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at windmills?
    She smoothed her hand along his sandpapery cheek. She pinched his mouth between her fingers, until his eyes welled with tears. “If Tobias is right, then you’ll be gone. And what will happen to me?”
    “You’ll be fine. Life goes on.”
    “How can you be so cruel?”
    “Nothing bad is going to happen to you, Cassie. You’ll live a long and happy life. You’ll surprise yourself by falling in love again. You’ll remember me fondly.”
    She was destroyed. Truly devastated.
    “The sad fact is,” he said softly, “the last person on the list won’t be able to help me, either. And Tobias will laugh in my face.”
    “God, I hope so.” She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.
    “And we’ll move to the suburbs and raise rug-rats and become walking, talking clichés.”
    “Seriously?” She smiled. “Because I’d love to be a cliché with you.”
    Ryan gave her a cynical grin. “Why not?” He climbed gingerly on top of her and lay very still, rubbing his penis against her, slipping it down between her legs but not inside of her. Not yet. She fell into a trance. He was like a drug she couldn’t survive without.
    *
    The next day they got lost. They’d been driving around forever when they stopped at a Sunoco station and Ryan went inside to ask for directions. The bright sunshine was making Cassie drowsy. The gas station attendant came over and filled their tank. He washed the windshield and cleaned the wipers with a dirty rag, then let them slap back against the glass. He leered at her toothlessly.
    “Yeah, whatever, Mr. Bumfuck,” she muttered grumpily.
    Ryan paid for the gas, got back inside the Range Rover and said, “I think I know where we’re headed.”
    She studied the map and said, “Glad somebody does.” The truth was, she’d been deliberately trying to get them lost. She wanted him to give up.
    They pulled back onto the highway, heading north. Bushes grew by the roadside, fat with berries, the kind you weren’t supposed to eat—winter berries. It was an unusually warm November day. They’d rolled their windows down, and her hair blew carelessly in the breeze. The view outside the Range Rover was monotonous—billboards, roadside pit stops, gas stations.
    Cassie had a sudden brainstorm. “Hey, what if I become immortal, too?”
    He glanced at her. “How do you plan on pulling that off?”
    “Easy.” She shrugged. “I’ll make another wish.”
    “You only get one. Remember?”
    “Then I’ll convince somebody to make a wish for me.”
    “Right.” Ryan snorted derisively. “You can see how well that turned out for Sophie.”
    It only stung for a moment—but he was right. It hadn’t turned out very well for her friend. “I’m serious,” Cassie insisted. “I can get someone to do it for me. I have a few candidates in mind.”
    “Oh, come on. You think I haven’t tried every trick in the book? It doesn’t work that way. Did you wish for Jayla McKnight back? Huh? Did you?”
    She felt her facial muscles twitching.
    “She was your best friend. But hey, don’t sweat it. We all do it. We all betray our best friends. It’s human nature. That’s the whole point. That’s the whole fucking point. We get greedy. We follow our self-interests. It’s baked in. You’re not going to find that magical ‘somebody’ who will selflessly make a wish for you. That person doesn’t exist. I’ve tried. Trust me. Nobody’s going to help us out of this thing. You can count on it.”
    “We’ll pay them lots of money. You’ve got plenty of money.”
    “That’s the first thing I thought of,” he said, losing his temper and pounding his fist against the wheel for emphasis. “Don’t you think I’ve tried everything at least a dozen times over?”
    “Try again,” she pleaded. “Okay? For me.”
    He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. They always betray you. Always. It doesn’t matter how much you pay them—do you want to know why, Cassie? Because they