A Toast to Ghosts (Liesa's Memories)

Chapter XXII: A Toast to Ghosts

Liesa hovered at the door to the Memory Cabana, half-turned away as if she might decide, at the last possible second, to bolt for the beach and never return. Her hands fluttered at the hem of her t-shirt, folding and unfolding it. Erin trailed behind, arms crossed beneath her breasts, and waited with all the patience of someone who understood the value of not rushing another’s dread.

When Liesa finally stepped inside, the space greeted her with a tight chill and the scent of burnt sugar. The walls gleamed in the strange light, and at the room’s center stood a black candelabra, elegant and severe, its single blue-flamed candle hissing quietly. The bench along one wall was barely wide enough for two; Liesa sat on its edge and pulled her knees in, while Erin remained standing, arms crossed in a way that suggested she wasn’t guarding herself so much as holding her ribs in place.

Neither spoke for a long time. Liesa stared at the candelabra, eyes tracing the curve of its arms. She seemed, to Erin, like someone on the verge of opening a forbidden box, or smashing it on the floor. Face unreadable, body taut as a bowstring.

Liesa stood suddenly, as if spring-powered. She reached out with a trembling hand, hovered her fingers over the blue smoke, and then, with a jerk, drew back.

“You can do it,” Erin said, not unkindly.

Liesa nodded once, but said nothing. After another minute, she exhaled (like blowing out an entire year, Erin thought) and dipped her hand into the blue.

The cold hit like a shot of oxygen, then the smoke leapt upward, sculpting the air into perfect, living shapes.

A classroom. No, not just a classroom: one of those brutalist lecture halls engineered for the psychic disassembly of undergrads. Fluorescent tubes flickered overhead, fighting with the late autumn daylight that bled in through narrow windows behind the professor’s podium. Eighty battered desks, bolted to the risers at odd, infuriating angles, groaned beneath the weight of students and their accumulated anxieties.

Liesa, how she had been at nineteen: hair in a loose braid and pencil stuck behind her ear, clothes thrifted and layered like armor. She wore a floral blouse, the style she still loved, and faded jeans that might have simply lost their color from too many washes. She sat near the top of the hall, alone, trying her best to catch up on the lesson. Liesa had arrived late, and in her rush to claim a seat, she’d left her bag unzipped. At the exact moment she bent to retrieve her spiral notebook, her water bottle slipped free, tumbled off the desk, and began its inexorable descent down the raked aisle.

At first, she tried not to notice. Maybe no one saw. Maybe the bottle would halt, get stuck under a seat, die a quiet **** far from her mortified gaze. But it didn’t. It bounced, skipped, drew every eye in the class.

Near the front row, it collided with a guy’s foot—young Andy Cooper, broad-shouldered and incongruously old-fashioned in a button-down and corduroys. He snagged the bottle in one smooth movement, like it had been thrown to him deliberately.

He looked up. Not just a glance, but a full, chin-tilted, open-faced smile that made his cheeks dimple and his eyes crinkle at the edges. He held her gaze for a second that felt like a held breath, then raised the bottle high, a blue plastic trophy.

"Lost something?" he called, perfectly deadpan.

A few people laughed. Liesa wanted to evaporate, but she **** herself to stand, walk the gauntlet down the aisle, and retrieve her bottle. As she approached, Andy’s smile widened—she’d never seen him smile like that for anyone else, not the professors or the club-crawlers or the campus activists with their endless sign-up sheets. She took the bottle from his hand, her fingers brushing his, and stammered something like, "Thanks, am a disaster," in her strong Flemish accent which only made him laugh harder.

He leaned in, voice pitched conspiratorially: “We’re all disasters. I just hide it better.”

She blushed—so hard she thought she might actually rupture a blood vessel. But somehow, the world did not end. She retreated to her seat, heart hammering, determined to never make eye contact with that boy again.

She failed at that, of course.

