As the car slowed down, the air inside thickened. Everything that had disappeared in the intoxicating rush of speed caught back up to me with a vengeance, including the identity of the man sitting beside me.

I felt his demeanor shift, too—less palpable than mine, but still a subtle transition as tension seeped back into his muscles. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel as he pulled up to the garage, and his spine stiffened, pulling him away from the seat as he put the car in park.

"Wh—?"

Before I even knew what my question was, he'd clambered out and slammed the door in my face.

I stared after him, noticing for the first time that his clothes were stain-free. The garage's lights were off, its "Open" sign flipped to "Closed." He had gone out of his way to help me even when he was off-duty.

What was he doing on that street in the first place? With the adrenaline wearing off, my general unease whispered in my ear that coincidences didn't exist around this guy. Was he stalking me?

"Shut up," I muttered to myself, shouldering my way out of the car. "I'm sure he has better things to do in his sports car than stalk you."

"You say something?" Ciar called as he flipped on the lights inside the garage.

"No." I wandered closer, slowing as I entered the circle of light. He was already climbing into the tow truck, and before I could say anything more, he slammed the door.

The engine roared to life, and the last thing I heard in the rush of air in the truck's wake was Ciar shouting, "Stay here!" out the window.

I gaped at the truck's rear license plate as it peeled out of the lot, my brain refusing to believe he'd just left me there.

It didn't take long for the familiar panic to set in. My throat closed around the air, and the harder I tried to breathe the dizzier I became. A single thought echoed through my brain: Not again. Not another person leaving.

I knew it was stupid. He was just going to get my car, and then he'd be back. But even as that tiny, logical voice reassured me, I fell into the chair behind the desk and curled my knees up to my chest.

I hated being alone.

Breathe. I just had to breathe. Ciar was coming back. He was.

No, he's not. You are alone.

That word echoed in my head, refusing to fade. Alone. I squeezed my eyes shut, clutching the arms of the chair as if they were the last anchors to my sanity.

And then another voice joined the first, softer and sweeter, soothing the nerves fraught by Ciar's departure.

You're never alone.

"Tilda," I whispered.

I'm here.

After everything, she was still there.

The crushing pressure on my chest lifted as my breaths slowly evened. I sank deeper into the chair, letting the tension leave my aching shoulders inch by inch as her whispers grew stronger.

The next thing I knew, a hand circled my arm, tugging me back toward something sinister and forsaken.

"Maisye."

I frowned. The name sat like a foreign word on a familiar tongue. For a moment, blurry, half-formed shapes twisted in the distance, hovering like dementors waiting to make a move. I tried to resist, tried to back away, but that name again—shouted this time—sharpened their edges.

"Maisye!"

With a jolt, I gasped as if taking my first breath after drowning. Maybe I had been drowning, suffocating under something so thick and unbreathable that its chill had numbed my senses.

Donovan Cosgrave's face swam into focus, his eyebrows drawn together as he finally let go. "You okay?"

The lump that rose up to choke me this time wasn't panic, but soul-crushing relief. I wasn't alone anymore.

He leaned closer, his lips twitching down at the corners, and asked again. "Maisye, are you okay?"

Wide-eyed, I glanced around. We stood in the parking lot beside Ciar's McLaren, my hand outstretched toward the handle of the driver's door. I blinked.

The last thing I remembered was sitting inside the garage as Tilda's voice rose from within to surround me.

No. This can't be happening again.

I stumbled backward, flailing for something to grab onto to steady myself. I only found Donovan's arm as he reached for me again.

He stared at me, lips parted just a sliver, and I wrestled with a sudden swirl of Tilda that demanded I close the distance between us.

"I'm fine," I said, hoping he couldn't hear the valiant effort behind those words.

"You're not fine." He rotated my arm gently as I tried to pull away. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

I relaxed a hair. Physical wounds were okay. He wouldn't run away when he saw their extent. They were a safe topic for him to focus on, so I let him lead me back into the garage and sit me back down behind the desk.

I winced as I leaned back in the chair. Whatever adrenaline had kicked in in the wake of the crash, it had erased the bruise of the impact from between my shoulder blades. Now it returned in full force, and I clenched my teeth to keep a hiss contained.

Donovan disappeared and returned with a damp cloth, then knelt in front of me and took my hand. My breath caught; was this what Tilda had seen as he proposed?

Tilda. The parking lot. How had I gotten out there? It was such a short distance, it almost shouldn't have mattered—and it wouldn't, if my history of blackouts wasn't tied to my psychiatric issues.

