His expression was closed-off, eyes hooded, jaw set, mouth grim. “We’re not going to have a long-distance relationship and let it fade away like it did before,” he said.

“Well, you’re right about that. We’re absolutely not going to have a relationship,” Daisy said, looking for her clothes, which were still on the floor. Damn. Hard to be righteous and strong when you had to bend over wearing nothing but a man’s t-shirt to pick up the clothes you’d strewn to Hell and back the night before. “And just FYI, back then, nothing faded away,” she said tightly, pulling on her tights. “You checked out.”

“I apologized for that,” Diego said, his voice low and rigid. “And I meant it. I screwed up, and I know it. But I thought we had something, something good that we were going to work for.”

“So did I,” she said. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe the reason I hadn’t told you about the NYC thing is because I wasn’t going to go?”

When he just looked at her, she shook her head. “Good to know that you’ve got faith in me. I’m not doing this with you again, Diego. This is more than a stupid misunderstanding. This is mistrust, a deep mistrust right at your core. And I can’t fix that. I can’t change that. And I won’t live with it, not ever again.” She was trying not to cry, giving up on figuring out how to get her bra on beneath his shirt, which she wasn’t going to take off. Yep, she was going to Lyft home in a man’s thankfully very long t-shirt, tights, and boots.

As soon as she got in the last word. “Last night, you let me think that you relocating here might be for me, but that clearly wasn’t true. If you’re trying to get me to understand that I’m not now—nor will I ever be—your first choice, message received.” She stopped to realize that she’d just picked up his socks, not hers, and threw them at him. They may or may not have hit him in the face. She zipped up her boots and turned in a circle, grabbing her remaining items. Her dress. Her bra. Her purse.

“Daisy—”

“No,” she said, snatching her phone from the counter and opening her Lyft app. “If I was really important to you, you’d say, ‘hey, you know what? We’ll make this work no matter what. And hell, I can even come to New York if that’s what you need to do.’”

Diego suddenly seemed just as angry as she was. Actually, she could have sworn that she saw a flash of something else in his dark gaze. Fear. But it was gone in a blink. “The only person in that scenario giving anything up is me,” he said. “And I’m done with giving up everything for the people in my life.”

Something in the way he’d worded that had her stop, checking herself. Then she realized…it was the same way he’d described having to come home after only a semester of college when he’d had to drop everything—his entire life—to come back and take care of his dad. “Diego,” she said, her voice softer. “I’m not asking anything of you. I don’t want anything that you don’t freely give.”