A blur of other, smaller collisions: study groups in the library, late-night runs to the vending machine, accidental brushes of knees beneath ancient wooden tables. Each time, Andy was there: always so careful with his words, so easy with his laughter, so quick to rescue her from social quicksand. Liesa had never believed in slow-burn romance, but looking back, she could almost see the way the flame grew, imperceptibly at first, then catching on everything: notes passed in class, shared playlists, the warmth of a hand held too long in the dark of a movie theater.

And Erin saw it all, as if she were a ghostly stowaway in Liesa's memory, watching the months unspool in fast-forward. She saw how Liesa loosened in Andy’s presence, how her laugh changed timbre and became something rounder, fuller, less wary. She saw the way Andy looked at her, not as a puzzle to be solved but as a friend he was lucky to have met.

The scene cut to a library study room, silent except for the clatter of keyboards and the periodic snap of Andy’s pencil as he erased and rewrote his notes. Liesa sat across from him, surrounded by a fortress of textbooks. She doodled in her notebook, sketching Andy’s profile while he was too absorbed to notice. Erin, watching the memory, noted how Liesa’s hand shook when Andy finally did look up and catch her in the act. Andy’s response wasn’t teasing; he simply grinned, pulled the notebook closer, and tried to sketch her back. His version was atrocious, all lumpy circles and misshapen eyes, but the moment was so gentle, so funny, Erin felt herself relax for the first time in days.

Next, a narrow apartment kitchen, cabinets painted a cheerful yellow. Erin remembered it. It was the place Andy had rented the third year of college. Liesa and Andy cooked together, elbow to elbow, fighting over the cutting board while arguing about whether onions should be diced or chopped. Andy insisted he could do it by “chef intuition”; Liesa had a YouTube video queued on her phone. In the memory, she surrendered the knife to him, but only after making a big show of rolling her eyes. The onions ended up uneven, but the meal looked happy enough.

The memory flickered, the blue smoke trembling, refusing to resolve into a single scene. At first, Erin saw only the shifting afterimage of that yellow-tiled kitchen, the ghostly repetition of laughter, the way Liesa would lean against the counter, her arms bare and hair tumbling over her collarbone, watching Andy coax flavor from store-brand pasta sauce as if it was a fine art. Then, abruptly, the laughter thinned and drained away, and everything was silent except for the soft tick of an unseen wall clock.

It was late. Andy lay sprawled on a battered futon, the kind with a metal frame you could get for fifty bucks and a promise. It was his apartment, still, but now she could recognize some of the decorations he had had when she first saw it. He was snoring softly, mouth open, a college textbook splayed across his chest like a fallen shield. The overhead light was off, but the city outside beamed its endless, sodium-amber glow past the half-closed blinds, stippling the room with shifting stripes. In the heavy silence, Liesa sat perched on the windowsill, hugging her knees. She wore Andy's old gray hoodie, sleeves bunched at her wrists, and stared out at the city as if she could decode the future from the traffic patterns or the way the wind rattled plastic bags against distant chain-link fences.

For a long time, she didn't move. The only sign she was alive was the restless twitch of her fingers, picking at the rough edge of a scab along her knuckle. Erin wondered what Liesa was thinking: about the future, about Andy, about the next day's exam, maybe, or (more likely) what she would say if Andy woke and asked why she wasn't sleeping. But there was no wakeful Andy, only the hush and the orange light and the low, animal sound of his breathing.

Then Liesa's phone vibrated on the windowsill, just once. She startled, almost dropped it, then caught it with both hands and turned it over in her lap. The world outside blurred in the reflection on the screen, and for a moment Liesa's face floated in the glass, distorted and anxious.

She read the text, once, then again. Her mouth pressed into a pale line. She didn’t blink for a long time, just stared at the words, as if reading could somehow change them. Erin, peering through the layers of memory, strained to make out the text. She couldn’t see the words, only the effect, as if the message itself were a toxin entering Liesa’s bloodstream.