I must have tensed, because Donovan made a shushing sound. "Relax, it's okay," he soothed, as if I was a wild animal.

I tried to smile at him, I really did, but it felt more like a grimace. It was as far from okay as it could possibly be. Why had I ever let Tilda out? I knew what happened when she took over. I knew what I became, and I knew that sometimes, I disappeared completely.

I closed my eyes and clung to the sting of my forearms as Donovan wiped the dried blood away. The pain was mine, completely mine, something that she couldn't and wouldn't ever feel because she was dead.

She's dead, I repeated over and over, waiting for it to sink in and chase her completely from whatever corner of my body she hid in. But it hadn't worked in five years, and I didn't really expect it to now.

"Ciar told me what happened," Donovan said, shattering my concentration.

"He did?"

Donovan nodded. "He called me. He's getting your car off the side of the road. Here." He swapped the towel for a plastic bag, which he set in my lap. "I brought you a change of clothes."

I just stared at him dumbly, unable to form a coherent thought. I told myself it was just the accident finally catching up to me, and I knew he thought that too—that I was in shock. But truth be told, if he hadn't reminded me of the cuts and aches, I probably wouldn't have even remembered.

I let him help me up and guide me to the bathroom, and as I locked the door and turned to the mirror, my reflection punched me back to reality.

I wasn't Tilda. As I stared at my own hollow cheeks, I remembered her plump ones as she smiled beside Donovan on that pier in Provincetown. I was her specter, a gaunt ghost—quite literally, what she might look like if she came back from the dead. With grit and grime smeared across my face, I couldn't fathom a reason why he wouldn't have disappeared from my life.

I turned the faucet on full blast and scrubbed furiously at my hands and arms. The crisscrossing scrapes burned, but I welcomed their pain. I splashed water on my face, turned the tap off, and yanked open the plastic bag Donovan had given me.

Her clothes stared back at me, innocent enough. Jeans, a t-shirt—things anyone would wear. But they were still hers.

Desperately, I probed my own memory, trying to find the piece of it that had carried me from the desk to the parking lot. It had to exist somewhere.

Instinctively, I reached for the mirror. My hand hit the wall before I realized that I wasn't in my San Francisco apartment, and there was no medicine cabinet behind the glass. No more pills that could make it all okay again.

Why did I ever say I wanted to try to be okay without them?

I'd insisted on weaning myself off the meds, and for a while I was fine. But maybe Mark was right. Boston was a terrible idea.

A bang on the door made me jump a foot in the air. "You okay in there, Maisye?" Donovan's voice wafted through the thin wood.

"Fine," I called back, wondering how many times I'd use that word before someone called me out on the lie.

With another glance in the mirror, I weighed my options: Suck it up and wear her clothes, hoping I'd be able to keep her voice at bay; or walk out there in my current state, which I now realized included a shirt torn enough at the waist to expose parts of me I didn't want out in the open.

I gave the clothes one last glance and yanked the door open.

Donovan's face greeted me, only inches from my nose. Had he been listening at the door this whole time? What had he heard? I liked to think I was pretty good at the whole silent panic thing, but what if something had escaped?

"You didn't like the clothes?" he asked, prying the bag gently from my clenched fists.

"I, um...." I stared at my shoes, then his, and back again. "Red's not really my color."

"Are you kidding?" I heard the smile in his voice, and when I looked up I found it crawling its way slowly across his lips. "Red is absolutely your color, Maisye."

"Really?"

"Yeah. God, yeah. The dress you wore to that gallery opening...."

As he paused and licked his lips, my flaming face felt the same shade as that dress had been.

Damn you, Clarissa!

It wasn't like I hadn't known that was why she dressed me in that outfit. I was there to catch his attention, nothing more. Not as a professional. Not as a talented photographer. As a decoy, bait for her to reel in the one that kept getting away.

Donovan sighed, giving me a lopsided, sheepish grin. "Look, if you don't like those ones, why don't we go home, find something you like? You should change."

I swallowed back the sour taste in my mouth. "Home sounds good." I needed somewhere I could be alone in peace. Someplace I could lock myself in a room where lost time wouldn't matter.

Donovan offered his hand, and after a moment's hesitation, I took it. His fingers laced through mine, surprising me into silence as he pulled me along. I wished he would look at me head-on, because from the side it was easier to forget how much he looked like Mark. And I needed Mark right now, beside me, supporting me, telling me I could handle this. I could handle Boston.

All I heard was his sigh over the phone. I don't think that's a good idea.

I dug my fingers into the back of Donovan's hand and followed him out to his Tesla.