“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Jonas says. “I should have. Or maybe I shouldn’t have. I don’t know.” His head shakes with his remorse. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “But I’m sorry.”
Sympathy wells up within Eva. The kind of sympathy that can only be fueled by love. She’s standing on a precipice, weighing whether to take the single step that will plummet her into the abyss. “Am I the only person he killed?”
“The mercenary, yes. He was trying to kill me. You were . . .”
“Collateral damage,” she croaks.
“It was an accident. It was—” Jonas’s voice trails off. He seems gaunt and physically pained. “But the scientist—his name is Victor—he . . .” His breathing is ragged, as rough as sandpaper. A tear blossoms. “He killed Amanda. Another Amanda. One I had found in another universe. He shot her dead, right in front of me. He didn’t want me to be with her. Any her. In any universe.”
Eva’s heart breaks for him, and it catches her by surprise. She didn’t think she had any sympathy left to offer. She thinks of the mercenary and the scientist and the thought of Jonas’s final salvation lying lifeless in front of him. “You’ve said the universe favors certain outcomes.”
“Yes.”
“And this mercenary . . . this scientist . . . your wife dying yet again . . .” She lets the thought die stillborn. It feels like an act of cruelty to speak it aloud.
“What’s your point?”
Eva feels tears pooling in her own eyes now. Are they for Jonas’s pain or her own? She has no idea. The only thing she knows for sure is that this is the most difficult conversation she’s had in her life. “My point,” she says, her voice tremulous, “is your point. That the universe wants things to turn out a specific way.”
“Or ways, yes. So?” Impatience creeps into Jonas’s voice.
But Eva presses on. “So have you considered the possibility that this mercenary, this scientist . . . your wife dying again . . . have you considered that they’re all the universe’s way of trying to get you to stop? The universe is begging you to stop.”
Jonas stares at her, looking betrayed again.
This, she tells herself, is an intervention. “You said you found my doppelgänger in Switzerland. But in this universe, I live in New Berlin. Where you just happened to be.”
“What’s your point?”
Eva throws him a look to suggest that he should already know the answer. “The universe wanted me to meet you. The universe wants this.” She gestures between the two of them. “I want this.” Her eyes widen with the realization that she hasn’t truly stepped off the precipice. Not yet. Not really. But now she does. “You want this.”
You want this. The words echo in his mind. You want this. Her and him. Together. Lovers and maybe more. You want this. Three words, but they feel like an assault.
Because they’re true.
He’s felt the connection between them. The pull. He felt it back in the Switzerland of an entirely different reality. He felt it in New Berlin, standing at the door to her faculty building. He felt it over the past several weeks in every conversation tinged with attraction, every stolen glance. He feels it now, finding himself cursing her for being so bluntly honest yet loving her for that same honesty.
Loving her.
It feels like a betrayal. And not just of his wife. Of his very soul. Of everything he’s been living for, everything he’s ever held true. Shame consumes him. In all his life, he has never felt so weak or so lost. Words escape his lips but at such a low volume that even he can’t be sure he’s actually spoken them.
“What?” Eva asks.
He swallows. As much to choke down tears as anything else. Then, louder, he says, “You’re right.”
He watches her brighten. Hope is the cruelest mistress, and he watches it fill her. His heart breaks to squelch it, and doing so requires all the conviction he can muster.
“I care about you, Eva,” he says. “And, yes, I might even love you. Either way, I feel a connection to you that goes beyond friendship that I know could become so much more if I let it.”
“If you let it?” Her voice trembles with uncertainty.
He pushes the question aside. “And you’re right when you say that the universe wants us to be together.”
“But?”
“But don’t you see?”
She shakes her head. Tears fall down her face. She makes no effort to wipe them away.
“The universe,” Jonas stammers, “doesn’t want me to find Amanda. I don’t know why. All I know is that it’s thrown up every possible obstacle. Victor is one. Victor’s mercenary is another. And another . . .” He stops. Breathes deep. He doesn’t want to say it, but he has to. Because he knows it’s true. “And another is you.”
The slap catches him unawares, but he knows he deserves it. Eva is sobbing now, tears falling over the betrayal and heartbreak evidenced on her face.
“I’m sorry,” Jonas says, meaning it. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not?” she asks, anger filtering into her voice. “You believe it.” She stares at him with disdain, all traces of sympathy or even pity gone. “You’ll believe anything to keep on believing you can still be with her. Should still be with her.”
Jonas doesn’t argue the point. No one has ever told him anything more right.
Eva looks at him, her eyes pleading, and speaks with the urgency of someone trying to prevent someone else from committing murder. “But you can’t be with her, Jonas. You have to know that. The whole universe is resisting you. You can’t fight fate.”
Is there any greater temptation than truth? If so, Jonas has never felt it. Not the way he feels it now.
“But you can be with me,” she says. “You have a choice. You can choose to live. You can choose to be happy.”
“But I don’t want to.” The words fly from his mouth unbidden. Visceral. “I don’t want to,” he says again, if only to prove that the first time wasn’t a fluke. “I care for you, Eva. I might even love you. I might be in love with you. But—” He stops, inwardly testing his convictions and finding them to be as solid as steel. “But if it’s a choice between being with someone who’s not Amanda and being alone, then I—I’ll be alone.” He reaches down deep and pulls up the most truthful thing he can say. “I’m sorry, Eva. I’m so very sorry.”