Liesa’s lips moved, silent. She drew a shaky breath, then tapped out a reply. Brief, perfunctory, no sign of emotion except the speed of her thumbs. She hesitated before sending, then erased half of it, typed a new version, deleted again. By the time she pressed send, her hands trembled so hard she nearly dropped the phone.

The blue smoke rippled, and the memory lurched: now Liesa was in the tiny bathroom off the kitchen, lights cold and hard as a hospital. She splashed water on her face, gripped the edge of the chipped porcelain sink, and stared into the mirror until her eyes grew even larger and more rimmed with red. Whatever she saw there, it didn't reassure her. She pulled her hair into a tight ponytail, then let it fall, then gathered it again, like she couldn’t decide which version of herself was necessary for what came next.

She turned off the light and padded barefoot back through the apartment, pausing at the futon where Andy still slept. She stood over him, barely breathing. Erin saw the way her fingers hovered just above his shoulder, wanting to shake him awake, to ask… what? For help? For advice? For forgiveness, in advance, for a crime yet uncommitted? Instead, she let her hand fall, fingers curling into a weak fist.

She slipped into the bedroom (really just a curtained-off alcove), rummaged quietly through a milk crate, and packed a change of clothes, a battered paperback, her toothbrush, a black notebook with a broken elastic. She moved with the exaggerated care of someone trying not to disturb the air. Every rustle sounded, to her, like a gunshot.

She returned to the living room and lingered at the edge of the futon. Andy had rolled onto his side, one arm over his head, mouth open. He looked younger in sleep, softer, the perpetual tension that coiled him in waking life gone slack for a few hours. Liesa crouched and watched the rise and fall of his chest. In the memory, she wept, silent and urgent, pressing a fist to her mouth to muffle the sound. Tears rolled across her cheekbone and into her hair.

At last, she slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder, walked to the door, and placed her palm against the frame. For a moment, it looked like she might turn back—might wake Andy after all, explain, or simply ask to be held. But she only drew in a long, trembling breath, and then she was gone, closing the door so quietly it might never have been opened at all.

The smoke collapsed in on itself, leaving only the echo of the city, the clatter of a dropped water bottle, and Liesa’s face, pinched and hollow.

Erin, who had watched every second without blinking, finally said, “You never told him why you left, did you.” It was not a question.

Liesa shook her head, shame radiating in her posture. Her hands were locked together, nails digging into her own skin. For a second, Erin thought she might cry, but Liesa’s eyes remained perfectly clear, almost stubborn in their refusal to blur.

The silence stretched, companionable only for those practiced at regret. Erin wanted to say, “You can show him now,” or maybe, “It’s not too late,” but she knew that wasn’t true. The rules of the game, and of life, were sometimes the same: what you didn’t say became the whole story.

She sat beside Liesa, not touching, just close enough to share the cold radiating from the candelabra.

“It’s okay,” Erin said. “You can keep going.”

Liesa nodded, and reached for the smoke again.

The smoke thickened around Liesa’s hand, turning the light in the room a leaden, aquatic blue. Erin watched the lines of Liesa’s face as the next memory unfurled, preparing herself for whatever pain might be waiting.

Liesa in a plastic chair outside a hospital room, the clock on the wall counting down in relentless red digits. She scrolled through her phone, not really reading anything, one foot bouncing in a nervous rhythm. The hospital smelled of antiseptic and burnt coffee, and the only other person in the waiting area—a middle-aged man in a tracksuit—kept glancing at her, probably wondering why a girl would show up at 3 a.m. alone.

When finally a nurse appeared, Liesa stood too fast, swaying slightly. The nurse spoke in Flemish, but too quickly, and with Latin words neither memory-Liesa nor Erin could recognize. Still, she understood the gist: her mother would be okay, the doctors had pumped her stomach, she hadn't wanted to die, not really, just needed to stop the pain for a while. But she would need to stay tonight. Maybe longer.

