Page 86 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER TEN

‘I NEED TO get some air.’

Cassie froze at the tone of his voice. At the coolness, the icy detachment. The sound of shutters slamming, doors closing and a future that had shimmered tantalisingly close disappearing for ever.

‘Get some air? But, Leo, it’s late and it’s snowing…’

But she was already retreating in the face of his rejection.

She’d been carried away by her own love, by hope and by idiotic, misguided optimism and she’d been wrong in her assumption that he surely must be on the same page as her.

How could the tenderness she’d felt not mean more to him than just sex?

But Leo was already shifting off the mattress, barely able to hold her gaze.

‘I’ll take my chances.’

‘In my car? The one you said you’d be surprised if it made it here in one piece? The same car you swore was held together with masking tape and glue?’

‘Cassie…’

‘No, don’t say it, Leo,’ Cassie whispered.

He would rather get buried in falling snow than spend a minute more with her after what she’d confessed.

She remembered the way he had walked away from her eight years ago.

Yes, she had broken things off with him, but now she wondered whether it had been easier for him to move on than she could ever have imagined.

He’d told her about his mother—not a lot, but enough.

Enough for her to have heard the pain in his voice and to understand the depths of his feelings of betrayal and abandonment by the one person whose love should have been unconditional.

If events hadn’t worked out they way they had, would he really have stayed with her, married her and had a family with her?

Or was he just too damaged inside by feelings of abandonment ever to trust that she could love him with all her heart, unconditionally, the way he should have been loved by his mother?

Had the threat of being left again cast such a great shadow that he would just never be able fully to commit?

Cassie wondered now whether the possibility of real closeness and commitment, which required trust and vulnerability, would always just be something beyond his grasp.

Suddenly the torment of the past felt more straightforward because she knew so much more about him now.

The space he had left behind on the bed was already icy cold and her body was rigid with misery and tension.

As he began dressing quickly and efficiently, pride and defensiveness started slamming into place inside her, just as his own shutters had come down.

‘This was never what it was supposed to be about,’ he ground out.

‘I know.’

‘We did what we did and we both knew the rules of the game,’ he continued grimly.

He’d moved to stand in front of her, towering and forbidding, arms folded, his face inscrutable.

‘Sometimes it’s a little hard sticking to the rules,’ Cassie said without defiance, quietly proud that she had been brave enough to be honest.

‘Not for me.’

‘No. I see that now.’

‘What we had was good, Cassie.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and stared down at her. She had pulled the covers up tightly but had sat up and was pressed back against the pillows.

‘Where will you go to get your air? It’s dangerous out there.’

‘It’s dangerous in here.’

‘I said what I wanted to say. You don’t have to be scared that I’m going to get clingy on you. I just thought that, like me, something in you wanted this phoney engagement…some unconscious pull you couldn’t acknowledge.’

For a few seconds, seconds that felt like minutes, hours and decades, silence stretched as their eyes collided in the darkness, adding drama and danger to the atmosphere.

Leo reached for his phone. He felt as though he needed to support himself, lean against the wall, because he was suddenly overcome by a weird falling sensation.

He had no choice. Had he asked for any kind of emotional connection between them?

He’d agreed to this crazy arrangement because he’d wanted to get rid of a troublesome ex.

There was nothing to be read between the lines.

He had made it clear from the start that what they had would just be a fitting conclusion to something that had started eight years ago but from which he had never achieved closure.

And then, when this charade had started, he’d told her that it was just a charade.

Yes, uneasily, he had realised that there might be something more beneath the surface but he knew that, whatever that something might be, he was never going to let it escape and do all sorts of damage to his peace of mind.

He’d built his life on self-control and he wasn’t going to let it slip through his fingers now like he had eight years ago. He would never be so weak again that he would allow his emotions to rule his life.

But, still, it felt as though he was staring down into an abyss as he handed his phone to her, having scrolled to just the right conversational thread between Aimee and him.

