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“You warned me.”
That caught his attention. He spun to face her, his eyes narrowed. “About what?”
“About the reasons we shouldn’t have…” She swallowed heavily, her throat closing. She cleared it and forced the words out. “We should have kept the status quo. Remained just friends.”
He shook his head. “No. Yvonne—”
“You know I’m right.” She hated the way her words were starting to wobble.
“He’s a kid.”
“And you’re the only thing he has. You’re his father and his mother. He needs you. And he has to come first, Leo. He has to.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
The tears she’d been fighting sprang to her eyes. She blinked them away. “No. No. He needs some time to calm down. He’s upset. And scared. You can’t push this on him.”
“What are you saying, Yvonne?”
“I think…it would be best…if we just went back to being friends.”
He scowled. “No. It wouldn’t.”
“Please,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“This isn’t right,” he argued.
She held up her hand to stop him. “I’m leaving one way or the other. We have to go back to the friendship or…I don’t know how we…”
“How we…” His jaw was clenched as he prompted her to finish her thought, his voice tight.
“Please don’t make me say it.”
He stepped toward her, but halted his forward movement when she shifted away. If he touched her now, she’d fall apart completely. “So you’re offering me friendship or nothing.”
She didn’t respond for a moment, then she nodded. Her entire insides were trembling, while Leo’s suffering seemed to take on the form of numbness. She wasn’t sure which reaction was worse.
“I’m going to talk to him.”
“I’m not going to change my mind,” she reassured. “I have to…” She bent down to pick up her overnight bag and started for the front door.
“You don’t have a car.”
“I’ll call an Uber.”
He followed her, grabbing the keys to his truck. “No, you’re not.”
God. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to hold it together the whole way back to the pub, but she knew Leo well enough to know he was going to drive her home.
Mercifully, he didn’t continue the argument in the truck. Instead, they rode to the pub in silence, the trip a far cry from yesterday’s, which had been silly, lighthearted, fun.
She held her breath the whole way.
When he pulled up to the door, he reached for her arm, stopping her before she could get out. “Change your mind.”
His demand, so typically Leo, provoked a smile, a watery one, but a smile nonetheless. “No.”
He released her arm, and she got out.
