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He loved me. He had still hoped, at least a small part of him, just a week ago.

But that will never be. I’ll return to the future and my relationship with Ben … and what will happen? Will we forgive each other? Will he find a way to trust me and open up to me? He’s said so many times that I am the only person who can ever know everything about him. It’s the same for me.

I move to another mirror, placing my palm on it and letting my hand sink through, then go in up to my elbow. I slowly pull my arm out.

Soft footsteps make me turn to see Quint watching me. We stare at each other, and my skin tingles for a new reason. My cheeks burn where he cupped them the night before, and the thrill his kiss left me with intensifies. I bite my lip, wishing I could taste it again.

We gaze at each other for a long time before he finally breaks it and leans against the railing near him. “Do you like them?” he asks in a quiet voice.

“Yes, more than you know. More than I should, considering you’re going to marry someone else.”

“As are you,” he points out, an edge of accusation biting his words.

I doubt that. I can pretend that Ben and I can return to normal when we go home, but how can we? He’ll never trust me fully, and I don’t know if he should.

It’s unfair to keep expecting him to love me no matter what when I can’t give him my whole heart either.

“I was telling the truth when I told Kitty that I didn’t think I’d go through with it.” I turn to another mirror and run my fingers over the edge of it. Bronze squares are glued to it in a geometric art deco pattern. What if I could stay? “Four mirrors a year…” I say tenderly. “It makes me wonder how I left at all.”

He sits down on the top step, turning his back toward me, his head in his hands. “I was young, Clara, and I believed we could have the world together. It took a long time for that to wear off.”

I walk to him. “And then why did you buy them?”

“Because no matter how I tried to convince myself it was a schoolboy infatuation, I couldn’t. You’re too hard to shake.”

I dare to put a hand on his shoulder, and when I almost retract it and apologize for it, he reaches his hand up and covers mine. “You are too,” I say quietly.

“Why did you come back?”

“I’m sorry.” My own heart is torn in two—hurting him cuts me apart in the same way losing my parents did. But I’m not totally sorry for returning, not really. No matter the hangover, he’s a drug I need. “Granville House,” I say. “I…” Truth is, I don’t know what to say. What an honor it was? How little I had to offer him of proof of my love in comparison to the tributes he’d paid me?

He stands, breaking our connection and waving off my words with one hand. “It was your idea. You deserved some kind of credit.”

I shake my head. “You would have thought of it. It’s still there in the future. Perhaps my idea—but you made it a success.”

He holds eye contact with me for a long time. I meet it with longing. I wish that I’d done the things he wanted me to in order to deserve the name. For it to have really been part of my dreams too.

“You should go to bed,” he says, turning from me. “It’s late, and I don’t think Ben would like knowing you were out of your room.”

I nod, though he can’t see, and obey, watching him stand forlornly by the stairs until I click the door behind me. I go to the window and stare out at the dark Allen estate.

What if I stayed? The idea pushes against my brain. I don’t want to argue it, ludicrous as it is to think of staying. I think of the letters from my mother that still sit on the nightstand next to my bed and how time-traveling is in my blood. It makes staying much more right than wrong.

Being with Quint would always be more right than wrong, whenever that is. I draw in a surprised breath as the vision of another little girl, a copy of the older sister who holds her hand as they walk along the edge of the pond, appears. Warmth rushes over me, and the peace and strength that had settled over me the night Quint had held me—even reluctantly—returns.

But what about Ben? Aches tug at my heart. I hold my hand against my forehead. Two years in the past and Miss Swanson’s terrible reaction to the truth have wreaked havoc on Ben’s ability to love me. A week in the past and a lifetime of memories with Quint have wreaked havoc on my ability to love Ben.

I shove the unsettled questions from my mind. I forget about what I should do and let myself long for what I want to do. That life with Quint. Waking up next to him in a French chateau. Spending a night on the town with him and kissing in his car outside the house when we return. Dancing in the drawing room to the sound of his father’s violin playing. Watching as he teaches those same moves to his daughters, their dainty feet standing on his.

Movement in the shadows beneath my window diverts my attention. A figure appears, facing the house and looking directly up into my window. I scream, then clamp a hand over my mouth to cover it.

It doesn’t surprise me that my door flies open moments later. It does surprise me that Ben rushes in rather than Quint. Quint must have left the landing right after I did.

“What is it?” Ben asks.

I point to the window. “There’s a man down there, looking up at the house.”

Ben crosses the room in four strides. He parts the curtains, scrutinizing the grounds below. He lifts his hand, holding up one finger, then four, then one again. He waits after that, staring intently below him. I stand on my tiptoes, noting that the man below answers him by a similar signal, but a different combination of numbers.