Cooper crouched over the toilet, limbs shaking as he braced his hands against the cool porcelain.

Another nightmare. He squeezed his eyes shut, wrestling with the nausea that had woken him. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.

He stumbled over to the sink and splashed his face with cold water. Most mornings, he liked to take a shower before class. But there wasn't time for that. Not today.

Not with Calla breathing down his neck.

I need you to do something for me.

Cooper still couldn't believe he'd agreed to help her. Admittedly, she wasn't asking for much—just a few harmless insights into his professor's life, like his habits or his favorite restaurant or the name of his golden retriever. Random, meaningless information...

Cooper hadn't been able to refuse her. And not because she'd charmed him, as she'd charmed so many others in her life to do her bidding. But because if he didn't help her, she would take matters into her own hands and upend the life he'd built down at Penn State, fragile as it was. Her presence alone would likely put Vincent right in the middle of things—things he had no business being in the middle of.

She'd left him with no choice, really.

Cooper shrugged into his usual uniform—a pair of worn jeans and the only hoodie he could find that didn't still smell like Lauren—and left the apartment, his backpack slung over his shoulder. Wintery air pinched the back of his neck, an unwelcome reminder of the turning season.

Leery of the cold, he hurried across campus and slipped into the empty lecture hall he called home each Tuesday and Thursday morning. This had better be worth it, he thought as he dropped his bag and took his usual seat. Right on cue, his phone chirped with an incoming text. He silenced it quickly, overly paranoid, and scowled when he snuck a surreptitious glance at the screen.

Calla: Don't overthink this.

Oh, easy for you to—

The door to his left burst open. Cooper flinched, but it was just a student with an oversized backpack and a bad haircut. He took a seat two rows ahead of Cooper without so much as a cursory glance his way.

Cooper stowed his phone with a silent curse. He didn't trust himself to respond to her. Not yet. Not with his temper so close to its breaking point.

The door opened a second time. Another student slipped inside. And then, behind them—

"Morning," Professor Li greeted the near-empty lecture hall.

The girl in the front row mumbled a placid response. Cooper said nothing, his stomach twisted in knots. He busied himself with his laptop while, out of the corner of his eye, he kept watch over his anthropology professor.

Lenny Li was an unimposing sort of man—reserved and well-spoken and a bit restless, the way Cooper had a tendency to be. His hands were never still, moving with practiced efficiency as he unpacked his bag, reaching first for a laptop, and then a stack of papers, a worn water bottle, what looked an awful lot like an orange pill bottle—

Pills. Cooper tracked Professor Li as he excused himself from the room, empty water bottle in hand. Some sort of prescription, I'd bet.

Cooper eyed the clock on the wall, wrestling with the urge to rush up to the podium to get a closer look at the pills. Not possible. More students were arriving by the second, filing into the lecture hall with weary, bed-ridden eyes.

Professor Li returned after just over a minute, his water bottle notably full. He was only gone seventy, maybe eighty seconds, tops. Cooper feigned interest in his laptop, keeping one eye on the professor as he popped a small, unremarkable white pill into his mouth. His spirits sank when Professor Li tucked the bottle back into his bag, out of sight.

Calla would want to know what those pills were for. Anxiety meds, maybe. Or antibiotics. Cooper scrubbed at his eyes, frustrated he hadn't learned more.

He spent the remainder of class attempting to pay attention to the lecture—something about ancient burial customs, the irony of which was not lost on him—but it was no good. His mind was elsewhere, wondering how and where his professor would die and what role Cooper would play in that eventuality.

He doesn't deserve to die, Cooper found himself thinking. And then: But neither did Margaret Yate.

Cooper felt his guilt subside. A cold sort of detachment filled the void his guilty conscience left behind.

And for the first time, he thought he understood how it felt to be Calla Parker.

# # #

Two days later, Cooper yet again found himself on campus at what Vincent would have proclaimed an ungodly hour. He stopped only once to grab a coffee—doused in enough sugar to send an elephant into cardiac arrest—before he (rather grudgingly) trudged into the anthropology building.

He bypassed his usual seat in favor of a spot down in the front row. If the plan he'd cobbled together last night had any chance at success, he'd have to get as close as possible to Professor Li from the onset, uncomfortable though the prospect was. 

Cooper's leg bounced as he watched first one student enter the lecture hall, and then two and then four and then nine, and he'd just started to wonder if his sleepless nights had been for nothing at all when the door opened again and—

"Morning." Professor Li's habitual greeting very nearly broke Cooper's resolve.

Margaret Yate. Margaret Yate. Margaret Yate.

Cooper repeated the name as one might repeat a prayer, forcing himself to unpack his bag while Professor Li did the same, arranging each item on the podium with practiced efficiency. Laptop. Papers. Water bottle. Pills.

Now.

