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I knew better, and I did it anyway. I’m going to do whatever I have to in order to make it right.

I’m sorry.

Beside him, Neil emptied of anger like a deflated balloon, his face drawn into lines of dismay.

“What can I do?” he demanded helplessly. “Hireher? You think I wouldn’t? I know what she can do! I’d do it in a minute, but the funders would never have it! They’d call it nepotism, or… or—I don’t know—something even worse, and then we’d both be out!” He held his bowl of lentils in both hands. It trembled furiously. “I can’t change the world for her just because it’s unfair!”

Adam’s joints ached as though from the steady pressure of some unseen weight. “The world doesn’t change. Not unless we make it—you, me, everybody. We’ve got to keep rattling the bars, even though they feel like they could never possibly break. Because maybe if enough of us do, something’ll finally give.”

He drew in a long breath. The night air tasted of river. Crickets chirped into the silence around them.

“I’m the last one in any position to stand here and moralize,” he continued quietly. “But Ellie really could’ve used a brother who rattled the bars for her.”

Neil slumped back against the trunk of a palm tree. He looked exhausted. A breeze whispered through the fronds overhead, setting them rustling as the water rippled softly against the banks of the canal.

“Are you going to marry her?” Neil finally asked without looking at him.

Adam found the other side of the palm trunk and leaned against it. He looked up. Through the lace of the leaves, he glimpsed a sky thickly scattered with stars. “Ellie’s got… strong opinions about marriage.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Neil replied dryly. “But… surely she must see… I mean, given the situation…”

“That it’s the most reasonable thing to do?” Adam filled in thinly.

“Isn’t it?” Neil asked desperately.

Adam didn’t answer. Was it reasonable to ask someone to take part in an institution they hated—and with pretty damned good reasons?

He’d told Ellie before that he didn’t want her to change her mind about marriage, and he’d meant it. But where did that leave them?

Maybe some small, miserable part of him had been hoping that somehow Ellie would find a way to be okay with the whole marriage thing. That the problem would just go away.

He felt worse about that part of himself than he did about the part that’d gone out and taken all thoseirresponsible libertieswith Ellie’s legs.

But if he truly took marriage out of the equation, what did that leave them? Was there a path to the future that they both could walk together—and still be who they were at the end of it?

“I’m…” Neil started tentatively. “I’m trying, Bates. But this… all this…”

His voice trailed off. Adam nodded, even though Neil—on the far side of the trunk—couldn’t see it. “Yeah,” he agreed—as though it were the answer to everything and nothing, all at the same time. He closed his eyes, sinking back against the tree. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m trying not to cause any more hurt. I’m… not always all that good at it. But I’m trying.”

“I know,” Neil replied quietly. “And for whatever it’s worth, I’m not sure I’m really any better.”

Something about his quiet admission, floating to Adam through the whispering darkness of the night, lifted just a little bit of the weight from Adam’s shoulders.

“Thanks, Fairfax.” The words came out rough and uneven, tight with something that felt close to tears.

“We should probably head inside,” Neil offered back, his tone unexpectedly tense. “As it occurs to me that log on the other side of the canal might not actually be a log.”

Adam spun around the tree for a better look. A pair of beady yellow eyes gazed back at him, glinting in the dim light of the moon.

“Yup,” Adam concluded. “Definitely time to go.”

Light flashed to them from the bright rectangle of an open doorway on the far side of the garden. It framed Constance’s petite figure.

“Adam!” she called out, voice ringing like a bell. “Bring Stuffy! Sayyid has translated the box!”

“Shall we?” Adam offered.

Without waiting for a response, he hooked a hand through Neil’s elbow and hauled him toward the house.