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He sniffs, clears his throat. “What now?”

I stare at the cheap tile between us. “Well, I started the day wanting you—not gonna lie about that anymore—then I hated you, then I hated you some more, and then…”

“You missed me?” he whispers.

I chuckle. “Hell no. I still hated you.”

“Oh.”

His face goes back into his hands.

I nudge his foot with mine. Not hard. Just enough to lower the hands.

“But I started thinking about liars. Cheats. And… Becca.”

Paul looks at me. Heat crawls up my neck.

“Yeah,” I say. “Becca. Like she had any idea what I was hiding. I could make myself feel better and say that she did, she musta, but I don’t know that.”

Paul shakes his head a little, not getting it.

I lean toward him.

“I’m a goddamn liar, too. I hide behind names and poses. I even lie to myself.”

Paul looks down at his own hands.

“I lie to myself all the time,” he says. “I pretend nothing’s wrong when everything is, and then… I just wanna run.”

“Why do you think I came to PV in the first place?”

His mouth twitches. “I thought you were trying to steal my beach house.”

A laugh gets out of me before I can stop it.

“Well, that was another reason.”

His smile lasts one second longer than it should. Mine too.

Then the sink drips in the bathroom, one lonely little tick after another, and the room goes quiet around us again.

Not fixed—not even close—but quieter. Like maybe we’ve both put down our sharpest objects without quite knowing what to do next.

I look around the room.

Paul doesn’t belong here, but he looks like he could fall into it. Like he’s starting to fade along with it.

I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t make it easy.

Paul is a dick. Manipulative. Selfish. A liar with soft hands and sad eyes and a mouth I am not thinking about.

But worse than that, I can’t imagine walking back into Casa Sirena without him.

I push myself up from the floor.

“Alright,” I say. “Here it is. I’m going to carry that bag back up a thousand steps, and you’re going to walk in awkward silence behind me until we’re home.”

Paul looks at me like I have started speaking Spanish.