No matter what games my mind was playing with me, I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, and yet I’d been in the hotel room with Tai at the same time that I was in the park with Eve Brier and then in Wilmette with Karly’s mother.

I could only come to an impossible conclusion.

Two.

There were two of us. I wasn’t hallucinating. My doppelgänger was real.

There was a Dylan Moran out there stealing his way into my life. It was as if this other Dylan had decided to follow every hidden impulse in my head and unleash my darker soul. Kill Scotty. Sleep with Tai. He was my id come to life.

This Dylan Moran was not me, but even so, we were connected by some kind of shadowy line. Echoes of his memories, of what he’d done, were in my own brain, like ghost images in a photograph. I suspected that he could sense me, too. He’d felt that I was coming back to the hotel, and that was why he’d made a fast exit.

Tai spoke softly from the bed. “If this was a mistake, Dylan, just say so. You don’t have to pretend.”

“It’s not that. I mean—okay, yes, what happened between us was a mistake. My mistake, not yours. The last thing I would ever want is to see you hurt.”

“I’m a big girl,” she replied. Then she looked down at her lap. “You know, I’ve been in love with you practically since the day we met.”

I felt as if I’d turned a knife into her chest, and I realized again how horribly unfair I’d been to her. How I’d played with her emotions without meaning to do so. “I never meant to lead you on. I should have been more careful.”

“Hey, you were married. I knew I was playing with fire.”

I stood up from the bed. “I need to go.”

“Okay. Go.”

“I have one more question. Believe me, I know none of this makes any sense.”

“What is it?”

“A few minutes ago, when I told you that I needed to leave, did I say where I was going?”

Tai looked at me as if I were a crazy person, and maybe I was. “Home,” she said. “You said you were going home.”

Home. Back to our apartment in Lincoln Square. Our apartment, where I kept all of my memories of Karly. I’d avoided the apartment for days, but this other Dylan was drawing me back there. Only a few minutes had gone by. It was still not even dawn. If I went quickly, I could corner him before he had a chance to run.

I needed to find out how he could possibly be real.

I headed for the door, but Tai called after me. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”