It fell because I stopped being its foundation, and a house of cards with no foundation simply discovers, all at once, what it always was.

I did not ruin Luca.

I merely stopped preventing him from experiencing the reality of his own life.

And the reality, it turned out, could not stand on its own for even sixty days.”

Chapter 11 — I’m Not Getting Dragged Into This

Chloe let out a sharp, hysterical gasp.

She had come to that porch to move into a fine house with a successful man, to remodel, to step into the life she believed I had been merely occupying.

And she was watching, in real time, that entire fantasy come apart, watching the successful man dissolve into an evicted tenant under a fraud investigation, and her survival instinct, which was clearly the strongest instinct she possessed, took over completely.