Liesa nodded, then nodded again, then sat back down and texted someone, a brief, almost impersonal update. She did not text Andy. Instead, she hugged her knees to her chest, watched the clock, and counted the minutes until sunrise.

A swirl, then another hospital corridor materialized, the lighting too white and the air filled with an antiseptic sting. Liesa, a few months older, her hair grown out, wore a shapeless black sweater and clutched a battered tote to her chest. She sat in a molded plastic chair, staring at a scuffed linoleum floor, while a nurse whispered to her father, an older man with the same strawberry-blond hair, but none of Liesa’s warmth. His face was gray with fatigue, his eyes wide and disbelieving, as if the world had inverted overnight and no one had warned him. Erin winced. The nurse spoke in Flemish, but the words were similar to the previous conversation.

The memory shifted, and Liesa’s mother appeared, first as a silhouette through a hospital window, then as a sleeping body, wrists thick with gauze, face so pale it barely seemed attached to the pillow. Liesa stood at the end of the bed, one hand pressed to her own lips, as if she could keep the sound of her breathing from disturbing the stillness. Her father sat beside the bed, hands on his knees, staring straight ahead.

Then the hospital cafeteria, the food untouched. Her father spoke in slow, heavy Flemish, words so weighted Erin could almost hear the sense of them, even without translation. He told Liesa it was her duty to stay. That her mother needed her. That family was family, and she had to do whatever it took.

A last, brutal scene: the corner of a café, a sleek golden-haired woman in a navy suit and designer heels sitting at a bistro table, her posture precise. Liesa entered, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair in a bun, her face haggard, but set. The woman gestured to the chair opposite her. A long, quiet conversation, and then an envelope was slid across the table. Liesa’s hand hesitated just above it, but in the end, she took it.

Then hotel rooms: faceless and interchangeable, always a different man, always a different bedspread. In each scene, Liesa’s dress changed, her hair shifted, her makeup more or less intense, but her face remained unchanged: a practiced neutrality, no smile, no anger, just the mechanical efficiency of someone who had learned to disappear inside her own skin. But her eyes… In the final moment, as she closed the door of another room behind her, her hands trembled, and she let herself lean against the wall for one slow, silent count to three.

When the memory faded, the blue smoke receded from her hand, and the silence in the Cabana deepened.

Erin didn’t look away. She studied Liesa, saw the tension in the cords of her neck, the faint quiver in her jaw. “You hated it, didn’t you,” she said, softly.

Liesa shrugged, a gesture so slight it was almost invisible. “I hated what it meant. But not every client was bad. Sometimes it was just… easier than thinking about everything else.”

Erin nodded. She looked at the candelabra, then back at Liesa. “You don’t have to show that,” she said. “You don’t have to make your pain the only thing Andy sees.”

Liesa raised her eyebrows, suspicious. “Then what am I supposed to show?”

“Show him the other side,” Erin said. “The part that stayed soft, even after all that.” She gestured, vague but insistent. “You could show the romantic. The one who still draws, who still wants love, who still believes there’s more to life than… survival.”

Liesa looked down at her hands, thumb tracing the lines of her palm. “That’s not what people want,” she said, a bitter smile curling her lips. “They want brokenness, or scandal, or something to judge.”

“Not Andy,” Erin said, more sure than she expected. “He always liked the dreamer. Even when it pissed him off.”

Liesa considered this, her skepticism wavering. “It would make me look naive. Or pathetic.”

Erin shook her head. “It makes you look strong. Most people can’t hold onto beauty after something like that.”

Liesa’s eyes flicked up, searching Erin’s face for any sign of mockery. Finding none, she allowed herself a small, hopeful laugh.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try.”

Erin grinned, and for a second, the cold in the Cabana lifted. Liesa let her fingers hover over the candelabra, as if she could sift the right memory from the blue smoke by willpower alone. This time, her touch was lighter; the air thickened, but the cold that came with it felt less like a threat and more like a splash of river water in summer.

