He closed his eyes, took a breath. “It’s you,” he said.
“Of course it’s me, Caleb—”
“You don’t—”
“How could—”
“God, Livi, wait.” He dug into his pocket. His hands shook, and they whirled across the screen. “I don’t want to be like Wells. But this is a huge thing.”
I waited. “It is,” I said softly. “I thought you weren’t going to open it.”
“I wasn’t. But I’ve been borderline obsessing over it. After you left the museum, I thought, if she isn’t mine, then maybe I should learn who is.” His brows furrowed. “And then I passed by my colleague’s office, and I was thinking about what they’re working on—an exhibit about people in history that have changed their mind about something, which led to a drastic shift in the world.”
I pursed my lips. “Do they want an intern? I suppose you could say I’m job searching.”
His mouth twitched. “It was between that and who’d be famous in two hundred years from our modern era.”
I groaned. “Even more up my proverbial alley.”
Caleb sighed. “Anyway, I changed my mind.”
“Who is it?”
“You need to ask me twice,” he said. “I really need you to make the choice yourself, because once you know, you can’t un-know it. And I don’t know what to do right now.”
“Who is it, who is it, who is it,” I said. “That was three times. One more for insurance.”
“You’re sure.”
I shrugged. “Honestly, at this point, I’m equally sure of nothing and everything.”
He shook too much. I took the phone from him and nearly dropped it.
Olivia Jane Adler, I read, my eyes swimming. And my birthday.
I looked at him, the screen, back to him. His face was anguished.
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Neither do I. But somehow, you’re my soulmate, and I’m not yours.”
Forty-Three
Back in my apartment, I paced. Caleb fidgeted. He hunghis suit jacket on my beloved coatrack; yanked his tie from hisneck and strung it over the hook.
“I don’t understand,” I said for what felt like the fortieth time. Soulmails were never wrong. Samantha and her unspoken-named baby girl, Dola and Trent—that first day, and then all the stories that trickled in thereafter. Plus all the experts who have reaffirmed it over and over. In all recorded history, at least the last few months, we had seen it time and time again: Soulmails were un-deletable, and they were never wrong. The Soulmail gods themselves had confirmed that for me.
“Me either. It’s miserable.” His hands were aimless. They fumbled over his hair, my counter, his pant legs, until he finally sat on the counter stool and fisted them below his chin.
So how was it possible that I had two different soulmates? I searched my inbox for the wordSoulmail, then changed strategies when I realized that almost every news alert, personal email, promo ad, contained that keyword. Instead, I navigated to the sidebar with my folders. My insides lit with relief at the one marked STARRED.
Wells’s name loaded, the font carved and clear like the hundreds of Soulmails I’d seen. I flinched at what was supposed to become my last name, at his birthday.
“I have never once seen unmatched Soulmails.” I pushed my phone toward him. “Tell me how this is possible.”
“I can’t.”
I pressed my shoulder to his, allowing myself a fraction of a second of contact before I grabbed his phone. My name glared at me.
