“Your landlady is sweet,” he said, meeting my eyes defiantly. “And a little daft. All I had to do was tell her that I was your boyfriend and that you’d locked yourself out, and she gave me the key off her own ring.”

“Jesus, Max, I trusted you. And it’s been you this whole time, hasn’t it? Following me around, creeping in the alley.”

“I had to see you,” he said, voice softening. “You get that, don’t you? You’re everything to me, Audrey. My sun, my moon, every last one of my stars. I’m sorry if I scared you, but—”

“If you scared me?” I said incredulously. “I’ve been terrified, and you knew it. You were scaring the shit out of me. For God’s sake, Max, you stood over my bed and watched me sleep.”

“That wasn’t what you think,” he started.

“And tonight?” I interrupted. “When I thought someone was here earlier? That was you, too, wasn’t it?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I swear.”

“How do you expect me to believe you? You’ve been stalking me, Max. I can’t trust you at all.”

“You can. I promise you can. Just listen—” he started, reaching for me.

I sidled out of his grasp, closer to the staircase. “Not another inch.”

“Please, Audrey. Listen. I know you’ll understand. I’ve loved you from afar for so long. And then when you moved here, to my city, I knew it was fate. We were fated.”

“That’s not fate.” I paused as a thought dawned on me. “What about Cat? Does she know about … all this?”

“You being friends with Cat was just a happy coincidence.” He smiled slightly and took a step toward me. “See what I mean? Fate.”

I looked behind him to the stairs. They were so close now—with just one large step I was certain I could be on them—but Max was standing within grabbing distance. There was no way I would ever make it past him and down those stairs without him stopping me.

“Max—” I started.

He reached for me suddenly, and I instinctively tried to dash past. My bare foot slipped at the top of the spiral staircase, and I grasped desperately for the railing. It was too late; my balance was too far off. Max’s face contorted, his mouth opening in a cry as he grabbed for me, and then everything went black.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN MAX

All I had wanted was to see her. She had disappeared from my screen, and I just wanted, needed, to see that she was okay. I’d grabbed the flowers and headed to Cat’s apartment, the keys she’d given me jangling a happy tune in my pocket. Those flowers (orange, her favorite color, which I knew because two years ago she posted a photo of her open palm filled with orange Starbursts captioned as such) would get me through the door, I was sure of it. Then we would start talking, and then she would realize how awful I felt that she’d had to find those photos. I felt sick whenever I thought about how easy it would have been to store that folder anywhere other than on the desktop.