A gray New York sidewalk appeared around them, sunlight glancing off glass buildings. Liesa, now in her late twenties, not too different from today, walked with a small suitcase in one hand, her hair tied back, face bare and a little pinched from the wind. She stopped across the street from a glass-walled café, pressed herself against a cold lamppost, and watched through the window.

Inside, Andy sat at a table with two other men, laptops open, coffee cooling between their hands. He was older now, sharper lines to his jaw, the beginnings of stubble at his chin. He laughed at something, but the sound, as it reached the street, was muffled and strained. Liesa watched him, just as she had in the library years before, but this time she didn’t draw him. She just stood there, studying the way he leaned back, arms folded, as if he could keep the world from getting too close.

“Did you ever talk to him?” Erin asked, softly.

Liesa shook her head, a sad half-smile on her lips. “Was afraid. And besides, I thought he was happy.” She let the scene fade. “He was good at pretending, even before.”

Erin made a noise in her throat. “Yeah. He’s still good at it.”

Liesa leaned back on the bench, stretching her arms behind her. “Ik denk… I think I used to believe you could only be one thing. A dreamer, or a survivor. Not both.” She looked at Erin. “But now I’m not so sure.”

Erin said nothing, but the set of her shoulders relaxed a notch.

“In the bodypaint,” Liesa said, her shoulders setting, “I want to show both. The dreamer, but also the one who got through.” She ran her hand through the candle’s blue haze, watching the light shimmer on her skin. “Is not pretty, always, but it’s real.”

Erin gave her a lopsided smile. “That’s more than most people manage.”

The two of them sat in silence for a while, watching the candle smoke swirl in lazy blue spirals above the candelabra. The Memory Cabana was supposed to be a place of spectacle, but this last act had reduced it to a confessional, the air between them thick with the kind of honesty that made both women uneasy.

After a long breath, Liesa tilted her head. “Thank you,” she said, her voice gentler than at any point prior. “For not judging me. Or for pretending not to.”

Erin rolled her eyes, but the gesture was softened by the way she tucked her hair behind one ear. “You’re welcome. Besides, who am I to judge? I’ve done my fair share of running away from things. If anything, it’s a relief to meet someone who admits it out loud.”

Liesa grinned, despite the ache. “I don’t always admit. Only when I’m cornered.”

“You think this is cornered?” Erin arched an eyebrow. “Wait until transformation hour. Or elimination night.”

Liesa’s mouth quirked in what might have been a smile. “I was hoping to avoid both.”

“Good luck,” Erin said, and they both laughed, the ice between them thinner now, more like a memory of cold than the real thing.

For a while, they watched the smoke together. Every so often, Liesa would move her hand through the haze, making figures or patterns. Sometimes she drew nothing at all, just let the smoke cling to her knuckles before it drifted away.

Erin studied her, noticing how much softer Liesa looked in this light, the edge in her voice blunted by exhaustion or the cumulative effect of too many raw memories. She thought of all the hours she’d spent disliking this woman, blaming her for the gaps in Andy’s stories, for the invisible standards set by ghosts. It occurred to Erin that she’d never given Liesa a fair chance, not once, not even now.

She cleared her throat, hoping to dislodge the thought. “You know,” she said, “when I first met Andy, I thought he was a liar.”

Liesa raised a curious eyebrow. “Why?”

“He seemed too good to be true. Not just in the obvious ways—” She made a vague gesture that encompassed the suit, the jawline, the whole package. “But the way he could listen, like he actually wanted to know what you thought. It felt like a trick.”

Liesa nodded. “He was good at tricks.”

“Yeah, but you could tell he wasn’t lying. Just… hiding. I spent so long trying to dig stuff out of him, and the only time he ever really talked was when he was three drinks deep and couldn’t help himself. Even then, the only stories that slipped through were about you.”

A blink, then a half-smile. “He never said my name, did he.”

