Page 138 of Shades of Grey & Gold

“You know…” My voice comes out tattered from crying. “You’re a ghost of a ghost. Patrick thought you were him and I keep glancing over at you and then—you’re you.”

He’s gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles are white, just like the night of the explosion.

I think I’m laughing now.

In fact, I know I am, but it sounds like maniacal laughter, not normal laughter.

“Also, this is twice now—” The words come out between what must be hysteria. “This is twice now that I’ve had a complete breakdown in front of you. The bathroom floor apparently wasn’t enough because now it’s a car in the Berkshires. I think you might just be—” I wipe my face with the back of my hand, a few stray tears clinging to me. “—statistically responsible for all my breakdowns at this point.”

He looks at me.

His face does something I have never seen Nico do. He looks like he might break.

“I would make them all stop if I could,” he whispers, and pauses for too long.

“Short of going back in time—”

“Max.”

I swallow.

“I need you to hear me. If I had a choice in any of this—” his voice cracks. “I’d make it all stop.”

“It’s not your fault, Nico.”

He doesn’t say anything else. So, I don’t either.

I don’t make it through the apartment door.

Well, not alone. Because my legs refuse to work when the car stops outside our apartment, either from the tequila and champagne or grief or all of the above.

Nico carries me to the door bridal style—fitting for a wedding—and stands me up. Then the door opens and my legs give out again. Becca is standing there and I see her face and everything inside of me wants to crawl in a hole and stay there.

But Nico scoops me back up. The way you scoop up a child. And he carries me inside to the couch and I let him because I have nothing left.

I hear Becca say something as he sets me down. I hear him respond. I feel the couch under me and a blanket around me and I close my eyes.

I hear footsteps towards the door; Nico leaving.

And then I hear Becca clearly, “What the fuck did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Nico’s voice is tired and sincere.

“Right.” Becca’s voice is the opposite, with an edge that says she isn’t going to argue but thinks he’s full of it. “Just like you’re always doing nothing to me at work? Try the opposite of nothing.”

A pause.

“Is that right?” Nico’s voice perks up a little and shifts into something lower, more deliberate. “Would you like to find out what the opposite of nothing looks like with me, Becca? Again?”

Another pause. Longer.

Then Becca, again: “You’re a moron. Get out.”

And the door closes. And so does my ability to stay awake.

Chapter Fifty

Max