“Yeah?” I swallow. I’m not—I don’t want to feel like I do now. If something had happened to Avery, I’d be devastated. What the hell is wrong with me? “What comes next? In the book, I mean.”

“I believe that the brush with death rekindles their love, and after a passionate declaration they celebrate the impermanence of life with several bouts of improbably orgasmic sexual intercourse.”

“Sounds like a good book. Maybe you should bring it on our next beach vacation.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Cool. We’re going to buddy-read it.”

“Oh, no, Maya.” She wraps an arm around my waist. “We’re going to buddy–set it on fire.”

We laugh again, a bit hysterical. Until: “Ma-da?” Something warm squeezes my hand. Kaede, pointing at the wave that rudely dragged her pail away.

I gasp theatrically. “What happened to your pail? We have to rescue it, don’t we?”

She nods urgently, and together we set out for the task.

The last thing I see before turning around is Conor, carrying Avery up the staircase toward the villa.

Chapter 19

Three years, two months, two weeks, and six days earlier

Edinburgh, Scotland

Of course, Conor’s staying at The Balmoral.

I would tease him about it, but there are two reasons why that won’t be happening.

The first is that I wouldn’t want to provoke him into dropping me. As it turns out, the alcohol-metabolizing enzymes I’ve been working on must be on vacation. I’m not drunk, but I am tipsy, and I made the crucial mistake of tripping over a cobblestone as I animatedly explained to Conor that in the event of an apocalypse, I would lie down in the streets and let the zombies take me—because I could survive longer, but why would I want to?

He decided that I needed to be carried.

I decided not to protest too much.

The second and most important reason is that I’m too concerned with prying a story out of him. “What do you mean, your father hired her?”

His eye roll fills the mirror-wrapped elevator. “As I said, forget that I mentioned—”

“Nuh-uh.” I started this. By angrily oversharing every single annoying thing Alfie did in the eighteen months of our relationship, ranging from the morning he smushed my lipstick while drawing a heart on my bathroom mirror, to the way he got me tickets for a band he liked for my birthday.

(Hindsight’s 20/20, but I must wonder: Was the heart for Georgia all along?)

“I told you,” he says. “Nothing to add.” We’re on his floor, and he’s clearly planning to walk out of the elevator.

So I lean over and press the shut doors button.

“What are you doing, Trouble?”

“Tell me more about what happened after she hit on you.” I send the elevator back to the first floor. Via the fourth, third, and second. “How did you realize that your dad had sent her?”

An indulgent sigh. I hear it and feel it, through the many places where my body touches his. Yes, we are inside. Yes, I’m unlikely to stumble again. Yes, he’s still carrying me. “She was the most attractive woman I’d ever seen, spoke three languages, and had a graduate degree. She was way out of my league.”