She may not have wanted the life that came with becoming Mrs. Dr. Charles Avery, but oh how she’d loved this city.

An ache gripped her heart. “So we do something,” she said, on an exhale. “We figure out this butterfly moment, or whatever it is, and we change it.”

Roman lifted an eyebrow. “You think it’s that easy? To find one moment, one second in years and years of seconds? And even if you did find it, what then? How would you know that whatever choice you were making was the right one?”

Dorothy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You propose we do nothing?”

He couldn’t be saying that, surely, and yet he didn’t argue.

Dorothy had to work to keep her voice steady. “For the last year we’ve been planning to save this city. What was all of that for if you’re just going to stand by and let it be destroyed?”

“We have a few years left.” Roman still wouldn’t look at her. “And, because of what we did this morning, those years will include heat and electricity—”

“What does any of that matter if we’re all going to die?” Dorothy leaned forward. “I thought you’d left the Professor for this, so that you could change our past and give this city a chance—”

But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Dorothy didn’t actually know why he’d left the Professor. He’d never told her.

I’m afraid we haven’t been acquainted long enough for that story.

She looked up at his face and saw that he looked younger than he usually did, his face softened by fear. It made it easier for her to imagine him as he must’ve looked when he’d worked with the Professor. She pictured him sneaking out in the dead of night to steal the old man’s time machine. Traveling into the future again and again. Staring out at that desolate, black landscape, hoping it might change.

Something twisted in her chest. She couldn’t imagine how lonely that must’ve been.

She felt a lump form in her throat. “Roman—”

Roman stood, abruptly, and made a show of tugging his jacket straight. He wouldn’t look at her. “It’s getting late.”

“You aren’t leaving.” Dorothy sat up taller. “We need to talk about this.”

“Later,” Roman said, glancing at her. He looked on the verge of saying something else but only shook his head and took up a glass of bourbon, downing it. He jerked his chin in goodbye and started for the door.

The nerve, Dorothy thought. She stood to follow him, noticing as she did that the guy at the bar had twisted around on his stool and was watching her. Her eyes landed on him as she made her way to the front of the bar, and she froze, feeling slapped.

Ash.

Ash was sitting at the bar, staring at her. His expression was stormy, eyebrows pulled down low on his forehead, gold eyes blazing. Electricity seared the air between them.

Dorothy’s heart was doing something complicated inside of her chest.