“He’s not proposing. He’s just . . .” I crumple in a chair. “Finally reckoning with his decades-long evil legacy because he wants you to be his girlfriend who sends him cute little heart emojis and sixty-nines with him every other day?” I shake my head again. The truth is, it feels like it. Like the letter is addressed to me. “No—he—he doesn’t—” “H

Jack is behind me. Witnessing all of this. Cross-referencing notes about how terrible I am with Austin. Shit. Shit—“What did you just say?” he asks.

“I didn’t know you two talked,” Monica says, looking skeptically between us. “I learned a few years ago,” Jack tells her calmly, staring only at me. She’s little more than a fly buzzing around us. “And Elsie’s in the process of mastering the art of speaking for herself.”

There is no universe in which I’m going to let you go. I want to be with you, on you, every second of every day. I think—I dream of crazy things. I want you to marry me tomorrow so you can go on my health insurance. I want to lock you in my room for a couple of weeks. I want to buy groceries based on what you like. I want to play it cool, like I’m

“They had some . . . disagreement over their joint research. He was intensely controlling. She refused to abide. You can imagine the rest.”

“What you said was true. And it was the right thing to do. But also . . . Elsie, there’s very little I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Is this—” I lift my hands and take a protective step back. “Are you throwing cheddar cubes at—”

She leans closer with a surreptitious expression. Her skin is 90 percent freckles, and I’ve known her for five minutes, but I want to be her friend.

“No, I meant—the article he wrote today?”