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I’m flourishing in the wreckage of my own rules. It’s the most alive I’ve felt since the early days of the show, before the sponsors and the legal teams and fucking Cebastian turned it into a brand. Back then, it was just me, a flight to a remote border town, and the grit of a story that didn’t care about anything but my ability to pull the thread until the whole thing unraveled.

The only thing I had to worry about was whether the local authorities would seize my hard drives before I could upload the audio.

It’s the sex. It’s definitely the mind-altering, rule-breaking sex.

But if I’m being honest it's more than that.

Which is unfortunate.

Sex I understand.

Sex has parameters. A beginning. An end. Occasionally a middle that makes you briefly reconsider your position on organized religion.

Whatever is happening here has none of those things. And all of them.

I know because I’ve spent the better part of the morning retracing the whole thing while wandering these aisles, trying to identify the exact point where I lost control of the situation. I’ve built an investigative career around making people regret underestimating my capacity for obsessive reconstruction. And yet here I am, three aisles deep with a cart full of things Serena loves, and I still can’t figure out when exactly this happened.

At some point, probably before the contents of my shopping cart become a referendum on my feelings, I should remember why I’m in this town in the first place.

There’s still a murder to solve.

And somewhere between the tapes and the bones and all the things this town has managed not to say out loud, this stopped being a story I could walk away from unfinished. I want to know who killed Casey. I want to know who helped keep it buried. More than anything, I want Serena to finally have the answer she’s spent most of her life pretending she can live without.

Which is why the next thought is particularly shitty.

Some selfish, underdeveloped part of me has realized that solving Casey means there is no longer a reason for me to be here.

Serena goes back to the city and back to her real job.

Tamsin goes with her.

Simon and I go wherever Cebastian decides the next season needs us.

Some airport.

Some hotel.

Some other dead person.

Another town where everyone knows something and nobody wants to be the first one to say it into a microphone.

The cycle starts again.

And Serena⁠—

I stop.

No.

I’m being ridiculous.

People own phones.

Planes exist.

The Interstate Highway System has been operational for some time.

There is no rational reason the end of this investigation would have to mean the end of anything else.