Page 100 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

It had taken her months after that fateful night to stop reimagining the scene, replacing the facts with alternative outcomes, but none of the other scenarios had a particularly happy conclusion either.

Some people were just not meant to be together.

She tipped her head awkwardly in acknowledgement. Her eyes lifted as she shook her head and forced her lips into a smile. Not a great smile and it hurt, but she was definitely smiling, which was better than the alternative—which was gibbering incoherence.

‘My whole life is on this phone…’ Her attempt at a laugh didn’t work out brilliantly and his only response was a scowl.

‘Your life!’ He expelled the words through gritted teeth. ‘Walking alone at this time of night in an area like this doesn’t suggest too much concern for your life!’

‘This area is perfectly—’ She stopped and took a deep breath, recognising that arguing with him wasn’t going to de-escalate a situation that needed some serious de-escalation. ‘Look, I’m grateful, but I could have handled it. I was handling it.’

‘Oh, is that a fact?’

This fresh display of blatant sarcasm brought a faint flush to her pale cheeks.

‘Yes!’ she retorted, pausing and trying to stick a hairpin back into her once neat braid, which immediately tumbled back down. So much for dignity.

How dare he comment on where she ran her business, where she lived her life? Him, with his new family, his new life—he knew nothing of hers any more.

She flung the unravelling braid over her shoulder and cleared her throat. ‘Sorry. Obviously, I am grateful, but I just…’ She swallowed convulsively as emotion rose in her throat, thickening her words and, worse, bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. ‘I just want to go home now.’

Aware that her voice had risen to a shrill plaintive wail, she took a deep breath, calming in theory but less so in reality. She cleared her throat again. ‘This is just all a bitweird. You, here? Looking like this…’ Her voice stalled. She fought the urge to say something daft likeDo you work out?and said nothing at all.

‘You have no security?’

The taut condemnation in his voice wrenched an ironic laugh from her. His comment showed just how far removed this man was from the Leo she had known.

‘Sure. It’s their day off.’ She studied his face; heusedto have a sense of humour. ‘Seriously, this is normally a quiet time of night, and I’ve taken self-defence classes.’ She hadn’t, but she didn’t want him to know his criticism had got to her.

‘You did?’ He raised his eyebrows in challenge. She could tell he’d seen straight through her falsehood.

Sometimes it was irritating that she couldn’t follow through with a perfectly good lie.

‘No, but I intend to when I have the time, and I’ve read a lot of self-help books.’

‘What, to whack little shits across the head with?’

She laughed and she didn’t know why, because laughter in this situation was not a sane reaction, but for a second he had sounded so like the Leo she had once known that a wistful sigh left her lips. Before reality came flooding back in and she realised that he was no more like the old Leo than she was the old Amy. They never could be. It was time to say goodbye, once and for all.

Chapter Three

‘Look, thanks foryour help but—’

‘Get in.’

‘What?’Until the long, sleek designer car they were standing beside bleeped, she had no idea they had been walking while they talked. He had basically been herding her like a sheep as they spoke and she hadn’t even noticed.

‘I was always told not to get into cars with strangers,’ she said, trying to inject some levity, admittedly strained, into the situation.

‘I’m not a stranger, Amy.’

Her head tilted to look him full in the face.

Yes, he was.

It was as if he had been stripped back to a shell and rebuilt as a harder, scarier version of the Leo she had known and loved.

‘The Tube—you can walk me to the Tube. That’s it.’ It was a meeting him midway offer that he appeared not to recognise.