one of him conquering the Dark One had replaced it, the light from the Golden Bough warm on his face, his arm taut and muscular as he held it out to cast the killing blow, his chest heaving, his jaw clenched—
Her hero. Everyone’s, really, but hers most of all.
He hadn’t accepted her refusals, which had bothered her. His persistence was just insulting, she insisted. As if he believed she didn’t know her own mind. But in this particular case, he had been right. Because at one of Ines and Albie’s parties, she and Matt had talked until three in the morning, arms draped over the back of the sagging couch, beer bottles dangling in their fingers long after the beer was gone. Matt had asked her again, and she had avoided the question and gotten up to use the bathroom. And he had followed her into the hallway and kissed her.
“Think of me another way,” he had said as he pulled away.
She couldn’t remember that feeling of fire in her belly that had driven her to press him up against the wall next to the bathroom and push her tongue into his mouth. She didn’t feel it anymore.
“I know it’s not a good time,” Matt said. “But we have to—”
“Talk. I know.”
He was dressed in preppy funeral clothes: a white collared shirt, a tie, a black sweater. Wool slacks, pressed so they’d had a sharp crease earlier that day. Now he looked rumpled and exhausted, like this conversation was just another task at the end of a long list.
He said, “I’m not even sure where to start, honestly.”
Sloane laughed. It felt more like a cough. She didn’t need him to start. As if drunkenly mocking Matt’s proposal with Albie hadn’t been enough, there was blowing up the Dome, lying about the Dive, hiding the FOIA request, burying the Needle in their storage unit . . . and the line of little deceptions that made up their days, every time she felt one thing but said another or indulged him in some fantasy of her that bore no resemblance to reality. There was almost nothing about them that was real anymore, and it was her fault.
But her throat was tight at the thought of what was coming, because he would be another person who didn’t want her. As if her parents and Bert and every journalist and Chosen One fangirl in existence weren’t enough. “You and I are all wrong,” she said. “You don’t need to convince me of that.”
“You’re not even going to argue with me?”
“There’s no point.”
“So you have no desire to fight for us at all,” he said, volume rising. “You’ve just—what, been waiting around for me to break up with you because you didn’t have the guts to do it yourself?”
She shook her head. “That’s not it. I—I know that when you find something good, you should hang on to it. That’s all.”
“That’s so . . .” He blinked rapidly. “That’s so fucking selfish, Sloane.”
“What?”
“Ten years,” he said. “Ten years I could have spent with someone who actually gave a shit about me instead of someone who lies to me and can’t even pretend to care when we break up.”
“I care,” she said. “Just because I’m not the sobbing type doesn’t mean I don’t care!”
“If you cared, you wouldn’t have bolted right after I proposed to you and made fun of me to Albie,” he said. “If you cared, you would have called a goddamn therapist after you almost sleep-murdered me in the middle of the night.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you to Albie,” she said. “He said it sounded like you didn’t know me, and I agreed. That’s all.”
“Like I didn’t know you?”
“Yeah!” Sloane threw up her hands. “You’re acting like all this shit comes as a surprise! Well, I am exactly who I’ve always claimed to be. And you’ve just been walking around with your fingers in your ears for ten years.”
“So in other words, it’s my fault because I believed in you.”
“No, it’s your fault for acting like you know me better than I know myself!”
She realized, belatedly, that he had said believed. Past tense. She hadn’t understood how much his belief in her—foolish as it had been—had permeated her until it was gone. She felt like a cored apple, gutted of all the things that could bring life or a future. All shiny skin and juicy flesh and nothing else.
She slipped the ring from her finger and held it out to him. Her