She took the phone and he watched as she read the thread: his admission to his ex that he was engaged; the clarity with which he’d explained that she had to back away because he was unavailable.

That, if she didn’t believe him, just a couple of questions would sort that out because he was happily and openly engaged to be married to the girl he’d once known. Why would he lie?

Cassie handed the phone back to him and didn’t say anything for such a long time that he could feel the incipient nausea inside begin to ripple through every bit of him.

He knew that he couldn’t have severed things more completely between them if he’d tried. He fought against an untethered, falling sensation.

‘So you see, Cass,’ Leo eventually said grittily, ‘There were no sentimental reasons for me agreeing to go along with your engagement charade.’

‘No. I see that.’

‘I was having problems with my ex-girlfriend.’

‘Yes.’

‘She wouldn’t let go and I realised that getting on board with your plan, and making sure she knew about it, would probably be my best chance of getting Aimee to realise that I was never going to agree to giving what we had another chance.’

‘I understand that now, yes.’

‘Cassie…’

‘Just go, Leo. The car keys are on the dressing table. You can take the car and leave it in town and spend the night… Actually, I don’t care where you spend the night.

You can park up at the side of the road and spend it in the back seat of my car if you want.

But leave my car in the car park by the police station and I’ll make sure I collect it when I next go into town. It’ll be perfectly safe there.’

‘Cass…’

‘There’s nothing left to talk about, Leo.

I don’t want to see you again, ever. Tomorrow morning, I’ll tell Mum everything.

I’ll tell her just how extensive the financial problems were and what I did to solve them.

I’ll take my chances that she’ll understand that, what I did, I did for myself more than because it was a way of getting Dad’s debts sorted.

I’ll take my chances that she understands and… forgives me.’

‘Cassie…’

‘Just go.’

‘We can talk about this more, if you want. Whatever you might think of me, it’s worth bearing in mind that—’

‘Go!’

Cassie looked at him with angry hostility as every shred of hope was washed away and her foolish love was exposed for what it was: a mistake; an idiotic, na?ve, pathetic mistake.

‘And take all your things,’ she continued in the same low, hostile voice. ‘If you have any reason to contact me, then please go through my lawyer.’

‘Damn it, Cassie…’

She didn’t answer. What was the point of a dialogue that wouldn’t go anywhere? She stared at him with stony indifference, which couldn’t have been further from what she felt, from the painful tumult of emotions tearing through her. Tears were so close that her eyes stung.

She watched in silence as Leo redressed in the very clothes he had removed only a short while before.

His coat was in the hall. He went to the dressing table and hesitated before picking up her car keys and distractedly tossing them up and down, catching them while he looked at her as though tempted to carry on talking.

Eventually he shrugged and walked to the door. ‘Where do you want me to leave the keys?’

‘You can lock them in the car. I have spares.’

‘This is a crazy way to end—’

‘Not to me.’

‘I never meant to hurt you, Cass.’

Cassie thought that those must be the most hurtful words in the English vocabulary, always spoken when the worst pain had been inflicted and solving nothing at all.

Those were words spoken by someone who wanted to clear their conscience before walking away from a messy situation they no longer wanted to be involved in.

‘Goodbye, Leo.’

She only sagged when the door had been quietly closed behind him. When she walked to the window and looked outside, it was to find that the snow had stopped falling, as though fate had taken it upon herself to make sure he made as safe a getaway as possible.

She wasn’t going to collapse. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of falling apart, even though now that he was gone he wouldn’t know whether she’d fallen apart or not.

For the moment, she was going to think about what she would say to her mother without breaking her heart.

The drive into town was slow and torturous, although thankfully the snow had stopped and the wipers didn’t have to be set at full speed.

The car might be a four-wheel drive, as most were in this part of the world, but he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Cassie that it was all just tin and metal stuck together with glue and running on a wing and a prayer.

He thought of her driving it in conditions like these and felt a little sick. He could buy her a new car. They might have parted company but that didn’t mean that he liked the thought of her risking her life while she was getting from A to B.