I’m going to make sure of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  BAD AUGUST

  EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN

  It must be a spectacular sunrise out there, because the room is bathed in a thousand shades of red and orange, like I’ve never seen before. It casts everything in a glorious glow, a shining mockery of my life and what I’m about to do.

  Because for all that, August is all I see.

  The whole night, we lay with our arms wrapped around each other. Sleep was fleeting, snaps and gasps, because I didn’t want to miss anything. This is the only time the two of us will ever be happy together. It’s the only time we’ll ever be together at all.

  I’ve spent hours meditating on what’s right. Do you tell someone the truth when you know it will hurt them? Would it hurt him more to never know why I’m doing this?

  I can’t stand the thought of him wondering whether I chose to leave him. Doubting himself. Thinking he wasn’t enough.

  Equally, I hate the weight of what I’m about to put on him.

  Maybe if I didn’t tell him, he’d move on and forget me. Maybe I’d become nothing more than a terrible memory, some prick who used him and left. Maybe he’d find consolation in the arms of someone else. Someone who would love him the way I could.

  Impossible.

  No one could love him that way.

  No one would have this black hole swirling and churning in their gut, like it’s swallowing their insides whole, at the thought of upsetting him.

  He’s a part of me. And I can’t stand to leave him.

  His eyelashes are long, his smile slight, his face perfectly at peace in the scarlet dawn. Arms stretched over his head, body long and lean, he’s a man who knows he’s safe and adored. Like he always should be.

  But it’s time.

  I’m quiet, skirting the bed. Not a sound as I find my clothes, slip back into them. I’m careful not to scuff a shoe or crunch any of the items we tossed off the bed last night.

  The first sound to reach him is the click of his handcuffs closing.

  His eyelids flutter, blink, then open properly. The room in red, the restraints on his wrists… then me, sitting here on the side of his bed.

  He pulls his arms, trying the cuffs, then stares at me, bewildered.

  I lean in, kiss him goodbye.

  But he smiles. “You’re the best thing I could have woken up to.” He arches forward, takes another kiss, kicks the sheet off his naked body, and wraps a leg around me. “I have been dying all night to fuck you again.”

  It’s painfully tempting. But I already feel like a sack of dried shit, and I’m not going to do this to him. “August… Listen. Um.” I pull the sheet up a little, letting it settle softly across his midline. “All that stuff I said last night about not developing feelings…”

  He watches me, waiting, bated breath.

  “I’ve developed them. I have strong and undeniable feelings for you.”

  “Yes!” he cries, his grin delicious. “Sex worked!”

  Even given the gravity of the situation, a smile catches me off guard. “It was very dishonest of you to manipulate me like that.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?” He kicks the sheet back down, exposing his gorgeous body in full, his dick ready for me, and close to impossible to resist.

  I make myself grab the sheet, but this time I pull it right up to his chin, settling a hand across his throat to hold it there. “I’m sorry.”

  His face falls slowly as the realisation settles. He shuffles a little way up the bed to sit up as much as he can.

  I hate this. I hate it so much.

  I force out the words: “I’m leaving.”

  “You’re not.” That simple denial of reality sums up our whole short relationship.

  Impossible.

  Not real.

  Words that show he takes my full meaning, but refuses to believe it.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “Then don’t.” His tone’s turned sharp, tipped with anger and fear, but not half so much as his eyes that I can’t bear to look into.

  Dropping mine to the white sheets, I make my request softly. “Listen to me. I have things to tell you.”

  “No.” I can hear the tears in his voice, and when I make myself look up, his cheeks are already wet, just the same as mine. I move a little closer to him, as close as I can be this last time, and hold his gaze. “I’ve been misleading you. This whole time. About everything.”

  “Misleading me?” The words eke out of him with the clear stain of betrayal.

  “Not about how much I want you. Or about how I want to be with you. August, you need to believe me, that’s the only true thing in my life. In this world. In all the worlds, the way I feel about you is all that’s solid and true. Believe that. And know it’s why I’m doing this.”

  “You don’t walk out on people you care about,” he whispers. “You know that. You know that better than anyone.”

  The sting of abandonment redoubles on both of us.

  It’s not as though our parents had any choice but to die. Yet we still feel it. The hopelessness of someone being ripped away. Gone forever, just like that. The way we put that blame onto their corpses and their memory, whether it’s logical or not.

  I try to calm him, reframe it. “Do you remember when I got here? And I told you about the coffee? That it was overflowing?”

  “Yes. But you said you would fix it.” The accusation sparks crystal clear in his tone.

  “I tried to.”

  “Try harder!” he shouts.

  “I can’t. I’ve done everything. And the thing is… The thing that I didn’t want to tell you…” It’s a short moment of relative peace when my eyes close on the scene, before I force myself to meet his heartbreak head on. “August, you said last night you wouldn’t want to know if you were going to die.”

  He stops fighting the cuffs, stares at me, wide-eyed.

  “You’re not going to,” I tell him quickly. “Because I’m not going to let that happen. But as long as I’m here, your reality gets worse.”

  “I know.” He yanks at the chains, curling his legs to face me. “You already told me that. And you were working on it—we were working on it. Why is anything changing? Why today?”

