But the recent snowfall had melted away, and it was a cold and bright day, sunny and clear enough to go rollerblading. And without thinking, I ended up at Damien’s building.

Suspecting that Damien wouldn’t buzz me in, I waited, changing into my sneakers and tossing my skates over my shoulder, until someone left the building to get through the locked front door and then I knocked. I immediately heard footsteps rush toward the door, which swung open as fast as light, revealing Damien, looking the worst I’d ever seen him. He was wearing jeans, a ratty black T-shirt, and no shoes, comfortable and vulnerable in his own space, and his eyes were lined with red like he’d been crying.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

“Were you expecting someone else?” I asked, not waiting for an invitation and instead choosing to act braver than I felt, breezing past him to stand in his apartment.

“Please, come on in,” he said dryly, closing the door behind me and coming to stand a few feet away.

Damien cleared his throat and I refocused on him. He was standing with his arms crossed and looked down at his feet as he spoke.

“I assume you’re here to yell at me?” he asked, his voice even raspier than usual, like he’d been shouting.

“I—” Honestly, I had been, but he looked so beaten down already, it didn’t really seem fair. “No, I’m not here to yell at you.”

He looked up at that, eyes wide with surprise.

“I’m just trying to understand what the hell is going on, Damien,” I said. And then I told him everything that Dr. Bright, Mark, and the rest had told me.

He winced every single time I said Mark’s name.

“Mark—he’s … he’s your ex, isn’t he?” I asked finally, choosing which elephant in the room to address first.

“Ex something,” he scoffed, repeating my words from the other day. “Yeah.”

“You guys…” I wasn’t sure how to ask it. Knowing everything about Damien’s ability that I knew now, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to ask. What I would be okay with knowing.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “Nothing ever happened between us, it wasn’t—it wasn’t romantic or sexual or whatever it is you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” I lied, putting up my hands.

“I thought we were friends,” he said. “I thought that we could be … I don’t know, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“Didn’t they die in a gunfight?” I asked. Emily loves that movie.

“Yeah, but they got out first,” he said, smiling hungrily. “They got a second act in a world where those aren’t handed out easily.”