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“Stop yelling at me!”

“Stop lying to me!”

“Quint, that’s enough,” says Rosa, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He shakes her off and takes a step back away from me until he’s half-sitting against Rosa’s desk, arms tightly crossed again. “I get that your family is having money problems. I know you want to help your parents. But… really, Prudence? Stealing from an animal rescue shelter? And from my mom, fromme?”

The first tears spill out, sliding down my cheeks. I hastily brush them away, but they keep coming. “I didn’t. Take. That. Money.”

“Then who did?” he asks.

“I don’t know! Maybe nobody. Maybe it got lost.”

He snorts, the sound so derisive and disbelieving it makes me wants to throttle him. “Please. You had the opportunity, you had a motive. It’s crime scene 101.”

I glower. “Innocent until proven guilty. It’s justice 101.”

He rolls his eyes. “You could just admit it, you know. Give the money back?”

“I didn’t do it!” I yell, tossing my hands toward the ceiling.

His nostrils flare and I see a tiny crack in his armor. A doubt, perhaps. A desire to believe me, if nothing else.

Then he looks away, and his face hardens again. “You are a lot of things, but I never thought you’d stoop as low as this.”

“Oh?” I say, a dare in my tone. “And what things am I, exactly?”

It’s a mistake, this question. I know he will rise to the bait, and I know I will never be able to unhear whatever comes out of his mouth, and I know I will regret for the rest of my life that I asked for it.

But I don’t back down. Maybe I want him to hurt me. Maybe, on some level, it will be easier to believe we never would have worked out anyway.

He holds my gaze, but I see him hesitate. The goodness in him, warring with his anger. I take a step forward, goading him on. I don’t even care that his mom is here. Let her hear it all—the worst of him. The worst of me. What does it matter?

“Go on,” I say through my teeth. “Not two days ago, I was pretty and confident and fun. But what do you really think?”

“Well, you’re clearly a liar,” he says, his eyes flaring. “You’re self-absorbed. Critical. Judgmental. A hypocrite. Selfish. And honestly, trusting you was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life.”

“Quint,” says Rosa. A warning, but too late.

He’s done.

We’redone.

Hurt makes my insides boil. I want to scream at her, at both of them. I want karma to reel up from the ethers of the universe and punish him for daring to judge me like this.

I squeeze both fists tight. As tight as I can. It’s never worked on Quint before. This horrible, backstabbing power has always failed me when I tried to do something to Quint. But this time, he’s being downright cruel.

This time, he’s breaking my heart.

This time, he actually deserves it.

My fingernails dig into my palms.

Tears blur my eyes.

To my surprise, Quint winces in sudden pain. He turns his face away from me, his jaw clenched, his face contorted. A hand comes briefly to his chest, like something has hurt him there, but he just as quickly drops it. He does not meet my eye again.

And maybe it’s trite, and maybe it’s naive, but I hope—oh, I hope with all my being that his heart might just have shattered, too.