I wanted to tell him to say my name, to hear which one would come out. I didn't really care. I would have responded to either. I just needed to know.

But his hands wandered down the curve of my hips to my thighs, lifting me onto the island. The sight of him there between my knees drove everything from my thoughts in a wave of pure insanity.

Maybe we were using each other. Maybe I was someone else to him, and he was someone else to me. Or maybe I was Tillie and he was Donovan Cosgrave, and time had turned back to when we were both whole.

It didn't matter, because our lips fit together like they'd been made for each other. Like we'd been made for each other.

"Say my name," he begged, pressing kisses into my neck. His hands slid up my thighs, dangerously close to the hem of my skirt.

My lips parted, one word on the tip of my tongue. Only one. There was no question. Tilda wrapped herself around my throat. She was in control.

The slam of the screen door tore us apart before I had time to answer. Heart racing, I clutched at his shoulders. Tilda faded, leaving me emptier than the simple loss of contact as Donovan stepped away. I reached for her, but she was a ghost, after all. Any hand I extended would have passed through her like nothing.

"Just like old times, huh?"

My head snapped up as Ciar ambled into the kitchen.

"Tillie," he greeted me.

I wondered if he knew the truth, that half of me was her tonight, and that half purred against my gut as he acknowledged it.

"Ciar," Donovan warned.

He only shrugged.

"Where's your girlfriend?" I asked, hoping the hard edge in my voice masked the sudden weakness I felt as Tilda receded from my consciousness.

Don't go. I need you.

Her shameless confidence seeped from my bones, deflating me. I jumped down off the counter, my shoulder bumping against Donovan's chest. I didn't look up as I stalked back across the kitchen and out the back door, into the night.

The party, still in full swing, masked my re-entry. The music pummeled my nerves, urging me to get away. As my hands started to shake, I grasped feebly at anything that could anchor me to Tilda, to the intoxicating certainty that she had lent me.

My eyes wandered past the crowd around the punch bowl, toward the backs of the houses on the next street over and, somewhere beyond that, the river.

The river.

It sat just out of sight beyond those houses. I knew because I'd searched this address on Google Maps before Clarissa had picked me up. And there it had been, an innocent ribbon of blue in the background, just out of reach.

The Mystic.

I slipped between the two nearest houses, walking along the line of shrubs that separated them. I crossed the street and trespassed on the next set of lawns, and there it was.

It looked innocent enough: a lazy current almost invisible in the night, but I could still hear it whispering to me. Come closer. Maybe I'd find Tilda at its bank.

"Maisye, wait!"

I was three feet from the river's edge when Donovan's voice cut through the night. I recognized it; it was the same one I'd used to call out to Mark as he walked away through the halls of Laurel Valley. I could still feel the stack of divorce papers crumpling in my fists as I pressed myself against the glass and begged him to turn around, even if it was only to glance back at what he was leaving behind.

I spared that for Donovan now, but seeing the desperation etched into his face couldn't stop me. Not tonight. I needed to be close to Tilda.

I needed her.

"T—Maisye, stop! Please!"

I bent down to slip my shoes off, tossing them into the grass beside the riverbank.

"Don't! Please!"

His voice was hoarse as he shouted, but the river murmured to me. The swish of it past the grass along its edge lilted like soothing poetry, assuring me that Tilda was only a few steps away.

I closed the distance, treading carefully as the bank dipped abruptly. Finally, my feet hit the water, and I stopped for a moment, tilting my head up toward the sky as I let the river's surface tickle my ankles.

"Maisye!"

The way the shout tore from his throat, raw and soul-destroying and broken, made me glance back over my shoulder. He hovered several feet from the bank with his arm outstretched, like a step closer would risk tumbling in.

"Please, come here," he begged. "Come back."

I heard his words from the other night, bouncing from my head straight to the cavity of my chest. "I can't lose you again."

The water lapped at my skin, tugging at me.

"Tillie!" Donovan barked. "Tillie, please! Don't do this again!"

The combination of her name and the urgency in his voice sheared the night. I flinched, turning away. He didn't understand. I wasn't Tilda. Not yet. I had to get further out.

And then Ciar's voice joined his brother's from behind me. "What's going on out here?"

I spun around, scowling, the water sloshing at my feet. It was his fault Tilda had left me in the first place, and I wanted him to be just as afraid.

But he only hung back behind Donovan, hands shoved deep in his pockets as he surveyed the scene with lazy indifference.

"Please," Donovan whispered, his eyes red around the edges. "It's too dangerous."

I blinked. Danger wasn't a word that registered in my brain. It meant nothing, just a sound in the darkness. What was it if the river swept me away? It had taken her, too.

Ciar shuffled forward until he stood just behind Donovan and his desperate, outstretched hand. His eyes flicked from me to the river and back again, a languid circle.

The corner of my lip twitched. Did he really think he was going to convince me to come out? That he cared enough to consider my safety?

"Can't swim in this part of the river, Flash," he finally said. "It's polluted as hell. You really want that all up in every crevice?"

I glanced down at where my feet disappeared under the current. Was he just pulling my leg? I took a cautious breath through my nose, searching for the bitter bite of refuse in the air rising off the river, but I couldn't separate it from the smell of the city.

I wavered. If I was going to die, I'd rather it be swift than by catching some disease from an infected river.

I took a step back toward the shore. As I clambered up the bank, Donovan lunged forward, grabbing me the second I was within reach. Ciar stood back, hands idling in his pockets as he watched his brother haul me out.

Donovan clutched me to his chest in a bone-crushing embrace, one that squeezed all the air from my lungs. I melted into him. I might not be Tilda anymore, but I was still Maisye—a woman broken and abandoned and insecure. I needed to be needed, and he filled that cavernous void in my soul.

A shrill ring split the night, and we broke apart as Donovan started rummaging in his pockets. He pulled out his phone, pressing it to his ear as he backed off a few paces.

"Hello? Yeah. You got it? Great." A pause. "What do you need me for?"

His eyes cut to me, and he sighed.

"Fine. Give me twenty minutes."

I watched as he hung up the phone and turned to Ciar. "I gotta go. Make sure she gets home?"

I gaped as Ciar nodded.

"Wait!" I exclaimed, rushing after him to grab him by the arm. "Where are you going?"

He ran a hand through his hair, pursing his lips. "It's work. I'm sorry. I—"

His eyes softened as he looked down at me. He must have seen my wild eyes, must have felt the iron grip of my fists on the sleeves of his shirt. He couldn't leave me, again.

"If I could stay, I would." He leaned down and pressed a warm, gentle kiss to my forehead.

I shivered against him, wishing we could stay like that forever.

"Go with Ciar. I'll call you tomorrow."

As he untangled himself from me and backed away, I wrapped my own arms around myself and tried to believe they were enough.

They had always been enough.