The rain wasn't falling anymore. It was throwing itself at the city.
I walked with my arms wrapped around my ribs, heels biting blisters into my feet, hair plastered flat to my skull. My phone was a wet brick in my hand. I pulled it out under the awning of a closed dry cleaner and dialed him.
Straight to voicemail.
I dialed again.
Straight to voicemail.
I didn't leave a message. What was I going to say. *I'm soaked. I'm walking. You left me in a theater because she broke a nail.* I typed it out anyway. Deleted it. Typed something shorter. *Where are you.* Hit send.
The little checkmark turned gray.
I kept walking.
The streetlights were spaced too far apart. Half of them flickered. The bus had stopped running an hour ago, and the rideshare app kept telling me there were no cars in my area, please try again. I knew the way home. Twelve blocks. I'd done it a hundred times in daylight.
In front of me, a long block stretched between two boarded-up storefronts. I could cut through the alley behind them and shave four blocks off. I'd done it before. With Ryland. In summer.
I turned in.
The alley swallowed the streetlight in three steps. My shoes splashed in something that wasn't water. The brick walls leaned in close enough to brush my shoulders. I picked up my pace. My breath made small clouds in front of my mouth.
I heard the footstep behind me one half-second before the hand closed over my mouth.
The world tilted. My back slammed into something hard — chest, jacket, the smell of wet wool and cigarettes. An arm clamped across my collarbones. My phone hit the ground. The screen lit up sideways in a puddle.
"Shh," he said. Right into my ear. Almost gentle. "Shh, shh, shh."
I bit down on the hand. He grunted and the hand jerked away and I screamed — one short, ragged sound that the rain ate before it finished. He shoved me face-first into the brick. My cheek opened. I tasted copper.
"Stop," he hissed. "Stop, stop—"
I didn't stop. I drove my elbow back. I kicked. I clawed at the arm across my throat. My nails caught skin. He swore. The arm tightened.
Then both hands were on my neck.
He turned me around to do it. He wanted to see my face. I remember that. I remember the moment he turned me around, and the rain running down into his eyes, and the way his mouth was open like he was the one struggling to breathe.
His thumbs pressed into the soft place under my jaw.
The world went small.
I'd never understood, before, what people meant when they said your life flashes. Nothing flashed. Everything narrowed. The alley shrank to the size of a coin. My ears filled with cotton. My hands, somewhere far away, were still moving — slapping at his wrists, scratching, fumbling.
Fumbling.
My right hand found my pocket. Empty. My left hand found the wet ground. Found glass. Found my phone.
My thumb pressed against the screen. The home button. The print read. I didn't see it happen. I felt it. The phone unlocked under my finger like it knew me. Like it was the last thing in the world that still did.
I pulled up the keypad by muscle memory. The same muscle memory that had dialed his number ten thousand times. From college dorms. From airport gates. From hospital waiting rooms when my father had his stent put in and Ryland sat next to me holding my hand.
I dialed.
I couldn't hold the phone to my ear. I just pressed it against the wet concrete near my face and prayed.
It rang.
It rang.
Across the city, in a warm apartment with the heat turned up too high, Ryland Crawford lay on a couch with a girl in a pink beanie asleep against his shoulder. His phone buzzed on the coffee table. He reached for it without disturbing her. He looked at the screen.
*Bellamy.*
He glanced down at Cadence. Her eyelashes were dark against her cheek. Her breath was even. Peaceful. She had finally fallen asleep after crying for two hours.
His thumb moved.
*Decline.*
In the alley, the ringing stopped.
I heard the small, polite click of the call ending. I heard my own breath whistle through the place his hands were closing.
My fingers went loose. The phone slid out of them and clattered into the puddle. The screen went dark.
Something in me went dark with it.
Not fear. Fear had already left. What came next was quieter. It was the understanding — the clean, terrible understanding — that he had seen my name and he had chosen not to know.
I stopped fighting.
I think that's what saved me. The man above me felt me go still and his hands loosened a fraction, surprised, and in that fraction —
"HEY!"
A shout. A real one. From the mouth of the alley.
"HEY — GET OFF HER — "
A dog was barking. A flashlight cut across the brick.
The hands left my throat. Footsteps splashed away into the dark. I heard the wet slap of them all the way to the next block.
I lay on my back in two inches of rainwater and looked up.
A man was kneeling over me. Older. Gray beard. A small wet dog at his shoulder, whining. He was already on the phone.
"Yes — yes, an alley off Pike, between Eighth and Ninth — she's bleeding, her neck, she — ma'am, ma'am, stay with me, what's your name, honey, stay with me — "
He slid one hand under my head. Lifted it out of the water. His coat smelled like cedar and dog.
"Stay with me," he said. "They're coming. You hear me? Stay awake. What's your name."
My mouth moved.
"Bellamy," I whispered.
"Bellamy," he repeated. Like a promise. "I've got you, Bellamy. I've got you."
Somewhere far away, on a coffee table in a warm apartment, a phone screen was already going dark.
