Page 66 of Light My Fire Three Times
Richard: Come on. You do owe me.
“Wow.” I let out a sharp laugh that sounds a little too much like hysteria. “Amazing. He can’t go two texts without swinging from fake praise to full-on guilt trip. Truly, a master of emotional whiplash.”
Leo watches me, brow furrowed, way too calm about all of this. “Block him.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Block. Him.” He says it as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like cutting off the constant drip feed of validation and shame is… a button you press.
Ping.
Richard: We both know you’re not built for sitting still. You’ll come crawling back.
I toss the phone onto the nightstand because it’s toxic waste. “Nope. Not dealing with it. Not today. Not when I already have… all of this.”
I wave a vague hand at the bed, the sheets, the six-foot-something complication lying next to me.
Leo smirks, amused. “All of this, huh? You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“It is.”
“Ooh, well,thatI like to hear.”
“Don’t make me regret admitting that out loud,” I grumble, pulling the blanket higher.
But even as I hide, I can still hear the phantom buzz of incoming texts in my head. Richard’s words crawl under my skin, familiar and poisonous.
Come back, Olivia. You’ll crawl back. You can’t live without this.
And the scary part? A tiny, traitorous piece of me almost believes him.
I worked extremely hard at that job. It’s hard to walk away, even with my coffee truck waiting for me. My own business will never be as secure as a full-time job.
By the time I peel myself out of Leo’s bed and start hunting for my clothes, the spiral has already taken over.
One second, I’m replaying what just happened, his hands, his mouth, the way my body betrayed me by liking it way too much, and the next, Richard’s texts are crawling under my skin as parasites.
What if I made a mistake walking away? What if everything I worked for, everything I sacrificed, late nights, missed birthdays, weekends spent chained to my laptop, was for nothing? Who am I if I’m not the woman who fixes everything?
The thoughts come fast, relentless—a blizzard I can’t see through.
Leo sits up, frowning as he watches me pull on my sweater. “Liv. Where are you going?”
“To my apartment.” My voice comes out too sharp, too brittle. I smooth it over with a laugh that sounds broken as glass. “I should… I need to check on some things. Clear my head.”
He swings his legs over the side of the bed, like he’s going to get up and stop me. “You don’t have to run off. Talk to me. Whatever’s going on?—”
“Nothing’s going on,” I cut in, a little too fast. A little too obvious. “I just need…”
Leo doesn’t buy it. His eyes narrow, that steady, grounded way he looks at me like he knows I’m lying. He can see the hurricane inside me, no matter how much I try to mask it.
And that’s the problem.
Because right now, he feels less like a lifeline and more like another complication I can’t afford. Another bad decision stacked on top of a pile that’s already about to topple.
“I just… I need space,” I mumble, slipping out of his room and hurrying to mine to pull the rest of my clothes on.
“Olivia—” He sounds like he actually cares, and the worst part? That almost makes me stop.