“Not once.” Erin shook her head. “He’d just say, ‘this friend I knew,’ or ‘someone from college.’ Like he was afraid if he said your name, it’d conjure you out of nowhere and you’d finish the story for him.”

Liesa considered this, and for a long moment, Erin thought she might cry. But Liesa only inhaled, deep and steady, then exhaled through her nose like a swimmer surfacing.

“I always thought he forgot me,” she said quietly.

Erin snorted. “Forget you? You were the gold standard. The original heartbreak. He compared everyone to you, even if he wouldn’t admit it.” She hesitated, then added, “It was really fucking annoying, actually.”

The two women exchanged a look, the kind that said I know, and it’s stupid, but it’s also real.

Liesa reached out tentatively and, after a moment’s deliberation, patted Erin’s knee. The gesture was awkward, but sincere. “You know, I always thought you hated me.”

Erin grinned, showing her teeth. “I did. For, like, a year. But not for the reasons you’d think. It wasn’t jealousy. It was that I didn’t get how Andy could get stuck on someone he never even mentioned. It was like competing with a ghost.”

Liesa’s eyebrows lifted, skeptical. “A beautiful, tragic ghost?”

“An infuriating, contradictory ghost.” Erin nudged her with a shoulder. “You know he used to talk about you in his sleep?”

A brighter smile from Liesa this time. “What did he say?”

“Mostly your name, sometimes in other languages. Once he said ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again.” Erin peeled at a loose thread on her sleeve. “I don’t know what for.”

Liesa looked away, eyes shiny but not wet. “I do.”

The silence that followed was less oppressive than before, more like two people catching their breath after wading into cold water. The emotional work had been done, and now all that remained was the aftermath, a slow thaw.

“You’re really good at this,” Liesa said suddenly, surprising both of them.

“Good at what?” Erin asked.

“Listening. Getting people to say things they shouldn’t.” She glanced at Erin sidelong. “You could have been a priest. Or a spy.”

Erin barked a laugh. “If I ever confess to anything, it’ll be under threat of ****. Or tequila.”

“I will remember that,” Liesa promised. She hesitated, then asked, “Why did you and Andy end?”

Erin looked up, startled by the directness. She considered lying, but the whole point of the evening had been the opposite. “He wouldn’t let me in. There was a part of him that was always closed off. And I began thinking… that it was because of me. Because I wasn’t enough. And I started resenting him.”

Liesa nodded, as if this confirmed a theory she’d long had. “You loved him.”

“I did,” Erin said. “Just not in the way he needed. And honestly, not in the way I needed at the time, either.” She paused, running her thumb along the smooth edge of the bench.

Liesa laughed, then sighed. “We are the exes. We should be mortal enemies.”

“Absolutely. I’m contractually obligated to despise you. But I’m also lazy, so you’re off the hook. Instead we’re stuck in this place,” Erin said, “with only each other for company.” She paused. “And Andy. The barnacle we just can’t get enough of.”

They both laughed, the sound bouncing off the cabana’s tight walls.

“So what are you going to do?” Erin asked, nodding at the candelabra.

“I’m going to show them everything,” Liesa said. “Not the whole story, maybe. But enough.” She drew a line in the air, as if sketching a ribbon across her chest. “I’ll be a painting, not a cautionary tale.”

Erin gave a rare, open smile. “Good. I think you’ll win, if you do.”

Liesa looked at her and saw, maybe for the first time, someone as complicated, as stubborn and brave as herself.

Andy gripped the edge of the gazebo’s railing, hands gone cold where the sea wind licked the knuckles. He stared through the latticed white posts at the far-off shape of the Memory Cabana, squinting as if he could see through the wall and into the stories that had just unfolded there. Even now, the impression of Liesa’s last memory haunted him: the way she hovered, invisible, just outside the world he thought he’d known.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there, maybe long enough for the sun to slip another inch toward the water, maybe only a minute. But the world felt rearranged, as if some cosmic reset button had been pressed while he was looking the other way.

