Hosea paused, shifting his mouth from side to side. “I’m only saying this to you because I know you can handle it. We got a guy here, real knowledgeable about politics and whatnot, who said there was a commission mandated by Congress last year who studied this exact thing.”

“The grid going down?”

“Yeah. Apparently, they put their big ’ol brains together and found that 90 percent of Americans would die under the conditions I do believe we’ve just found ourselves in.”

“We’re talking total devastation, then.”

“Maybe. No way to fact-check such a claim at the moment. Could be a load of BS. All I’m saying is there’ll be a spot for you here.”

“Thanks, Hosea. Oh hey,” I said, and Hosea turned back my way. “Those big brains who determined 90 percent of society could die off with a grid collapse, what’d they do about it?”

“Nothing, man. They didn’t do nothing.”

Hosea turned away again and I watched him go. Nothing. But I guess I hadn’t needed him to tell me that. We were all living it.

I turned back toward Emily, her grin wide as she looked over at me, our eyes meeting. Something gripped me, a protective instinct so strong it nearly brought me to my knees. Ninety percent. That can’t be true. It had to be an exaggeration or a misremembering, or something else, but either way, I vowed that the woman I was locking eyes with would not be among that statistic. I will get you to safety.

At the sight of her lingering smile, my heart did a strange dip and swerve. I swore she could see it on my face, the way she slayed me, the way she always had. Dammit. In a way, I wanted to continue feeling disdain and disappointment for who she’d become. I wanted to keep those feelings in place because underneath them was the deepest attraction I’d ever felt for any woman and the knowledge that I’d loved her my whole life, and no matter what she did or who she was with, I always would.

I turned, walking on legs that felt slightly shaky all of a sudden, and not because of the mind-boggling topic Hosea and I had been discussing—one that I hoped wasn’t true but that was terrifying all the same. I headed out the door and took in a lungful of air. There was, frankly, so much to feel shaky about. That had been true before we arrived here, and it was even more true now that I’d spoken to Hosea and learned the scope of the overall situation. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, it was meeting Em’s eyes across a room that had swept the rug out from under me. Fuck.