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A TORRENT OF rain and wind slammed against the windows. The sky, a few minutes ago gray, had darkened into a heather-colored storm. Then the emergency alert system tore through the house.

Sasha broke apart from me first and hurried to get his phone from the bedroom. I looked at mine in my hand. “Mandatory evacuation,” I read aloud, my voice cracking. “For nonresidents.”

“I guess the storm changed,” he said, coming back into the living room as he scrolled through the alert, and instructions on where to go.

He concentrated on his screen, the light making his face sharp and hollow.

His face was passive. I tried to listen to his head, but then I realized with another sudden jab of hurt—I couldn’t.

The meteorologist had predicted that a cold front would keep it out at sea, but the front had weakened.

And now, like gravity, the tropical depression started to fall inland again.

Right on top of us. I glanced out at the beach, and the swells came right up to the front of the property.

I hadn’t even noticed. I should have. But I’d been so thoroughly lost in my own head (and in his) this morning, the rest of the world had been a blur.

Now it all came into sharp, jagged focus.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, studying my face.

The question felt guarded.

Maybe if he could still hear me, he’d know that I wanted to stay here and curl up in a blanket with him and write a thousand more songs, and that scared me more than the oncoming storm.

But those were things that I couldn’t say.

I didn’t know how to. For all the time I’d known him, I hadn’t needed to.

This silence between us, this emptiness, it felt …

like a loss. An actual, physical barrier that separated us now.

Did he feel it, too? On the other side of this wall, did he still feel the same way as before?

Or did he also feel this distance—a distance that felt impenetrable?

For a second, I was glad he couldn’t hear these panicked thoughts swirling through my head, questioning me, questioning him and the mind I could no longer hear.

I had to—I had to trust him, when our entire relationship so far had been built on the fact that we couldn’t hide secrets for very long, if at all.

He’d still be honest with me, wouldn’t he?

When he didn’t need to be? When he returned to LA, staged his comeback, the world cracking open for him like an egg into a pan?

He’d have so many options. So many opportunities. Would he even want to be with me?

Stop it. Act normal , I told myself, feeling the panic feeding into my veins.

And as normal people, we would both want space now that we had our privacy, and as a normal person this was the last thing I should be worried about.

If there was a hurricane alert and emergency evacuations happening, then it meant I needed to get to the Revelry. I needed to help my parents—

And the Revelry wasn’t Sasha’s problem. I didn’t want to put that on him.

“I guess you should evacuate,” I decided, my voice sounding strangely calm to my ears. Then I grabbed my shorts off the back of the couch and looked around to try to find my bra. I was in one of his oversized Hawaiian shirts. It smelled like him.

He plucked my bra up off the floor beside the coffee table and handed it to me. “But …”

“Who knows how bad the swell will be, and if you don’t get out now, you might not for a few days.” And with that space, he could figure out if he … if he really wanted this—my mess, my complications, me. It was better he figure that out now than later, both for me and for him.

As I headed toward the bedroom to get dressed, he grabbed my wrist to stop me. Gently. Imploringly. “Where would I go, bird?”

My heart found its way into my throat. It made it difficult to swallow. “Home, I would guess.”

“Home,” he echoed. His face settled into something neutral and pleasant, but hollow, as if I’d failed a test.

“Home,” I replied, solidifying my resolve.

The Revelry, my family, all of this —it wasn’t his to worry about, and we both deserved some distance, anyway.

To evaluate ourselves and our feelings now that we had this privacy back in our heads.

At least that was what I told myself. I don’t want you to be here because you think you have to , I thought, but it never reached him.

Aloud I said, “I don’t want you trapped here if things get worse. And you don’t want to stay here.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t?”

“It’s Vienna Shores,” I replied simply. “We’re a vacation town. No one stays.” If he had a rebuke to that, I never caught it, because my phone started ringing. He let go of my wrist so that I could go answer it. The caller ID read DAD.

Panic shot through me. I answered it quickly. “Yes?”

“Daughter!” he crowed, and my anxiety quickly evaporated. He didn’t sound panicked, and that grounded me. “I hope you’ve seen the weather outside, and not to be too frank, but I’ve got a favor to ask. We got ourselves a hurricane party.”

That meant the phone tree was activated, and the Rev would be turned into an emergency shelter. It confirmed all my worst fears—this was going to be a bad storm.

“I’ll be there soon,” I promised.

“Be careful, it’s already a monsoon outside.” And he hung up.

Sasha studied me. “Was that your dad?”

“Yeah. I need to go to the Rev—it becomes an emergency shelter when storms get bad.” I hurried into the bedroom to grab my shoes and slipped them on.

I was glad I at least had the forethought to take a shower this morning.

If it was going to be a bad storm, who knew how long we’d be without power, without water, without—

“I can come with you,” he suggested, pulling me out of my thoughts. He’d found his jeans and pulled a black T-shirt from his suitcase and shrugged it on.

I snapped my attention back to him. “What? No. No—if you can get out, you should get out.”

“I can help.”

“We’ll be fine,” I dissuaded him.

He was silent for another moment, and then took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.” He pulled his curly hair back into a tight bun. Then he shoved his wallet into his back pocket and typed something on his phone. “I’ll call my driver and be out of your way.”

That caught me off guard. That wasn’t—I didn’t mean for that—

He put his phone into his pocket, and quickly disappeared into the bedroom. If he packed, he only came out with a small duffle, and started for the front door.

“Sasha?” My voice sounded too loud for my ears. “Sasha, wait.”

He turned around at the door. Took a breath in through his nose and out through his mouth.

“I get it, Joni. You don’t need me,” he inferred, but I could tell there was something he didn’t say under those words.

Something that, if I was in his head, I would have caught.

Would have understood. “Your life, your music, your song. I’m just in the way of it all. ”

“No, that’s not—”

“You can keep the shirt. They look like shit on me, anyway,” he added, attempting a tricky smile that never quite reached his eyes.

It was the kind of smile I saw the first night I met him.

Sebastian Fell’s smile. Not Sasha’s. Then he bent toward me, negating the heavy space between us, and pressed a kiss against my lips.

I closed my eyes. Hoped this kiss would join us again. Hoped it would squeeze the marrow of my thoughts into the bones of his—but it was just a kiss.

Just a lovely, bittersweet kiss.

It tasted like goodbye.

“It was worth a try,” he whispered.

“Sasha, wait,” I begged, but he abandoned me in the doorway as he fled out into the storm, and into a car pulling up from the street.