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I waited for the sharp edge he usually reserved for people who crossed him in business, but it didn’t come.

“I’m sorry,” I continued, my voice wavering slightly. “I’m coming from a place of respect and honesty. Dragging this out while living hundreds of miles apart, pretending we’re going to make weekend flights work while I’m drowning in family responsibilities… it would be selfish of me. You don’t deserve to be kept on a leash while I try to figure my life out.”

“Don’t start apologizing before you even finish firing me,” he muttered dryly.

I closed my eyes and exhaled. “Yonas, I am not firing you.”

“Sound pretty unemployed from over here, Nurse Lakelyn.”

Leave it to Yonas to deflect with a joke when something cut too deep. He used humor like body armor, cracking wise so nobody could see the parts of him that were bruised.

“I need you to understand that this isn’t because you did anything wrong,” I said softly.

“That sentence always means somebody’s about to say something terrible.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I, Lakelyn.”

I took two steps forward, closing the space between us. “Yonas, going back is going to be overwhelming. My granny isn’t doing too well, my family needs me, I have to get Kaidence settled into a new school and a new environment. Adding to that, I have to find another job. My hands are going to be completely full.”

Yonas reached out and caught both of my hands in his, his fingers warm and solid around mine.

“And I can help you with every single one of those things.”

“I know you can.”

“Then let me,” he urged, his grip tightening just enough to make his point. “Let me help carry the load.”

“I can’t. It’s not fair to you.”

“Let me be the one who decides what’s fair to me.”

I looked up into his face and gently shook my head. “No.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed. “Why?”

Because the truth was ugly, raw, and completely unfair to the man standing in front of me.

After six years of keeping my distance, the thought of returning to Hallowridge pulled Caspian’s memory straight to the front of my mind with a force so sharp it made my chest ache. I had been back to the city before, but those visits were temporary. I could leave again, go home, and put space between myself and everything that reminded me of him.

This time was different.

I was coming back to stay.

I was returning to a city filled with memories I had spent years learning how to live around, and Yonas deserved a woman whose heart was fully available to him, not someone whose soul was still tied to a man she had never stopped missing.

“Yonas, you’ve been good to me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

And he had been.

Better than good, actually.

In the two years we had spent together, Yonas had never once pressured me to give more than I was ready to offer. He had never made Kaidence feel like an inconvenience or an afterthought. Most importantly, he had never tried to compete with the shadow of a man who wasn’t in the room to defend himself.

Yonas had given me grace I didn’t always have the strength to return.

“Past tense already,” he noted, his voice flat.