Bertie flopped down on the ground between us, his head resting on my feet and his tail on Clark’s, but despite how close we were, I could feel a gulf splitting open between us, widening and widening with every passing second.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked, and I knew this was his last shot. His last attempt, my final chance to change our course.

I nodded, swallowing hard. “I do.”

Clark looked away, down the road. When he turned back to me, I could see that he was suddenly farther away from me now, even though he hadn’t actually moved. There was a distance in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before. “It’s probably for the best,” he said, his voice still raw but getting more composed with every word. “I mean, I have a lot of work to do. I should probably focus on my book now anyway.”

I nodded, wondering why it hurt me so much to hear him say it when this was my idea and I was the one bringing it about. “Right,” I said, nodding, hoping what I was feeling wasn’t clear in my voice. “Sure.”

I pulled Bertie to his feet and we started walking back toward the house, more space between us than before—we were practically on opposite sides of the road. Neither of us was speaking, and Bertie was walking between us, happily sniffing, not aware that anything had changed. For him, things were still the same—sun and grass and things to smell—while Clark and I were standing in the rubble of what only minutes ago had been our relationship.

The silence seemed to get more oppressive with every step, until I was sure I wouldn’t be able to handle it for much longer. It was like the silence in the car after our first disastrous date, but exponentially worse, since I knew him now—knew who he was, how much he’d meant to me, and exactly what I was walking away from.

When we reached the driveway, I stopped, having reached my limit. “Here,” I said, holding out Bertie’s leash to him, glad that I had my keys in my pocket and that he had his own, and we didn’t have to continue this into the kitchen and have what had the potential to be the world’s most awkward good-bye. Clark took it from me, and Bertie didn’t even seem to notice the handoff, just sat down and started scratching his ear with his back paw. “I’ll tell Maya someone else needs to start walking him now.”

Clark just looked at me for a moment and gave me a smile with no happiness in it. “It’s not necessary,” he said. “I can walk Bert. I mostly just called Maya because I was hoping to see you again.”

It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart, and this continued as he turned away and walked toward the house, Bertie trailing behind him. As I watched them go, my throat got tighter, like it was getting harder to breathe. Was this really how it was going to end? Without saying anything else, without even getting to hug Bertie one last time?

“Clark,” I called, when he was almost to the door. He turned back to me slowly, keys still in his hand, his expression wary. “What happens?” I blurted, before I could stop myself. “With Karl and Marjorie?” It was such a small thing compared to everything that had just happened, but it was a world we had built together, and I needed to know.

Clark looked at me for a moment, then unlocked the door. I thought for a second he was going to ignore me, but then I saw him unclip Bertie’s leash and let him in before he turned and crossed the driveway toward me, stopping when there were still several feet between us. “You really want to know?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, Marjorie kills Karl.”

I drew in a breath—it felt like someone had just pressed on a bruise. “What?”

“Oh, yeah,” Clark said, his voice certain, like this was the only answer, like there was no other way this could go. “She finally remembered that she was an assassin. She was just pretending to be someone else, but in the end, it wasn’t who she was.”

Clark’s voice was cold and dispassionate, and I had never heard him speak that way before. When I thought about the gentle way he’d talked to me when I’d first arrived at the house, not even an hour before, I knew that he sounded this way because of me—that I was the one who’d done this to him. I bit my lip hard and felt tears, the ones that had been lurking behind my eyes, threaten to emerge. “No,” I managed, shaking my head, but before I could say more, Clark was continuing on.

“And then Marjorie dies too,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “After she kills Karl. The king’s men kill her in a tavern. They can’t have her talking. It’s best to just erase the evidence, so it’s like it never happened. The end.”

“You can’t just do that.”

Clark looked at me for a long moment. “I just did,” he said, then turned and walked back up the driveway, then into the house, letting the door slam behind him.

I walked to my car, and my hands were shaking so hard it took two attempts to get my key in the ignition, and it wasn’t until I’d gotten the car started and driven two streets away that I pulled over and really let myself cry.

Chapter EIGHTEEN

Maya looked at me from across the table at Flask’s, concern on her face that didn’t seem to match her purple and pink hair. She pushed aside her blended coffee drink—pumpkin spice. It was the last week of August, but apparently, as far as Flask’s was concerned, that meant it was fall. “How are you doing?” she asked, leaning toward me.