“He asked you to marry him,” I conclude. Because of course that would be Hark’s response. What a fucking joke.

“He grew up in mountains of privilege, but his childhood was so affectively bankrupt, he never had examples of functioning relationships in front of him. He’s unable to get in touch with his feelings and to meaningfully engage with his desires.” She rubs her face, exhausted. “It’s not true, what he told Avery. That he can’t be with her because he’s still in love with me. Because—he simply isn’t. Either he was lying to her, or he’s lying to himself.”

There is a third option, of course: that he was referring to someone else altogether. But Minami has no way of knowing. In fact, no one does.

No one but me.

“I’m sorry for venting, Maya. I—please, don’t repeat any of this. The kicker is, most of this stuff about his family, I only know from Tamryn. He never even told me himself. He’d hate it, if he found out.”

I nod, reassuring. Pull her in for a hug, and don’t bother telling her the truth: That everything Minami had to fight and scrape and beg to learn, every little detail about Conor’s family, I knew already. He told me when we first met in Scotland. He told me over countless late-night phone calls over the past three years. He told me when I asked, and he told me when I didn’t.

Because one day, Conor Harkness decided that he wanted someone to know him. And he chose me.

Chapter 25

Three years earlier

Edinburgh, Scotland

Maya: Sorry I didn’t pick up, half of my mouth is asleep.

Conor: Ouch. Cavity?

Maya: Yeah.

Conor: Isn’t it the second in a short time?

Maya: The third. The dentist wants me to start using an electric toothbrush, but I’d rather die.

Conor: Why?

Maya: What if the head falls off and I carve a hole in my cheek with the little iron thing underneath.

Conor: That is a very rational fear.

Maya: What if it explodes in my mouth.

Conor: At least you’d be done with the cavities.

That night, he sends me soup, and three different types of electric toothbrushes.

Two years, four months earlier

Austin, Texas

The plan is genius, and absolutely unhinged. So much so, only Jade could have come up with it.

“I didn’t, though,” she tells me. “It’s called emotional fluffing. It’s a thing.”

The problem is: I haven’t had sex in nearly a year, and I miss it.

The problem is, also: I haven’t wanted to have sex with someone who isn’t Conor since the day I met him again in Scotland.

“Here’s what we’re doing,” Jade says with a straight face. “You set up a hookup with some Tinder guy who looks like he might be decent in the sack. Half an hour before—wait, how long do your calls with Conor last these days?”

I lower my eyes.