the way you were kicked out of school and I realized I had ruined everything. I was still mad at you, but I didn’t realize that that would just be…the end.” She swallowed back the pain this memory brought. “I’m sorry.”

Gustav slowed to a stop and let go of her hand. Then he turned to her. Slowly, he caressed her cheek, and she could feel the meaning behind this simple gesture echoing through her body. I am sorry, too. And when he brushed his lips over hers, she could feel the meaning that spread through the ever-present heat. You are forgiven.

And in that moment, she found a different kind of freedom.

“All of it led us to this moment, right here,” he whispered.

They continued down the path, down stone steps carved into the rock, to the shoreline. There was a dock with two boats, their masks rising up high, one catamaran and one larger sailboat in the deep blue waters of the dock.

“This is how I spent my summers when I came back from school.” He gestured out at the shore and the boats and the sea, dotted with islands.

“It looks like paradise,” she said. “Did your mother teach you to sail?’

She could immediately feel that this was the wrong question because whatever opening she had seen in his gaze was gone. He gestured at a rock that sat perched above them, and he helped her up on it to sit. He sat next to her with his knees bent, his arms around them, his hands clasped. It was the way he used to sit, and this only invited comparison. His muscular legs had filled out, as had his arms, and his jaw was sharper. Yet it was still so clearly him.

Gustav said nothing, and she assumed that the subject of his mother was closed. He glanced in her direction, then looked out at the water, sparkling in the midday sun.

“My mother wasn’t much for practical things, at least not when she climbed from the position of palace housekeeper to mother of a prince.” He frowned. “I never heard the full story of how I came to be, just snippets from what she told me. She had always loved everything about the royal family from when she was a girl, and working in the palace, even just dusting and cleaning, was a thrill. My understanding is that when the opportunity posed itself to sleep with the king, she was more than willing.”

His expression was stoic, but she did know him, because she could read the tension in his body, the pain that oozed from each sentence. “When she found out she was pregnant, she had no illusions of becoming the queen in the short term, but she wondered if someday it might happen. It wouldn’t be the first time, as she liked to say. In the meantime, she put all her hopes in me. Everything was about securing my position. We would go to see my father a few times a year in a townhouse in the city, and those days felt more exciting than my birthday. My mother was always in an almost ecstatic mood.”

He swiped a hand over his face, then continued. “I can’t remember when I began to notice the difference between my mother’s excitement and my father’s distracted indifference. But as I got older, it bothered me more and more.

“When I got to school, at first I was warned not to tell anyone who I was. And that worked, or at least I thought it did, but at some point I was introduced to the term Bastard Spare. I was angry at my mother. It felt like both a secret she had kept from me and also something I had known for a long time.

“I came back home that summer and confronted my mother, and she was shocked and hurt. She saw my position as a gift that she had given me and couldn’t understand why I didn’t see it that way.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He was quiet for a long time, long enough for her to wonder if the story was over, but finally he spoke again. “I put a lot of things together after that. The way we rarely saw her family, the way she had so few friends. It was as if she had built a bubble with her own story and she had put all her hopes into me. And I ruined it. Although I apologized and tried to bury my anger when I was at home, it was never quite the same.”

Livia realized that she was holding her breath. His mother was the one parent who cared for him, and he so clearly still felt the weight of his mistakes. “How old were you when that happened?”

“Twelve.”

Far too young to bear the responsibility for his mother’s actions. Far too young to understand her reasons for doing what she did. And yet he so clearly felt responsible.

She put her arms around her waist and rested her head on his shoulder. Though he didn’t move, she could feel that hard tension in him soften.

“You hold yourself responsible for this?”

He shrugged.

“What about your father?”

Gustav let out a humorless laugh. “Yes, I definitely blame him, too.”

“But it doesn’t help ease that feeling of responsibility?”

Gustav’s brow furrowed, and he was quiet. “I don’t think about it that way.”