Page 87 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

He’d done the right thing. He’d broken off a relationship that had no place in his life.

There was no point learning lessons if he then went and ignored every single one.

That thought lasted about as long as it took him finally to make it to the car park by the police station which was in the centre of the small town, the nucleus from which everything else radiated.

He parked carefully. His computer was still at her house and he didn’t care; that could be sorted.

He could barely spare a thought for work, anyway. His head was stuffed full with memories of Cassie, from the second he had seen her again to the second he had walked away from her for good. Memories of everything that lay in between, of her laughter and joy and the way she had made him feel.

Making his way to the hotel, which was buzzing, Leo felt the steady onset of emotions that he had stored on ice, always expecting that they could never, ever be thawed out.

He hadn’t banked on Cassie coming along and bewitching him all over again.

He hadn’t figured how easy it would be to remember every single thing about her he’d sworn he’d forgotten over time.

How stupidly easy it would be to remember just the way she was.

Remember the way he’d loved her and…now… the way he still did.

He’d turned his back on her and walked away and he couldn’t see how he’d ever be able to rebuild all the bridges he’d burnt behind him with the reckless disregard of someone too blind and stupid to deserve a second chance.

He thought about his mother and all the unanswered questions that had settled in his subconscious, ruling the way he’d behaved towards Cassie and laying out a pattern of behaviour he could see hadn’t freed him but had done the opposite: it had paralysed him.

He changed his mind about the hotel and instead headed straight to the airport. On the way there, from the back of the car that had collected him, he pulled out his mobile and hesitated, but only for a few seconds.

Right now, there was only one person he felt a driving need to talk to.

‘Papa, puedo hablar contigo…?’

Cassie looked at her mother over the casserole which, so far, she had yet to touch. It was a little past one in the afternoon and right now she felt that she could do with a glass of wine instead of the glass of water next to her.

The conversation about Leo and the vanishing engagement had yet to be had.

She had spent three days mulling over what to say.

She’d covered his disappearance with, ‘He’s had to rush off to work…

Remember I told you what a workaholic he is?

’ But she was just buying time and she didn’t have much of that left at her disposal.

If only her head would give her some peace, but on and on it churned, replaying the ending of their relationship in grinding, remorseless detail.

She was hollowed out by the fact that he had agreed to the engagement because it had suited him.

He’d wanted to dispose of a nuisance ex and an engagement to her had been a handy excuse.

She was mortified and crushed at the way she had foolishly thought that he had succumbed to feelings he hadn’t yet consciously acknowledged.

He’d never had the sort of feelings for her that she’d had for him.

Maybe eight years ago he’d been infatuated with her but had it been love?

No. It hadn’t been love then and it hadn’t been love when they’d met again.

He couldn’t love anyone. Maybe back then he’d tried, but love and all the complications involved was something that was beyond him and the finality of that was like a knife driven into her again and again.

There was just no space inside her to come out with the truth to her Mum.

‘Why are you looking so glum?’

Cassie blinked and half-opened her mouth.

‘I suppose you’re missing Leo. You’ll have to get accustomed to those times when he’s not around, Cass.

As you’ve said, he’s a busy man. Your dad did his best but I spent many an evening in because he had to cancel at the last minute when some work thing came up.

Once you start a family, trust me, your life will be so busy you won’t have time to sit and brood about him not being with you. ’

‘Mum, if and when I ever do have kids, I would never accept my husband not being present for them!’

‘So does that mean that you’re thinking of having children? I guess time waits for no one.’

‘I never said that.’ Cassie looked at her mother whose cheeks were pink and whose eyes were bright. She’d been moving better and walking faster, looking forward instead of back.

Cassie felt queasy.

‘There’s something, actually…something I feel I need to tell you, Mum.’

Her tummy lurched. She had contemplated holding off indefinitely on the explanation.

She had debated whether to just let the whole engagement thing disappear in a slow series of excuses for Leo’s continued non-appearance that would culminate in the sad demise of their relationship.

But she just couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to have anything more to do with Leo, even when it came to having his name pass her lips.

To talk about him would be to torture herself every single time, and she couldn’t cope with that—not yet, anyway.

Maybe a few hints at what was to come might work; a process of erosion…

She was about to speak when the ring of the doorbell came as a shocking intrusion and it took a couple of seconds for her to register that there was someone outside.

‘Are you expecting anyone, Mum?’

‘Who would be out calling in this weather, uninvited?’

‘It’s nearly Christmas.’ Cassie began rising to her feet.

‘You know what it’s like here; someone always wants to drop something off.

’ She smiled weakly, backing out of the sitting room towards the front door, half-relieved that she’d been temporarily spared, half-annoyed because she was just delaying the inevitable and, now that she had settled on a way forward, she just wanted to get on with it.

It had stopped snowing. The skies were clear and blue and it was freezing. She pulled open the front door without checking to find out who it was, and then stood back and blinked in utter shock at the sight of Leo standing in the doorway.

Temporarily deprived of speech, Cassie could only stare at him with her mouth open, the silence stretching into incredulous infinity, then sanity returned and she rushed into furious speech.

‘What are you doing here? What the hell do you think you’re doing coming back here when I told you that I never wanted to see you again?’

She made to slam the door, only to find the flat of his hand on it, preventing her from moving it so much as an inch.

‘I find there’s more talking to do, Cass.’

‘Too bad.’

‘Let me in…please.’

‘No; absolutely not.’

In a minute, her mother would come out and Cassie didn’t even want to think about that.

‘Leo, if you had any respect for me at all, you’d leave. I’m just about to explain everything to Mum. Please just go away. I don’t know why you’ve come—whether you’ve forgotten something—and I don’t care. I just want you to go.’

She glanced over her shoulder, a quick, surreptitious glance before returning strained, combative eyes to Leo.

‘I’d like your mother to hear what I have to say as well, Cassie,’ he told her quietly.

‘I don’t need you to share this with me. I can tell her everything on my own. It’s all my fault anyway. I should never have got in touch with you.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why? Because you got the closure you wanted?’

‘I don’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon out here having a conversation with you when it’s freezing cold.

’ He paused. ‘You know if I just very, very gently push this door you wouldn’t be able to stop me from coming in, but I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to force an entry here. I want you to invite me in because I’ve never wanted to talk to anyone more than I want to talk to you now. ’

Cassie was overcome with a wave of weariness. Weary from her misery, from the stress of having to disillusion her mother; weary from Leo standing here for reasons she couldn’t fathom but destroying her fragile composure just with his presence.

She stood back, defeated, as he brushed past her.

Leo paused and looked at her in silence. She’d stuck out her chin and postured but he could see that she was broken, and he had done that.

His stomach clenched and pain coursed through him. He’d turned away from her in the very moment when she had been most open, trusting and vulnerable. She’d confessed feelings that had thrown him into a tailspin and he had reacted predictably.

He would have come sooner but, after his conversation with his father, he had taken a few days to digest what he had been told.

It was a conversation that should have been had a long time ago but this was the first time Leo had been driven to find out those details about his mother.

He had seen how his past had put him in chains, and to break free of those chains he’d had to dive into dealing with what had happened between his parents.

His mother leaving, his father had explained to Leo, had actually been a release, in hindsight.

It had been an unhappy marriage and she would have eventually become a toxic parent.

The signs had already been there before she had even given birth to him.

She had hated everything about the life she’d had and, yes, when she had finally walked out he had said goodbye to the married life he’d hoped he would have; but, even through his own unhappiness, he had known that her leaving was the best thing she could have done for both of them.