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“Yonas.”

“I’m listening.”

“What we had was good,” I said, trying to soften the blow.

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Apparently not good enough to keep.”

I squeezed his fingers, willing him to understand. “I don't want us to become strangers. We can still be in each other’s lives. We can still be friends.”

Yonas closed his eyes and let out a dry, humorless breath. “Damn… not the friends speech. Women have been executing perfectly good men with that exact sentence since the beginning of time.”

“I mean it. And you’re going to survive this.”

He opened his eyes, staring down at me with heavy dark irises. “That’s questionable.”

“Yonas, I don’t want to lose you completely.”

“Then don’t push me away,” he practically begged.

“I have to,” I insisted gently. “I cannot ask you to wait around on a promise I don’t know if I can keep. I don't know how long I’m going to be gone, and I don't know what kind of person I’m going to be once I get there.”

Yonas studied my face in silence for several long seconds, reading the hesitation in my eyes, the tension in my jaw.

When he spoke again, the teasing tone had evaporated completely. “This is about Kaidence’s daddy, isn't it?”

My heart gave a hard, sudden thud against my ribs.

Yonas knew about Caspian… not every single detail. I didn’t share every dark corner of that story with everyone, but Yonas knew Kaidence’s father had disappeared before he was born, he knew that there was no grave to visit, and that a large portion of my life remained locked behind a door I refused to open.

To his credit, Yonas had never tried to force that door open, and he respected the silence I built around it.

Maybe that was the reason he had lasted as long as he did.

“No.” The denial came out too quickly, too sharp.

Yonas gave me a knowing look.

I looked away, letting out a defeated sigh. “Not entirely.”

“That ain’t a no, Lakelyn.”

“I’m moving back to the place where he disappeared, Yonas,” I said, the words tasting like copper in my mouth. “I’ve gone back for brief holidays to my family… yeah. But I haven’t lived there in five years. I spent years clawing my way out of a depression that almost took me under, and I don’t know what being back on those streets every single day is going to do to me. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for it, let alone strong enough to give you what you deserve in a relationship.”

I hadn’t completely vanished from Hallowridge… I couldn’t.

Once Kaidence was born, keeping him away from his family just because I couldn’t handle my own grief would have been cruel and selfish, so I had made the trip for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and random long weekends when Granny complained about missing her great-grand.

But I had a strict rule: seven days maximum.

By day five, the air in that town always began to suffocate me. By day six, I caught myself taking detour after detour just to avoid passing certain intersections. By day seven, I was packing my bags. Everyone in my family knew the routine, and eventually, nobody questioned it.

They knew what the city did to my spirit.

Yonas nodded slowly, processing what I had said.

That was one of the things I had always appreciated about him: Once the truth was on the table, he didn’t waste time throwing tantrums, making threats, or trying to force something that was already slipping away. He knew when pushing harder would only do more damage, and most of the time, he had enough pride to accept what I was telling him even when he didn’t like it.

For a moment, he was quiet, and I thought that was the end of it. Then he asked, so unexpectedly that it caught me completely off guard, “Do you love me?”