Max heaved a shaky breath. It sounded pathetic to his own ears, but he was so bowled over. By Dani, and now by this. This allyship that should not be a surprise but somehow was.

“Max.” Seb’s tone was fond but a touch exasperated. “I love you, but you’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“I don’t even know if she’ll have me. Forget that, I don’t even know if she’ll ever speak to me again.” That was the crux of the matter. He could go to New York, yes, but what was he going to say to Dani when he got there? Double down, except this time lead with “I love you” and hope it turned out better? Or just try to get everything back to what it had been?

Although . . . perhaps whether Dani would have him or not wasn’t the crux of the matter. It felt like the most important thing in the world, but perhaps what Seb was suggesting had its own logic.

Was Max ready to do everything Seb was talking about—was he ready to remake his life and his reputation—without Dani? He had been thinking about how she was worth it. But for him to upend his life so utterly, he had to be worth it, too, didn’t he?

“Uh, hello?”

Dani shook her head. She was talking to Sinéad. Theoretically. She hadn’t been listening, and Sinéad was holding her beer aloft in what looked like a paused toast. Dani lifted her glass and clinked it against Sinéad’s, but after setting it down and realizing she’d forgotten to take a sip, she had to reverse course.

“That is the most pathetic toast I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She took a sip. It had been just over two weeks since she’d gotten home from Eldovia, and she was trying to do the things that a person did when she was not heartbroken.

One of those things was go to the holiday party, even though going to a work party without Max felt wrong. Another one of those things was reconnect with local friends. She’d been emotionally absent all summer and fall. So she’d invited Sinéad out for an early dinner before the party and now they were standing at the bar in the faculty club waiting for the shindig to begin.

“What’s the matter with you?” Sinéad asked.

Dani lowered her voice. “What if I don’t want to be a professor anymore?” She couldn’t believe she was saying this out loud. “What if I want to do something else?”

Sinéad, ever-unflappable, didn’t freak out. “And what would that be?”

“Write books.”

“You’ve done that.”