  “I lied.” There it is. Two small words, out in the open. A gateway to all the horror of the things I’ve done. The person I really am. “A portal will open for me, and I will move on. Only…” Here it comes. “The portal doesn’t open until I’m the last thing left alive.”

  Horror dawns in his eyes, scanning me, as though desperate for a sign I’m lying.

  “You’ve seen it happening around us. You’ve slipped through time with me, you’ve felt the fabric of this world pulling apart.”

  “I haven’t. Not like you’re talking about.”

  “It’s getting worse, and it’s happening fast, and you can see that.”

  “We have time,” he protests. “We can fix this. Unchain me, I’ll help you⁠—”

  “We never had time, August. It’s moving on without us. You and me, we can’t be in the same place without destroying this world.”

  “No. That’s bullshit. It can’t be that bad.”

  I drop a finger over his lips to quiet him, so different to the last time I did it. “I just wanted to be near you. You bring me so much peace. So much happiness. Just by being close to me. That was selfish. But I am selfish. I’ve been a horrible person, more horrible than you know. I don’t deserve you, and I don’t deserve the…” I want to say love. I do. I don’t know the word for it if it’s not love. So I only tell him, “You’re too good for me. And I want you to know what I’ve done. All of it. So you’ll understand why I’m doing this. And what an awful person you’re wasting your time with.”

  “I don’t care.” He pulls away from the headboard, locking a leg around me, trying to hold me to him. “I don’t care if it was your maths or your formula that did it. I don’t care if you haven’t told me all the details. August, I don’t care. I don’t care. You’re good. You’re good, and I won’t ever believe otherwise.”

  I drop my hand to his leg, wanting more than anything to throw my arms around him, to cry against his chest.

  But it’s all false, whatever affection he might show me now. He won’t want me soon.

  “What I’ve done, it’s so much worse than anything you can imagine. I want to prepare you. But there’s nothing I can say that will do that. So…” I have to get it out quickly, before my need for his approval gets the better of me. “When I came to you, when I met you in the street, that wasn’t the first time I’d jumped worlds. I lied to you from that very first day.”

  His breath catches, dancing on his open lips, soundless.

  “I’ve done it before, countless times. Hundreds of times. I’ve been living in this loop for years. But it’s not a loop, not really. It’s a new universe every time.”

  He doesn’t say a word.

  “I have three weeks. Each time I hop worlds, it’s three weeks. I search, and I try to find the answer, the way to get back. I’ve done everything. I’ve done it over, and over, and over. I’ve found other quantum physicists. I’ve pleaded my case, begged them, held guns to their heads and made them work for me. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve met so many people. And I’ve destroyed them all.”

  His head shakes, my vision of him obscured by my tears flowing fast and free. “Every time, it’s the same. I come here, I search, and I try, then three weeks later, it’s all fallen apart. The world dies. Everything breaks. It must start in some distant part of the universe, and it falls away, piece by piece until one day, the final day, the portal opens. And I go through. Then it starts again. I leave chaos in my wake. I leave death everywhere I set foot.”

  My hand, on his leg, crumples into the sheet, desperate for the touch of him, the comfort I have no right to. “I did it. I did it all. It wasn’t ‘some physicist.’ It was me. I set off a chain reaction that ends only in death. Space, those stars, those moons and lonely rovers, all the things you find so beautiful… I rip them apart. I’ve destroyed every planet and every star, life I can’t even conceive of, tentative and miraculous. I’ve taken it and dismantled it.”

  He watches me, tears staining his face, but he’s not crying now. His face is horror. Aghast, as I knew it would be. The very vision I abhorred and ran from. The reason for every lie.

  “I didn’t mean to do it.” As though that could make any difference. “I made a mistake. One stupid mistake, driven by pain, by grief. Our parents died, then when Sarah died too…” It sounds so pathetic. So small. Such a hopeless explanation for all the things I’ve done. “I think I wanted to believe it was all theoretical. As though I’d have some distance, or it didn’t matter. It was just calculations, numbers, an experiment. So I did it. And August…”

  I pull my hand away from him, completely unworthy to touch him or be near him. But he locks his leg around me, and he holds on tight, while the whole thing comes out on a mess of tears. “I’m so terrified. Of me, and of what I’ve done. What I’m capable of. I can’t take this back. I can barely even let myself think about the enormity of it. I just keep going, acting like it’s nothing. Because I can’t survive if I don’t push this down.”

  My hands clench into fists lest they take hold of him again. “I have fucked up on a scale that literally no other person in existence can comprehend. And now I’m sentenced to watch myself destroy these worlds one after another. Every second of every existence, every heartbeat, every tear and raindrop and scatter of stardust, one miracle after another, I watch them fall apart. And it’s all my fault. And there is nothing I can do about it.”

  My hand drops to his chest, frenzied, clenching so that it hurts, begging for his understanding. “I want to put them back. It’s all I want. It’s all I’ve lived for. I’ve tried so hard. But it can’t be done.”

  “August…” His head drops to the side, tears trailing down his cheeks. “Please, I want to help you.”

