I agonized over the perfect location for our first date, knowing I needed something that appealed to Audrey’s aesthetic interests but that also looked effortless. Audrey liked things that were lovely but easy, and I knew hitting that sweet spot was the key to charming her. That Kalorama Heights mansion ticked all the boxes, and it wasn’t hard to extract the lockbox code from Tag. Then there was everything I had done to make the setting perfect for her: the small fortune I’d spent on candles and foliage, the recipe I’d carefully selected based on her expressed desire to go to Thailand (and the travel blogs I’d read about Thailand so I could pretend I had been there), the way I had practiced making that damn dish three times a day for days until I knew I had it down. By the time the date arrived, I had never wanted to look at tofu curry again.

Everything else—the picnic carefully selected to be as photogenic as possible, the Tabasco I sprinkled on popcorn after noticing her multiple tweets over the years about loving spicy food, the Negronis I’d learned how to mix after seeing a Story in which she raved about them, the donation I’d made to the Hirshhorn to gain access to the Rosalind preview, the anonymous comments and posts I’d made in a deliberate attempt to unsettle her so she would seek shelter in my arms, and so much more—had all been done because I loved her. Why couldn’t she see that? I had done everything for her, had bent myself completely into a knot in the service of pleasing her.

But she didn’t understand that, and so I knew I needed more. I needed to touch her. I just needed to take her small, soft hands in mine and kiss her rosebud lips, and then everything would be okay again. She would feel the electricity crackling between us and understand we were destined. Our love was unbreakable; it could survive anything.

But she kept evading me, and as I reached for her, certain that this would be the magical touch that reaffirmed our connection, suddenly she was slipping, falling head over heels down that spiral staircase, leaving a trail of water and blood behind her.

For a moment, nothing seemed real. I stared down at her perfect body crumpled at the foot of the stairs, and I thought, She looks just like a beautiful, broken bird.

And then I saw the pool of dark red blood forming around her head and spreading across Cat’s pristine floor. My stomach twisted at the sight. I clambered down the stairs so fast it was a miracle I didn’t fall myself, and pressed both hands against the wound on Audrey’s head. As her sticky blood seeped through my fingers, I was entranced and sickened by the sensation of having her life pulsing beneath my hands.

“Audrey,” I said gently. “Are you okay?”

Her eyelids didn’t even flutter.

“Audrey,” I said again, more loudly, more desperately. “Audrey, please.”