A rustle of fabric behind him. He didn’t turn; he knew it was Arabella before she even cleared her throat. Her emerald gown trailed across the planks with its usual grace, but when she stepped up beside him, he saw the shadows under her eyes. A hairline fracture in the illusion. She leaned on the rail, elbows out, and for a while, neither of them spoke.

“Did you see everything?” Andy asked, not sure if he wanted a yes.

Arabella’s profile was cut from marble, all clean angles and serenity. “I saw enough,” she said. “I always see enough.”

He exhaled, shoulders heavy. “I never realized how much she hurt. I never even knew she’d come back. I thought she just… vanished.”

Arabella traced a line in the salt on the railing, careful. “You didn’t hurt her, Andy. She was already hurting. And yes, she did come back. For you, though she would never admit it.”

He turned to her, searching her face. “What happened to her mother?”

Arabella shook her head, the motion soft. “That’s not my story to tell.”

He nodded, accepting the boundary. “Did Liesa really watch me? Like that? From the street?”

Arabella’s lips flickered in a smile, then went still. “She did. It was October, a few months before you sold Aural. She found you at the café, and at the conference, and at the bookshop in Midtown. But she never found the words to cross the street.”

The ache in Andy’s chest tightened. He wished she’d crossed; he wished he’d noticed. But it was a wish without a target, so he let it dissolve.

They stood, watching the bay, the horizon smeared with the first hints of sunset. Andy wanted to ask how Arabella knew so much, how she could be so certain about the details of every life she surveilled. But the question felt too small, or maybe too late.

Arabella broke the silence first. “Do you know what happens to the eliminated women, Andy?”

He blinked. “They go home. Or at least, they… leave the show, right?”

She turned, fully, so her body shadowed his. Her eyes were tired, but her voice was clear. “They do leave the game. But they remain with you. Here. And in your world, when you return.”

Andy shivered. “You mean—”

“I mean, you have to care for them, Andy. They may not be able to help themselves. But they will rely on you.” She reached out, touched his wrist with cold fingers. “You’re the Master, after all.”

He tried to absorb this. It felt like an accusation and a blessing, both.

“But—” he said, “—I don’t want to lose anyone. Not even the ones who finish last.”

Arabella’s face softened, the closest he’d seen her come to real emotion. “That’s why you’re here. The last Masters didn’t care. Not about the women, or the world, or even themselves.” She paused. “If you want to break the cycle, you have to be better.”

Andy nodded, once, the words settling into the hollow behind his ribs. “I will,” he said. “I’ll look after them. All of them. Even if I mess up sometimes.”

Arabella smiled then, slow and real, and the effect was so disarming that for a second Andy thought the whole gazebo might collapse from the weight of it.

“That’s all I wanted to hear,” she said. “I’ll do my best to help you, Andy. But some things… you have to do yourself.”

He looked at her, then out at the water, then back at the women—now gathering at the edge of the lawn, readying for whatever performance awaited them. He thought of Liesa, and Claire, and Marissa, and all the others, each one orbiting him in ways he hadn’t understood until now.

Arabella followed his gaze. “They’re strong, you know. Stronger than any of the men who’ve been in that chair.”

He barked a laugh. “Even Sam?” He still could not understand why she had been included in a harem designed for a man.

“Especially Sam,” Arabella said, eyes twinkling.

Andy grinned, the first real one in a while. “What happens now?”

Arabella tilted her head, considering. “Now you watch. And when it’s time, you choose. But you won’t be alone, Andy.”

He took a deep breath, let it out slow, and let go of the railing. The sea air cut at his skin, but he felt more awake than he had in years.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it.

Arabella reached up, brushing a stray hair from his brow. “Thank you, Andy. For trying.”

They stood, side by side, as the sun slipped lower, the challenge ahead a distant storm on the horizon. Andy let himself believe he might not fail after all.

Unbeknownst to him, Arabella watched him with something like pride.