  I let myself take a shaking hand to his cheek, the feel of him leaning into it like hot tar dousing my insides. “You did help me. More than you’ll ever know. Meeting you has changed everything.”

  I drop my forehead to his, breathe him in on hitching breaths, then press a kiss to his brow.

  He whispers, “Don’t leave me.”

  I hold him against my chest. “Me being here is what’s causing the problem. It must be. It follows me.”

  His head shakes against my body. “You can’t leave. You just said the portal won’t open until it’s all destroyed. You have nowhere to go. We have time.”

  “No. Not this time.” I kiss his forehead again, then make myself meet his eyes. “This time, I’m not going to wait for it to open. This time… I’m going first.”

  He stares back at me, trying to read my expression, while my heart sinks deep. “I don’t understand. Are you…” But he does understand. I see it dawn on him—the revulsion and the anger. “No. Let me go.” He rips at his binds, so I hold his hands back to stop him from hurting himself while he cries, “No. No, August, no.” He slams his hands down so hard trying to escape that it scares me, and I grip him twice as tight.

  “Please stop. There’s nothing you can do. Believe me, I know. I’ve killed so many people now. August, I’ve killed billions, billions, over and over. And I’ve tried so hard to put them back. I thought if I figured out how to tear it up, I could figure out how to fix it. That with enough time, I could put it back together. But I see now. It’s over. I’m not having any more death.”

  “You can’t do this,” he pleads.

  “I have to. I switched off. For so long, I stopped feeling. I just worked, and wandered, and let it keep on… but you…” My finger slides down his beautiful face. “You put all the feelings back in me. And I can’t face what I’ve done. So this is the last time. This is all the good I can do, to try to make up for the bad.” I take his face with both hands, and promise him, “You’re not going to die. You’re going to live. You’re not going to be my mistake.”

  “No.” He tears down hard against his too-strong restraints. “I don’t want you to do this.”

  Taking both his arms in mine, I hold him still. “You said it yourself. One man solving time travel? Impossible. And you were right.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I believe in you, August. You can do anything.”

  I take a final look at him, the man I adore, who’s shown me not just what’s worth living for, but what’s worth dying for. “I wish I were half the man you are. I wish I had been back then. I wouldn’t have done it. But I think I’m a little better now.”

  I pull away, tearing my hand from the face that I’d never imagined would become everything to me.

  “Let me go. I will help you. August!”

  “I’m sorry. I have to leave you.”

  “August!”

  I turn back one last time. “I’ll call the police an hour from now. And I’ll call your landlady. I’ll make sure someone finds you soon. Here’s the key.” I place it on the closed lid of his record player.

  “August!” I try to ignore him, to walk away, but he throws out one final plea. “Kiss me? Kiss me goodbye.”

  I drop to the bed, as if it were a coffin I wish I could fall into. Then I wrap my arms around his neck and cry. Horrible, heaving sobs, where I hold on to him and wish, wish for the billionth time I’d never done it. That I hadn’t made that one bad decision.

  And I kiss him. One last time. I try to push down the storm inside and plead, “You understand, if there were any other way, I’d choose you. A thousand lifetimes, and I’d choose you in every one. You mean the world to me. August, I’ve fallen for you. I don’t want you to think, for even a second, that I’d ever not choose you.”

  “Don’t do this. Please. Please don’t go. Please!”

  “I have to.”

  “August!”

  My name, our name, screamed in pain.

  I turn my back, walk away, and close the door on him.

  “August!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  GOOD AUGUST

  THIS AIN’T A LOVE SONG

  Agony rips through my back as I slam into the headboard for the billionth time. It shakes, but it won’t budge. “Mrs Huang!” I scream for my landlady again. She can’t hear me, I know that, but I try anyway. She can’t be at Mahjong already. The room’s still bright red, like this weird sunrise won’t lift, but it must be at least half an hour since he left. I thrash back, my spine screaming. Then I crumple, and cry more of these useless tears.

  How can I be this hopeless? How can he be about to kill himself, and I’m stuck here chained to this fucking bed?

  I roll over, crossing my arms, pulling as hard as I can, kicking the headboard, kicking the wall, and none of it does a thing.

  My forehead drops against the solid mahogany in defeat.

  Please, August. Please don’t do anything stupid.

  Then a sound.

  A scuff of shoes on the concrete outside.

  And like a miracle, a knock on my door.

  “Help! Help me, please! I’m trapped! Help!”

  I can’t even believe it. The sound of a key in the lock.

  My leg kicks out to pull the sheet up, to try to cover a bit of my nudity before I scar poor Mrs Huang for life.

  But my mouth drops open at the first glimpse of that long strawberry-blond hair, the familiar accompaniment of chains jingling up and down his wrists. “Jon!”

  He stops dead still, adjusting to the darkness of the room before reeling back at the sight of me. “What the fuck did I just walk in on?”

  “Help me! The key’s on the record player. Please. Please, undo me.” Even as I’m speaking, he’s running for the key, dropping onto the bed, working the lock.

  His worried eyes meet mine only fleetingly. “Did August do this to you?”

  “No. No, he didn’t do anything.”

  “Then who did this?” His tone makes it clear he doesn’t believe me at all.