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I heard Alona's sharp intake of breath behind me and turned quickly to face her. “I didn't mean you.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Why not? The same rules that apply to Erin apply to me, too. That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

“It's different,” I insisted. “You were sent back for a reason, even if no one spelled out what it was.”

“Glad to hear you think so now,” she said quietly.

Ed, of course, noticed none of this. He forced a laugh. “Let people go? You keep telling yourself that, man. Let me know how it works out for you in real life.”

Damn it. Drunk and ridiculous, Ed had a point.

I followed Will down the stairs after he stormed past me. He started pacing the empty living room, back and forth in front of the windows in the rapidly fading squares of sunlight on the carpet.

I leaned against the wall in the foyer and watched. The frustration rolled off him in nearly visible waves, and I felt a pang of sympathy for him. He was doing his best. That being said, I couldn't leave it like this. We couldn't just hangout in an empty house and hope for all of this to resolve itself. I mean, I guess we could have, but not without a lot of the collateral damage we were hoping to avoid. “So, what now?” I asked.

Will stopped to glare at me. “I don't know, okay?” He rubbed his hands over his face. “You were right,” he said, his voice muffled. “This was a stupid plan.”

He sounded miserable, and it tugged at me in a way I normally would have worked very hard to ignore. Except… this was it. The end. In that knowledge, I felt a reassurance and freedom I'd never experienced before.

I straightened up and approached him cautiously, my steps soundless on the carpet. When I touched his shoulder, he jerked his head up, startled.

“It's all right,” I said. “It wasn't a stupid plan. There were just more variables than we counted on, is all.” Actually, more variables than he had counted on. I'd foreseen that Ed might not be as easy to maneuver as Will had thought, and Will might have avoided some of this if he'd listened to me. But I saw no point in bringing that up now and making him feel worse. Hey, look at me, growing as a person.

He laughed bitterly. “You can't fool me. You're gloating on the inside. You tried to tell me, and I wouldn't listen.”

That stung. Maybe I wasn't perfect yet, but I was trying. I pulled back from him, but to my surprise, he reached out and enfolded me in his arms, pulling me closer and burying his face against my neck. “I'm sorry. I just want everything to be easier, like it was before,” he whispered, his lips moving against my skin.

For some stupid reason, this sparked tears in my eyes. I gave a shaky laugh. “Who doesn't?” I smoothed his hair down; it was softer than it looked and shorter than it had been when I'd first been forced to take real notice of him. The idea that at some point he'd gone out and gotten a haircut without my knowing made my heart ache. He had a life without me, and he would continue to once I was gone. It was ridiculous to get upset about it, and I knew that, but I couldn't quite stop myself, either.

I blinked a bunch of times, trying to get my emotions under control, and cleared my throat. “You know, it wasn't so great before. I was kind of a bitch sometimes, and you were hiding from everything.”

He laughed, and I felt the vibration of it beneath my hand on his back. I would miss this. I would miss him.

“It just seems harder now because we're not used to this,” I continued, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Not used to being something other than what we were.”

“You are so damned practical,” he said with another laugh, one that held more than a little sadness. He leaned back from me without letting go and reached up to touch my face, brushing his thumb across my cheek, maybe to catch a tear that had somehow escaped. “No one would have ever guessed that before, least of all me.”

I could see the warmth in his gaze and sense the words rising up inside him, words that not a single person had ever said to me and actually meant. My mom loved that she had had someone else to blame. My dad loved that he'd had someone else to clean up his mess. My ex-boyfriend Chris had apparently loved someone else entirely.…“Don't,” I said quickly, pushing away from him.

He frowned. “Why not?”

Because Will knew me in a way those other people hadn't, and I might have believed him. And that seemed way too dangerous, especially now. I stepped back from him and wiped under my eyes, as though my mascara would run. “It doesn't change anything,” I said in my haughtiest tone.

Which rolled off him like I hadn't said anything. “If things were different…” he began.

“But they're not,” I reminded him.

“They could be.”

He meant being Ally again for good. If we could track Erin down, if it was even possible that that arrangement could last, if I wanted to literally be someone else for the rest of my life… if, if, if…“Maybe.”

He sighed and walked a few steps away before turning back to face me. “What do you want to do?”