Page 52 of What If It's You?

Are you sure you want to delete your…

User not found.

The soft feminine cadences of the speaking voice suddenly stripped away, leaving a robotic garble. After a few seconds, the screen in front of my eyes dissolved into the setup image again.

Hello…Hel—Hello Laur—User not found.

Dammit, what was even happening right now?

Nice to see you again, Laurel. Would you like to continue your calib—

Access denied.

“Delete user profile,” I said aloud, desperation starting to tendril through me.

Which user profile would you like to delete?

“Laurel Everett.”

Profile—Profile not—

“Delete user Laurel Everett,” I said again, more forcefully this time.

Access denied.

Then the screen went blank and the ambient noise suddenly fell away. I pulled the headset off, blinking at the blue light from the screen. It was flickering again, more consistently now. I clicked the AltR icon again, but the terminal just returned:

Access denied

“Goddammit.” I slammed a closed fist on the desk, hard enough to rattle Drew’s mug of pens. Did I have to fix this in the other world? But how could I even be sure I could—

The sound of voices approaching the door stopped my train of thought short. I looked over at the wall of frosted glass, which showed two silhouettes.

“Fuckfuckfuck,” I murmured, dropping to my hands and knees beneath Drew’s desk, pulling his chair in as close to me as I could. Even the most cursory search would turn me up, but maybe they’d just glance around and leave? I sat there, breath held, muscles in my shoulders starting to cramp, waiting for the click of the door, the footsteps approaching…

But there was nothing. After about thirty more seconds I risked darting my head out—the silhouettes were gone. Body sagging with relief, I crawled out from under the desk and into the chair, quickly logging myself out. I paused at the door for several seconds before leaving, heart in my throat, but when I finally got up the courage to emerge, I didn’t see anyone on my way back through the building.

Whatever was going on, I wasn’t going to be able to sort it out in this world, not without a lot more information than I could reasonably expect Drew to share (or really hope to fully understand).

So what should I do?

The idea of going back to the empty condo, waiting there for something to change, for my life to slip back onto the tracks it was supposed to be on, was enough to start panic seeping up through me, sludgy groundwater that was rising faster than I could control.This life is the wrong one. Drew was still a good person, even if he was a bit cockier here, he was still kind and caring, and still, well,hot—more than I’d realized to be honest. But as a couple we felt…wasdoomedtoo strong?

Ever since last night, the uncomfortable realization that our life might—okay, almost definitely did—resemble the life my mom had before she left had been burrowing its way through my brain, destabilizing everything from beneath the surface. Hell, it was probably part of why I’d held on to thewhat iffeeling with Drew for so long: He reminded me of my dad. Not in obvious ways—it was more his framework, the hidden rebar holding him up: the unrelenting work ethic, the urge to care for the people he loved, the Midwestern practicality that was in no way sexy but was fundamentally soothing.Reliability might not be glamorous, but if you listened, it was a constant low-level thrum ofI love you.

And being with someone so like my dad had somehow morphed me into a version of my mother, right down to the sad, empty feeling that I played phone games to avoid looking at head-on. I believed that Drew and I loved each other, or at least that wehadloved each other somewhere along the nearly-five-year path that had brought us to this moment, but when I imagined a future with him…it looked suffocatingly like the present, just with better vacations and an even more glamorous home base. It felt passionless. It felt like a trap.

I’d never crystallized the thought before, but some part of me needed that passion from a partner, a counterbalance to myownMidwestern practicality. Ollie had always felt so right not just because he was an artist—though that definitely appealed, and let me hope that someday I’d catch it off him and my own creative metamorphosis would begin—he was right for me because he painted my world in his technicolor hues. For the first time since I’d seen the ring, a flicker of that certainty other people always described lit in my heart.

I let out a strangled groan. What, precisely, did this realizationdofor me?

Because the Ollie in this world, World D, wasn’t in my life, barely even remembered me. Even if I could find him, the best I’d be able to manage would be a one-night stand with a stranger. He wouldn’t know me, wouldn’t know what I liked…and I wouldn’t know him either, I realized with a start. The Ollie who had formed in my absence and the one who had grown with me, our stems twisting around each other, strengthening and shaping the other’s path toward the light—they were totally different people.

“Holy shit,” I murmured, blinking rapidly.That’swhy Drew was so different.Me.Something about our being together had fundamentally changed him. It had given him the confidence that he lacked to an occasionally frustrating degree in the world I knew, butwhich, when reapplied daily in this world, had built a lacquered veneer of cockiness.

Being with Drew wasn’t just the wrong choice for me, it was the wrong choice forhim.

My breath started coming short, legs jiggling with nervous energy.I have to get back. But how?

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