“You aren’t going anywhere,” Noelle said. “This is ridiculous. We are all going to fix this. The entire team is in there, ready to fight for this. We’re not going to give up.”

“We can’t fight him. He always wins,” Miriam said, sounding exhausted and resigned. She rubbed her hands down her jeans. “I was right. All those years, I was right. He must have been so mad, about the Bloomers, and he was just lying in wait like a spider for me to have something worth destroying. And I fell for it! I let you and Hannah convince me to let down my walls, and now there won’t be a Carrigan’s! Do you know what that would do to me, Noelle? All those years, I survived, knowing somewhere out there, Carrigan’s still existed. I can’t be the reason it’s destroyed. I can’t survive it!”

Noelle paced in the snow, her boots crunching rhythmically.

“So you’re going to leave us, leave Cass’s vision that you fought so hard for, leave everyone here who needs you. You’re going to run, again, instead of fighting.”

Noelle shook her head, her brain buzzing with angry bees. She hadn’t even started to dig herself out of the grief of losing Cass, and now the threat of losing Carrigan’s and Miriam, too, filled her with stark terror. Some part of the back of her brain was telling her that her anger was just her fear coming out sideways. She told the back of her brain to shut the fuck up. “I know you’re scared, but that’s bullshit, Miriam. If you run now, he knows he’ll always win. Stand and fight.”

“You don’t get to tell me how to respond to him,” Miriam cried. “It’s not your life.”

“It is my life!” Noelle yelled. “You made me believe in a future with the two of us together, you made me fall for you, and now you’re running the instant it gets hard. I told you I was scared of ever trusting anyone again because everyone leaves, and now you are leaving. How is that not my life?”

“I’m doing this to protect you,” Miriam yelled back, her hair whipping into her mouth in the wind. She angrily pushed it back. “Because I love you! If I don’t, he’ll never stop coming for you. At least this way, he’s only coming for me!”

“That’s a lie, Miriam,” Noelle spat out, her whole body rejecting Miriam’s words. “The only person you’re doing this for is you. And it’s going to hurt you more than it hurts anyone. You’re a coward.”

Noelle stalked back to the house, her hands stuffed into her jacket, her head down. In her peripheral vision, she could see Miriam had sunk down on her knees, sobbing.

Noelle left her there and just kept walking.

Part 3