Scarlett had also worked today, and tonight she was… I had no idea what she was doing tonight. Maybe we’d had plans? My stomach went into freefall. Had I forgotten her like she’d always accused me of forgetting the other girls I’d dated?

My gaze returned to the suitcase and panic began to close in, blackness descending on all sides. Forgetting plans was the only thing that made sense, but even now I couldn’t remember anything I’d missed.

“Scarlett,” I said, but my throat was too tight to get more words out.

“Tell her,” Amelia pleaded. “Explain it. Don’t let her leave.”

Tell her what? Surely she wouldn’t leave me for forgetting one night? There had to be more to it. I’d screwed up about something, obviously, but she couldn’t walk away. Abandon me. Everything in the room seemed unreal, a two-dimensional facade, and I couldn’t get my body to work. Except my lungs—they were working too fast.

And then I remembered—Scarlett had been distant for a couple of days. I’d tried to talk to her about it, but she’d fobbed me off. I’d figured it was a problem at work and she’d tell me when she was ready. It was obviously much bigger than I’d realized.

Billie said something. I didn’t hear what it was, but it brought my attention to her. “Billie.” I took my wallet from my back pocket and handed it to her. “Take Amelia out for burgers.”

“We’ve had dinner,” she said, grabbing Scarlett’s hand.

“Then take her for ice cream.” She didn’t move, so I added, “Please.” I needed some time alone with Scarlett so I could fix this. Whatever it was, I had to fix this. I couldn’t lose her.

Billie looked to Scarlett, who nodded. “Come on, Amelia,” she said, standing. “We’re going for ice cream.”

Amelia reluctantly stood. “Can Harvey come?”

“Sure,” Billie said, looking at me, daring me to disagree. “We’ll take Finn’s car.”

She put her hand out and I dropped my keys in her palm, not caring what she did to my car, as long as I could talk to Scarlett and make things right.

Once the door closed, I took a step toward her, my knees nowhere near steady. But I stopped. There was an invisible wall between us now. She’d put it there, but I must have given her the materials to build it. So I stood awkwardly, my heart racing unevenly in my chest.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said cautiously. “I was given short notice that I could access a rare book on Mesopotamian music that was on loan to the library, and I had to take the opportunity.”

Her face expressionless, she nodded. “Of course you did.”

Expressionless Scarlett made me nervous.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Finn.” She turned away and I couldn’t see her expression, but her hand waved at the far wall. “I bought you a present today.”

Confused at the abrupt change in topic, I glanced in the direction she was pointing. A desk stood against the wall. A huge, solid, wooden desk, which held piles of my books and papers, probably in the neatest order they’d ever been in.

“You bought me a desk?” Moving closer, I ran my hand along the smooth edge. “Thank you.”

I tried to sound grateful because it was a great gift, but I was too preoccupied trying to piece all the parts of this puzzle together. Nothing seemed to fit, as if I were trying to complete a jigsaw with a deck of cards.

“I wanted it to be a surprise.” She still sat on the sofa, somewhat stiffly, altogether untouchable.

“It is,” I said, still wary.

“When I was moving your things from the table to the desk, I found some letters offering you fieldwork.” There was no malice in her, just sadness.

I swore under my breath at myself, then a little at the ancient gods for good measure. “Okay.”

“I can’t do this, Finn.” She rose to her feet, her spine straight, and crossed her arms. She was magnificent and everything I wanted.

“Come on, Scarlett. You’re not really leaving because of some letters, are you?” There was a pleading note in my voice, but I didn’t care. Self-respect was a low priority in the circumstances. “I turned them down.”

“You turned these down,” she said, her voice wobbling. “But there will be more.”

I took a small step in her direction. “We’ll face that when we come to it.”

“The only thing worse than a life spent moving around from place to place is the uncertainty of knowing it’s in the future, but never knowing when. Waiting for the axe to fall. Praying it won’t happen. Hoping you changed your dream, then hating myself for being so selfish. We can’t live like that. I can’t live like that, with that level of uncertainty… That was my entire life until you found me. I can’t do it again. I’ll become brittle and bitter. But the thing is, Finn—I love you. I’d never want you to give up on your dream, not for anything. Especially not for me.”

I opened my mouth to say something, though I had no idea what. Just something that would stop what was happening. But she held up a hand.

“Please just let me say all this.” I nodded and she continued. “So the options here are that we stay together and you give up your dream, or we stay together and I’m unhappy.”

I could see where she was going, but it was like watching a runaway train and being helpless to do anything to stop it. My mind screamed no, even before she said the words.

“There’s no good choice there, Finn.”

The panic was rising again, threatening to engulf me. “Don’t leave me.”

For a fraction of a second her face crumpled, then she caught it and found a neutral expression again. “I love you. More than I’ve loved anyone or anything in my entire life. But I have to go.”

“Nothing about this is right. Not a thing.”

“I’m really sorry, Finn.” She pushed her blue glasses up to the bridge of her nose and didn’t meet my gaze. “I just can’t see a future for us that doesn’t end in crashing and burning. At least if I go now, we won’t hate each other.”

She picked up the small suitcase and headed for the door. Before she could reach it, I stepped in her path, not sure what I was doing, but knowing I couldn’t let her walk through it.

“I’m asking—no begging—you not do this.”

“Please don’t make this any harder.” She turned her tortured eyes to me. “It’s already tearing me in two.”

I was standing, rooted to the spot, scrambling for something to say to make her stay, paralyzed by her asking me not to, when she blinked a few times in quick succession and walked around me and out the door.

She paused and said, “I’ll be at Cathy’s if you need me,” then she was gone.

A sickening sense of déjà vu overtook me and I was transported back to the day I’d heard the people I’d loved most in the world had left me, that my parents had been killed in an accident. And now it had happened again—the person I loved most in the world had walked out on me. I turned and ran for the bathroom, then threw up until my stomach, my ribs, my chest, everywhere was in as much pain as my heart.

A week after Scarlett left and I still felt like throwing up most of the time. I made it through tutorials on autopilot and tried to lose myself in history books the way I had when my parents died. Only this time it wasn’t working.

It turned out to be a major blessing Billie was still home—she dealt with anything Amelia needed so they could give me a wide berth. Of course, Billie was doing that partly out of consideration, but mainly because she was pissed at me for screwing things up with Scarlett. She didn’t know the details, but she was certain it was my fault. And she was right. I should have been able to fix it, to find a compromise that suited us both.

I barely slept more than three hours a night—kept awake by the replay of my time with Scarlett, over and over, either desperately clinging to the good times or beating myself up about the end, depending on my mood.