“What I’m trying to—wait, the capybara?” His face has gone all scrunched again. “Are you maybe thinking of the chupacabra?”
“OH MY GOD,” I shriek to the stars above.
“Okay! Okay.” He runs a hand over his face before returning his gaze to mine, his jaw set. “I’m just saying, the way this happened doesn’t make it all fake. Lots of people with real feelings for each other believe some cosmic hand brought them together.Theirs might be kismet or the Universe or God. Ours just happens to be a fifty-something Londoner with several Goodreads Choice Awards and a terrifying personal assistant. So what?”
“So what? So many reasons what!” I just know the urge to correct my shrill disregard for grammar is clawing at him, and the fact that he keeps it at bay tells me how serious this is. “It’s going to end, for one thing, and we’ll never see each other again.”
“That could happen in real life too. It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“Well, I don’t like being manipulated,” I grit out.
“Who says you are?”
I don’t know which is worse: the idea that I’ve been tricked into having these feelings, or having no one to blame but myself.
“IknowI am,” I decide. “Because I don’t do this. I don’t get carried away in real life. I don’t feel this much when left to my own devices.”
His gaze remains intense, but there’s a softness weaving itself into his features as he looks at me. “Aren’t you tired of being left to your own devices?”
Iamtired. Exhausted to my core, to the brink of collapse. And I can imagine it, giving in, letting myself sink into this part of the story like it’s a warm bath. But isn’t that what a frog does right before it gets boiled alive? Lesley’s words feel like a taunt now:Try not running and see what happens.Iknowwhat would happen: a painful goodbye, a broken heart, an avalanche of regret. I’d be destroyed.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry. I can’t.” As if this weren’t enough of a disaster, tears are beginning to sting the edges of my vision. I need to get away before Grant sees. But before I can try, he reaches out and catches my wrist with an agonizingly gentle touch. His voice is so low it almost gets lost in the night.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing,” I snap, wrenching my arm away from him.
His head tilts as if to say,Come on, Roxie.
“We both know that’s not true.”
Something in my chest tightens. I’ve read hundreds of romance heroes in my life; Grant is the only one who’s ever read me right back.
A million protests tumble through my head and each one dies on my lips. Where has all my fight gone? Who is this sad, broken-down version of me, getting pummeled by the rain while trying not to cry?
Grant steps closer, and this time I can’t move. “Forget that,” he says. “Let me ask the better question: What do you want?”
What a question. That’s exactly the thing: There is nothingtowant. There are no good options, just a dizzying carousel of lose-lose scenarios. If I stop fighting this and say that I wanthim, I’ll be miserable when the story ends. If I keep denying it, I’ll stay miserable until then. Part of me wants to have never made that wish, to have never met him, and another part is flooded with grief at the thought.
What do I want?
I want him to convince me.
I want to believe, like he does, that this would be worth its inevitable ending. I want to have a stronger heart, one that can survive whatever happens to it. I want to be able to trust myself enough to try. To stay, for as long as we get. To say yes for once.
I want to be a different kind of person.
Grant waits patiently, searching my eyes for the answer. I don’t know if there is one. He’s half a breath away from me. If he comes any closer, that will be it. Everything will change, and I want it to and I don’t. I feel myself about to speak and I have no idea what the words will be.
“I—”
A sharp pain lances my arm.
Grant flinches at the same time.
I look down toward my side in confusion, stumbling as I pull the feathery red tuft from my skin, a small needle coming out with it. The streetlights dance on the puddled pavement. A thick heaviness is enfolding me, dragging me somewhere dark. I reach out to where Grant should be, and I maybe feel my fingertips brush something, but it’s all too cloudy.
The last thing I see is a glimpse of men’s wingtip dress shoes stepping toward me before it all goes black.
