Handcuffs weren't comfortable. Neither was the cement floor of a holding cell, the bars digging into my back as I sat across from Ciar and gave him a glare that should have vaporized him on the spot.

"Come sit, Flash." He patted the spot on the bench beside him.

I just blinked. Even if I didn't hate him right now, it didn't really look any more comfortable than the floor.

He gave me an exasperated sigh. "Come on, don't be silly. I know your butt fell asleep like an hour ago."

"You got me arrested," I grouched.

He rolled his eyes. "Obviously, I didn't know that was gonna happen."

"Why did you bring me there? You had to know they would think I was her."

"You seemed okay with that when my brother was doing it."

I lifted my chin. My head bumped against the bars behind me, and I let it rest there. "What am I to you?" I asked, staring at him through half-closed eyes. "Just another game to play with him? See if you can make it happen a second time?"

"Make what happen?" he asked, his voice cutting the air like a hot knife.

I idly jiggled my foot. "I don't know. Maybe the reason she jumped was because she couldn't live with the guilt of cheating on her fiancé with his brother."

He lurched to his feet, jaw clenched and hands twitching at his sides. "You don't know the first thing about what was going on—"

"Then tell me!" I glared up at him, refusing to let him intimidate me. "Because you sure left out a lot last night while you were doing the exact same thing to me!"

"You kissed me!"

"I did not!"

"You don't even remember calling me, Flash. I don't trust your memory as far as I can throw my Mustang."

I snapped my mouth shut. That was a cheap shot, and he didn't even know it. He wasn't there for the pile of medications and the nights I'd been too scared to fall asleep because I never knew where I'd wake up. He didn't get to use them against me.

"I think you're angry because Tilda wasn't as perfect as you thought she was," he said when I didn't respond.

"Of course she wasn't perfect!" I hissed. "She spent most of high school making moves on my boyfriends, and the only reason she didn't do it to the girlfriends too was because she wasn't into that!"

His head jerked a little, but if my random coming out surprised him, he didn't give it a voice. Instead, he simply plopped back down and asked, "Then why are you surprised?"

I looked down, picking at the inseam of my jeans. "Marriage is different. Real life isn't high school. Those boys never loved her. Not the way Donovan did."

Ciar went deathly still. His fingers, which had drummed silently against his thigh, ground to a halt. His gaze seared into the side of my face, even as I avoided looking at him.

Finally, he crossed his ankles. "Yeah. The way he did."

I propped my elbow on my knee and let my chin rest on it. "What do you know that you aren't telling me?"

Again, he hesitated. "I don't get what you're all worked up about. I already told you she was with both of us at the same time."

"You said she didn't dump either of you at first," I corrected.

"Fine." He rolled his shoulders, tilting his head back and staring down the bridge of his nose at me. "She didn't dump either of us, ever. I broke it off when I found out she was seeing him. Least I could do, seeing as I'm the idiot who introduced them."

I threw my hands up. "Then explain tonight."

This time I held his gaze, daring him to back down. He didn't. His blue eyes sent icicles straight to my heart. Donovan might have been through hell and back after Tilda's death, but Ciar had the frigid edge of someone who had never left.

"She never stopped wearing those skirts," he said.

"So she was asking for it." I raised my eyebrows, letting him know that wasn't going to fly.

"No. But she knew where I was weak and she went for it. Go ahead." He flapped his hand at me. "Call me an idiot. A slave to my desires. I am. I was. I wish I'd never done it. I wish I'd stayed away from her at that first bonfire. She wasn't worth it."

There it was again. That sentiment I'd never understand because to me, Tilda was everything. For all of my childhood, she was all I had. The only one who never left when everyone else around us did. And she wasn't worth it? Those words slit the barriers I'd built, right through my thickened skin. As he stared down at me, I bled silently, and he didn't even notice.

"Hey." The bars rattled against my back, and I jumped up as an officer slid a key into the lock on the other side.

Ciar stood, too. "Look, she didn't do anything," he said, pointing at me. "She didn't even know I was gonna—"

"Save it, Cosgrave." She jerked her chin toward the front of the station. "Time to go."

"Where are you taking us?" I blurted as the cell swung open.

"Nowhere. You're free to go. Get outta here. And you"—she jabbed a finger at Ciar—"I don't want to see you in here again."

She stepped aside, and we exchanged a glance before testing our freedom. No one stopped us as we shuffled cautiously to the exit.

"What just happened?" I whispered.

"Someone bailed us out."

"Well where are they?" Wasn't that how it worked? Whoever paid off the cops to drop your charges was supposed to meet you as you got released, right? I'd seen it in movies.

Ciar shrugged. "Maybe they want to remain anonymous."

Clarissa. Of course it was her. And I was sure the second Ciar and I separated, she'd swoop in and berate me about how all the agreements I'd signed had made it perfectly clear that I was not allowed to break the law while I was working with her.

Trying to put that moment off as long as possible, I cleared my throat and glanced at Ciar. "So, what do you normally do when you get out of jail?"

He lifted one shoulder. "Depends who got thrown in with me."

"What would you do if it was Tilda?"

The sudden absence of his breaths deafened me, and I stumbled to a stop, biting my lip before I could blurt an apology. The silence stretched, thinner and thinner, like a wad of putty pulled every which way. It wound around us, sticking to the air between us, to the insides of my lungs.

"You don't want to know," he said, his eyes darkening with each word.

I blinked, slowly releasing my lip from the prison of my teeth. He'd already told me where he was weak, and I wasn't afraid to use it.

"Maybe I do," I challenged him.

"Maybe I don't want to tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because it's between me and her."

"She's dead."

"Yeah." He tilted his head up toward the sky, letting a slow, dry laugh reach for the stars. "Shoulda stayed that way, but you couldn't let that happen, could you?"

The words hit me like a punch to the stomach. I knew what he meant—that I'd dredged up old, painful memories—and I knew it was justified. But for anyone to wish that Tilda wasn't alive at this very moment seemed like blasphemy, no matter what she'd done.

He must have seen the glitter in my eyes as I fought the moisture pooling there. He stayed quiet, though, just watching as I pulled the remaining pieces of myself together into something resembling a whole.

"I had the chance to, you know," I finally murmured, staring at my shoes. "Five years ago. I almost ended everything, exactly the way she did. I know what it's like to stand on a bridge and look down at the water and feel your own irrelevance as every single car passes by without a second thought. And if you really want to know who Mark is, he's the one who stopped me."

The tiny whoosh of his breath spilled into the space between us. His stare burned into the side of my face, and I turned my head just enough that I couldn't even see him from the corner of my eye. Memories—of happy summers with Mark, his shining face as he thought about starting a family, the way he'd held me on the Golden Gate Bridge even though I was a stranger—flared up behind the blur of my tears, but I swallowed them back.

Ciar's mouth popped open, a sharp inhale warning me of a question to come. I shook my head, silencing him before he could start.

I folded my arms and forced myself to turn back to him. He looked like I'd sliced him open, pain and wariness warring in his eyes.

I ignored it, my nostrils flaring as I tried not to choke on my own breaths. "So if you want to blame someone for the fact that I'm not dead, blame him. God knows he deserves it."

I took a step away, suddenly more than willing to listen to Clarissa's rant, but he seized my wrist before I could flee.

"Maisye, I didn't mean—"

The clearing of a throat froze us both, and as a shadowy figure parted from the pool of darkness under a broken streetlight, I realized that Clarissa hadn't bribed anyone to release us.

Donovan had.