But she wasn’t waking up.

My body began to cave in upon itself. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. We were supposed to spend an eternity together; we were supposed to live happily ever after. We were fated.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT CAT

As I climbed the steps to my apartment, holding the extra key I’d left at Priya’s for emergencies, I desperately hoped that Audrey was elsewhere. I hoped she’d followed my advice and called Nick, or that Max’s ill-conceived plan to win her over through surprise flowers had worked. I couldn’t face her after my catastrophic failure in court that morning; I couldn’t handle her faux sympathy and her Oh Kitty-Cats, especially when she was the reason everything had fallen apart. If only she hadn’t distracted me with those texts.

God help me, I thought as I twisted open the front door. Audrey, if you’re here, I might actually kill you.

I stepped into my apartment and stopped short. I blinked, hoping that the gruesome scene before me was just a manifestation of my subconscious.

“Oh my God,” I managed, dropping my suitcase and taking an involuntary step backward. For all the wishing Audrey away I had done that afternoon, I never wanted this.

Max Metcalf was crouched at the base of my narrow spiral staircase, cradling Audrey’s lifeless, naked body in his blood-streaked arms. Dark red dotted both of them and was smeared on the floor beneath them.

“What happened?”

Max raised his head to look at me, and I shuddered. With a slash of blood on his cheek and almost feral eyes, he looked wild and dangerous.

“She fell,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“She fell?” I repeated dubiously.

He nodded, gazing down at Audrey and stroking her face, leaving a ruby smear along her pale cheek.

“She’d just gotten out of the bath,” he said quietly. “Her feet were wet. She slipped. I tried to catch her, but it happened too fast. She hit her head and …”

As he trailed off, my eyes traveled from Audrey’s wan face to the dark blood matting her hair. A memory flashed through my mind: another head wound, another beautiful girl’s hair streaked a sticky red. Spots swam in my vision. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.

I grabbed at the entry table to steady myself and forced myself to think pragmatically. Audrey dying like this, on my floor and at Max’s hand, would lead to questions I didn’t want to answer. I would have to explain how Max had come to have the keys to my apartment, and it would be impossible to explain my connection to Max without Camp Blackwood coming up. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed the parallels between Audrey’s unfortunate demise and what happened that summer. It wasn’t the same, of course, it wasn’t my fault, but would anyone believe that? My future with the firm, already on thin ice after that morning’s dismal performance, would be destroyed. I would be lucky if I escaped with my law license intact. Everything I had worked so hard for, gone. All because of Audrey.