“Of course I can’t. It’s your Aqua Man mug, you think I want to lose an eye?”

He glanced up at me, smiling weakly. “No, you can’t take that one because yours will take a few minutes to brew and I wanted the chance to talk to you before you left.”

“Ah.”

“I know you have some stuff going on.” He let the sentence hang for a moment, suspended in the air while he walked to the fridge and retrieved a carton of half-and-half.

I felt a flash of panic, worried that Harlow had decided to get even with me after all, and told him everything. But she hadn’t; I knew this even without hearing what else he had to say. Harlow may be a lot of things—meddling, naïve, impulsive—but disloyal is absolutely not one of them.

He returned to the counter and opened up the carton, checking the date before continuing without missing a beat. Like we were just having a casual conversation after work, like he wasn’t giving me yet another chance to open up. Which of course, I didn’t.

“Just know that you can talk to me.”

“I know,” I said, grateful that Oliver never seemed to push. “Thanks.”

And that was it. He handed me my coffee, gave me a long hug that would have bordered on awkward even for Ansel, and I left.

I pulled out of his neighborhood and headed straight for the I-5, not glancing even once at the road behind me.

THIRTY-THREE HOURS AND one horrible, sleepless hotel night later, I’m home. I pull into my driveway—the sound of gravel crunching beneath my tires is like a lullaby—and see my house for the first time in weeks. It weird to be home and see how small and alien everything familiar looks after I’ve been out in the wide-open world for what feels like forever.

It’s in these moments I realize just how different my world is from Harlow’s. How much quieter. Instead of buildings crowding overhead, my view here is nothing but towering evergreens, crystal blue water and sky; color in stretches that seem to go on forever. I’m almost completely surrounded by forest, so much so that even the smell of the water on the back side of the house is eclipsed by the heavy scent of decaying trees and foliage out front. There’s no traffic, no noise, and it’s entirely possible to just start walking and go days without ever seeing another person.