She shook her head, overwhelmed and uncertain. Instead of reassuring her, it felt like he was being intentionally difficult and distant, like he wanted this to escalate and get worse. “Us! I feel like we’re ending. You’re leaving, I’m staying…it feels like you’re already gone!”

He took a step toward her. Out of the shadow from the bright window light behind him, she could see his features clearly. With his brow furrowed and his mouth set into a hard line, Clare knew he had no interest in moving past this argument right now. “If you remember correctly, you’re the one that said no to me. Do you remember that, Clare? Me asking you to marry me, you telling me no?”

She had never heard him speak to her like this before. It felt like he hated her. “I remember,” she whispered.

“And how do you suppose that made me feel?”

She didn’t know, not exactly, but if the way he was acting now was any indication, she could guess. He was hurt and pissed and maybe scared—but for the first time in their lives, she felt like she couldn’t ask him any of that. Long before Adam had ever become her boyfriend, he had been her best friend. Now, right when she needed him most, a wall had come up between them.

Everything was changing, right before her eyes, but to her it felt like Adam was changing the most and the fastest. Without thinking, her thumb reached for his ring still on her finger—did it mean anything anymore? She was too afraid to ask him, too afraid he would hang his head and say no.

“I’m sorry we’re fighting,” was all she could manage to say. “I’m going to go…home.” Her voice was soft, careful, unsure of everything.

When he didn’t answer and only continued to glare at the floor between them, she turned from him, his room, and all the tension and unanswered questions she had about what was happening to him, to them. She headed down the stairs, past the framed lifetime of Adam and Kaylee, every single year that had brought them all to this moment right now. Kaylee would always have her brother. They were bound by blood, family. No matter how far apart they grew from each other, their lives would eventually spring back together.

When Clare reached the bottom stair, a sense of utter loss opened up inside her. She was not Kaylee, and despite the lifetime she had spent inside it, the childhood acted out between these walls, it was not Clare’s home. Her picture didn’t hang on any wall here, and her connection to this place, these people, that boy upstairs that she loved too much—the intangible fragility of those bonds was suddenly crystal clear to her now that they were breaking.

“Clare,” Adam’s voice called down to her.