“I’ve held my tongue, but this is ridiculous. Yeah, I shouldn’t have gone to Vegas with Jacinda. Yeah, I should have called. Yeah, I could have done things differently, but the thing that you keep forgetting, Chani, is that you left.”

“What?”

Gabe points a finger at me.

“You. Left.”

I’m clutching the sheet in my hands.

“When I woke up that morning, you were gone,” Gabe says. “You left in the middle of the fucking night. No note. No text. Nothing. You know what I thought? I thought, well, she probably got exactly what she wanted—a couple of good sound bites and a good story to tell her friends about how she hooked up with a celebrity.”

My knuckles are white.

“Well, maybe you were right,” I say. “Maybe that’s all this is.”

“I know it’s not,” he says.

“We barely know each other.”

“Chani,” he says, but I keep talking.

“Collectively, we’ve spent maybe six days together,” I say. “That’s nothing. You can’t know someone in six days.”

“Can’t you?”

I shake my head.

“I know you,” he says.

“No, you don’t,” I say. “And I could write about all of this. About last night. About your family. About your relationship with your niece. About your sister and Benjamin Walsh. This could be my story.”

It makes me sick just saying it out loud.

Gabe is silent for a long time.

“Then do it,” he says.

“What?”

“Go call your editor,” he says, extending a hand toward the living room. “Write that article.”

We stare at each other, playing the weirdest game of chicken ever.

“No?” he says. “I thought so.”

I scowl at him. “Don’t be smug just because you think I’m a decent person.”

Gabe shakes his head. “I don’t understand why you’re being like this,” he says.

“Because this was a mistake,” I say.

“No,” he says. “It wasn’t a fucking mistake. Isn’t. Ten years ago, maybe, but that was one we made together. If anyone is making a mistake right now, it’s you. On your own.”

I’m out of bed and pulling my clothes on.

“Chani,” Gabe says.

His hand is on my elbow, but I shake it off.

“You don’t understand,” I say. “You don’t understand at all.”

“Then tell me,” he says.

I shove my legs into my pants, not looking at him.

“You know what happens at my book signings?” I ask. “People don’t come to learn about my writing technique or my interviewing process. They don’t want to know about craft or publishing. They buy their book and get in line and every single one of them asks me what really happened between the two of us.”