Cooper flicked his favorite pen across the floor, where it spiraled, seemingly at random, near the foot of the podium.

Professor Li either didn't notice, or he didn't care—or maybe it was a bit of both—because he exited the lecture hall without a backward glance, empty water bottle hanging from his fingertips, completely unaware that as Cooper stood to retrieve his pen, he lingered a second longer than another student would have, seemingly distracted by the portrait of a golden retriever on the professor's computer screen.

He straightened, eyes narrowed as he tried to make out the writing on the little orange bottle balanced on the edge of the podium: XANAX, 0.25mg.

A sense of both victory and dread threatened to paralyze him, but then the door opened and the pen was in his hand and he reclaimed his seat on shaking legs, moving at an easy, measured pace completely at odds with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He could barely keep his seat through the lecture; twice, he almost made a break for the front door. Only the thought of what Calla might say when he called her after the fact kept him in place, unsure of himself.

"Margaret Yate," he muttered after Professor Li had released them, and the name was enough to propel him out of his seat and through the side door, out into the bright sunshine beyond. He dialed Calla's number before he could lose his nerve.

"What?"

Brusque, as usual. Her reliable, if not prickly nature calmed him. "Professor Li takes meds. Every morning, looks like."

"Meds?" Calla's voice came into sharp focus on the other end of the line. "What kind of meds?"

"Xanax."

"Did you get a look at the dosage? Were they little white pills, or orange?"

So Cooper told her everything he knew. The dosage. The shape and color and quantity of the little white pills in the little orange bottle—guesstimates, he warned her, and nothing more. Regardless, she sounded pleased. More than pleased. And with each passing second, the hard knot in his gut loosened.

It's done. My work in this is done.

He paused in the middle of the lawn, his face upturned to catch what little warmth the sun had left to offer this time of year.

A familiar voice called out to him from the other side of the lawn, and he blinked, thrown, as he tried to make out who it could be. "I've gotta go," Cooper said into the phone, ending the call.

His vision shifted as his eyes adjusted to the harsh winter light, and he saw her clearly then.

Lauren.

He resisted the urge to meet her halfway out on the lawn, and instead watched as she tiptoed across the grass, mindful of the giant puddle that had formed after the storms passed through two days earlier. "Coop," she said once she was closer. "Hey. How have you been?"

We're done, Coop. I'll drop off your shit tomorrow.

Her last words stuck with him, even now. They were the same words that had driven him north, to Calla. The same words that had inadvertently gotten him where he was now—spying on his professor and trying not to think too hard about the fact that one of his closest childhood friends was a hitman.

Resentment and longing rose in him as Lauren smiled, hesitant, and something about that smile reminded him of Tracy Smith the night she died, looking at him as though he were little more than a stain on the side of a pair of shoes she didn't particularly care about anymore and had every intention of throwing out.

He almost turned away. Maybe he should've. But he didn't. He couldn't. 

"I'm fine." He glanced over his shoulder. Any excuse not to look at her with that false smile plastered on her lips, as if their last conversation had never happened—or maybe as if it had never mattered, not to her, even if it had mattered to him. "Look, Lauren. I've gotta head to class—"

"Of course. Right." She fiddled with the strings of her pink sweatshirt. Ballerina pink. Ballerina pink like Tracy. Ballerina pink like a dead girl with a dead smile answering the door to a dead mansion no one wanted to live in anymore. "It's just...I've been doing a lot of thinking about what you said, Coop, and I feel like I overreacted before, and I guess I was wondering if you maybe wanted to grab dinner sometime, so we can...talk." A blush crept across her cheeks. "Or whatever."

If he'd had trouble meeting her eye before, Cooper suddenly couldn't look away from her now. "Talk about what?"

Her blush deepened. "About us. I took you for granted, and I know that and I'm sorry. I just want us to be good again. Like we were."

He hated himself for even considering the offer, but her words triggered memories of days past—hours spent at the library and more hours still on his couch, her head on his chest and his arms around her waist, wondering is this what happily ever after looks like? 

That question had kept him up at night, right alongside the nightmares and the growing doubt inside him that screamed, if it is happily ever after, it isn't enough, it isn't enough, why isn't it enough?

Cooper met her hopeful gaze. "No," he said.

The color slowly drained from her face. "Oh," she whispered.

"I'm sorry." He ignored the urge to comfort her, to give her the yes she so clearly desired. "I don't think dinner is a good idea."

"It doesn't have to be dinner," she blurted. "We could just—"

He stopped her with a shake of his head. "No. You were right. Things between us...they just weren't working." He shoved his hands in his pockets to resist reaching for her. "I hope you find someone who can make you happy. I'm not that person. And I really don't think I ever was."

As he turned to go, striding across the lawn with more purpose than he'd had in days, Cooper hoped that Lauren would find someone who could make her happy—and another part of him hoped that he could find that someone, too.