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“No,” I answered, my eyes pinned on Leo as he stood just outside my front door.
I’d allowed him to bring me home. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice. It was either him, Detective Morris, or walking.
I’d decided Leo was my best option. And while he’d seemed relieved that I’d agreed to having him drive me home, it was obvious he thought I was going to have a conversation with him about this.
He was wrong.
“Hanna, please,” he begged, his voice thick with emotion.
No.
No, he couldn’t do that to me.
I shook my head and steeled my spine, unwilling to be fooled by him again. “There’s nothing to say, Leo.”
“There’s plenty to say,” he argued.
“Well, I’m sure you can forgive me, but I don’t believe a word that’s coming out of your mouth,” I told him.
“I swear I had no idea the police were coming here,” he insisted.
He really was good at his job. If I hadn’t known better, I might have believed what he was saying.
But I wasn’t a fool. I wouldn’t be duped again.
“And I don’t believe you,” I returned. “I would like you to leave now.”
“Sweetness,” he rasped. “What we have is good. Don’t throw us away.”
Like he’d flicked a light switch with that one word, tears instantly filled my eyes.Sweetness.I couldn’t believe I fell for it, gobbled it up.
I’d been so desperate after Xavier’s funeral service, stupidly believing that my life was going to pass me by and that I was going to be living it alone. I didn’t know what made me think I could change what was always meant to be for me. I’d gotten bits of good throughout my life, but ultimately, they were always taken away from me.
“What we had was a farce, Leo,” I spat. “You didn’t give the first damn about me.”
His body jerked back, and his expression grew wounded. He looked like he’d suffered a physical blow.
“You can’t possibly mean that, Hanna. You know what we had between us. You know it was good. Better than good. It was fucking great.”
I nodded, because to some extent he was right. I thought I knew what we had between us, and it was magnificent. It was the best thing I’d ever experienced in my life. Maybe that was why this hurt so much now.
“Yeah, it was,” I murmured. “Until I realized the truth. Until I learned that you’d used me from the start just to solve your case. And you want to know the best part about it, Leo? You didn’t solve anything, because despite what you might think, I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I know you didn’t, and there wasn’t a single second that passed after I realized you had a connection to all three men that had been killed that I thought you were responsible. I came here because I wanted to talk to you about them, about that connection, but never because I believed you were responsible. I did it because I thought that there was—”
“Stop,” I demanded, holding my hand up between the two of us. “I don’t want to know what you think anymore. The bottom line is, this was never going to work between us. I was going to tell you that at dinner tonight.”
Another blow.
This one wasn’t nearly as easy for him to recover from. Long, silent moments stretched between us, and the intense, wounded look on his face was practically killing me. I couldn’t take it.
But just as I was about to demand once more that he leave, Leo reacted.
He didn’t seem to care that I’d told him I hadn’t wanted to talk to him or that I’d wanted him to leave.
Nope.
He walked through the open door and came inside. “What did you just say?” he seethed.
