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The follow-up thought strikes quickly: But of course it is. How could you have ever thought otherwise?

It has been him all along. For all that my mystery editor—Sam—has going for him, there’s just something missing every time I meet him face-to-face that cannot be forced into being. No matter how I try, I can’t force the spark to exist when it’s not there. No matter how much it pains me to accept that fact.

I take a step back and, in doing so, see the question in Ferris’s eyes.

He really did think I’d come back to him, didn’t he? The thought makes the heat rise in my cheeks.

“I had no idea you felt this way, Ferris,” I say, brushing my dress off as if I’m brushing off the conversation. “I’m sorry to hear this.”

His eyes widen in disbelief. “Of course you did, Savvy. With all the coffees and the little chats. With all the flowers. You knew—”

“Yes, well, that’s the problem, then, Ferris. It’s a little hard to tell you’re trying to hit on me when you’re bringing both me and your fiancée coffees in the morning and flowers on behalf of the pair of you at night.”

He stops. “They’ve never been from her. They’ve always been from me. Just me.”

There’s something in the way he says “they” that stops me. I pause. Raise a finger. “You sent me more than one bouquet?”

“Twice!” he exclaims. “Twice, just in the last month! I know it was a bit of a risk sneaking them into your room and office, but I had to do it.” He rakes another wild hand through his hair. “I had to show you I care. That it’s been driving me insane to be without you—”

I realize he’s reaching for my hands again. And as though there’s a slowly moving copperhead slithering my way, I jump back.

As I do, my eyes catch the sight of a particular shade of warrior blue behind him.

Olivia’s face is horror stricken, her long, slender fingers at her lips. Her eyes shimmer, and despite it all, I feel my big-sisterly defenses rise.

“I’m sorry, Ferris,” I say, my jaw flexing. “My sister is here, and I need to attend to her. I wish you luck wherever your slimy backside lands.”

And without hesitating a moment longer, I move aside and reach for my sister, who has, at last, broken her six-year hiatus from crying and dissolved into tears.

Chapter 19

You’d think it was impossible for someone to use so many four- and five-syllable words to say the same thing.

“Yes,” I say, nodding as I come into the room. “He’s horrible.”

“Horrible doesn’t cut it,” Olivia says, rubbing a tissue fairly violently beneath her nose. “He’s the most substandard, abominable, ignominious, louche man to ever walk this planet.”

She shakes a tissued hand impatiently at me, and I hand her a pint of ice cream. Another one.

I stand in the doorway and check my phone. Eight thirteen p.m. For two hours I’ve been plying Olivia with tissues, ice cream, cheese, and boxes of oatmeal squares, dry. I think I’ve broken her. One encouraging comment about how she could use a little “break” from her diet and this happened. This.

But eight thirteen isn’t so bad. If I can squeeze out now, I might just have enough time to meet Sam. If I hurry.

I take a step toward the hall. “I think I’ll run to the store real quick. I can pick up some things for the morning. Would you like that, Olivia? Some of that nice yogurt you enjoy?”

Olivia scowls from her floor nest, her silky blue dress in a puddle around her feet. The back of the bodice is halfway unzipped. There’s a litter of empty cartons around her feet. And the level of mascara that has run down her face and dried . . . Well, she looks like a cover for an eighties rock CD. For once in our lives, if we were in a lineup at a school dance, I’d be the one picked.

Well, I take that back. I suppose I can now say twice.

“What did I do wrong?” Olivia says, breaking off a block of cheese with her teeth. “How did it go wrong?”

I give a sympathetic shrug. “Sometimes we pick the wrong people, Olivia. We live and learn.”

“No,” she chokes out, swerving her raccoon eyes at me. “Really, Savvy. What did I do wrong? I don’t want your empathy. I don’t want frothy, girls’-sleepover-style answers. I want to know what I did. I want quantifiable data.”

“Well, you can start with that,” I retort a little tersely. “You can start with not being so snappy at everyone for everything. And you can stop calling me Savvy, because you know I don’t like it.”

“That’s good,” she says, reaching for the legal pad on her bedside table. And here she goes. Another list. She clicks a pen and starts writing. “Snappy. I can be less snappy.”