Our Infinite Fates

THE NEXT DAY, THE blonde stranger I’d assaulted outside the flower shop came into Beacon Books while Nia was on her lunch break.

The floor was deserted, and I was perched on an old stool behind the counter, flipping through one of the last remaining copies of Ten Hundred Years of You for any clues I might have missed. Not that it would help me now – the poems had been penned decades ago. But still I yearned for a why , a how . Why was this happening to us? How could I break free? Maybe the simple act of putting ink to paper had unlodged something my searing questions could not.

At the sight of Ceri, I shoved the book beside the till, climbing to my feet for no discernible reason. Some vague sense of being battle-ready, perhaps.

His blonde hair was fine and neat, and he wore a green sweatshirt – frayed at the neckline – and black jeans hanging loose on his angular frame. There was a subtle left hook to his nose, like it had been broken on a rugby pitch and never quite reset, and a smattering of freckles on his white skin.