The railing was cold under my palms. Metal. Real. The wind pulled at my hair and my clothes and I thought: this is what it feels like when the world tries to push you off something.
Behind me Mrs. Adams was still screaming. Not words anymore. Just sound.
I looked down at the street twenty-two floors below.
No airbag.
Just pavement. Gray. Flat. Very clear in the afternoon light.
I had known the second Colson said it. Known the way you know when someone is lying about something small — where they were, who they were with — except this wasn't small. This was my life. This was the baby I hadn't told him about yet, the one I'd bought shoes for, the one I was going to surprise him with somewhere quiet and good.
He had gambled both of us to avoid fifteen minutes of inconvenience.
I didn't feel angry. I didn't feel scared. I felt something collapse inside my chest, something that had been holding me upright for six years, and suddenly I was just very, very tired.
The phone was still in my hand. I could hear him breathing on the other end. Waiting.
"Colson," I said.
He didn't answer.
I let go.
The wind took me immediately. It was louder than I expected. A roar in my ears. The sky flipped. The building blurred past.
I thought: I'm going to die.
I thought: good.
I thought: I'm sorry, baby.
Then I hit something.
Not the ground. Something else. Metal. It buckled under me with a sound like thunder. Pain exploded through my back, my ribs, my skull. The world went white.
When I opened my eyes I was staring up at the sky. Blue. Very blue. There were birds.
I tried to move and couldn't. My whole body felt wrong. Distant. Like it belonged to someone else.
I turned my head — slowly, so slowly — and saw the building above me. I was on some kind of awning. Seventeen floors up, maybe. The metal was twisted and torn where I'd come through it.
I was alive.
I started laughing. It came out as a cough. Blood in my mouth. Copper taste.
Somewhere far away I could hear sirens.
I pressed my hand against my stomach. Flat. Small. Still there.
"Hold on," I whispered. "Just hold on."
The sirens got louder.
—
The hospital room was white and quiet and smelled like disinfectant. I woke up in pieces. First my hands. Then my ribs — every breath a knife. Then my head, pounding.
A nurse was checking something on a monitor beside the bed. She saw me looking and smiled. "You're awake. That's good. How do you feel?"
"Alive," I said. My voice cracked.
She nodded like that was a reasonable answer. "You're very lucky. Seventeen-floor fall and you walked away with three broken ribs, a fractured wrist, and a concussion. We've been monitoring the pregnancy. So far everything looks stable."
I closed my eyes. Stable. The baby was stable.
"Does my husband know I'm here?" I asked.
The nurse hesitated. "We haven't been able to reach your emergency contacts yet. We're still—"
"Don't," I said.
She stopped.
"Don't call him," I said. "Don't call anyone."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded slowly. "Okay."
When she left I stared at the ceiling and thought about the railing. The phone. Colson's voice: *Make it convincing.*
I thought about the baby shoes in the closet. The card I'd written. *We're going to be a family of three.*
I thought: no we're not.
I thought: I'm going to disappear.
Not die. Disappear. There was a difference.
I reached for my phone on the bedside table. My hands shook. I scrolled through my contacts and found Harley's name.
She picked up on the first ring. "Serena? Where the hell have you been? I've been calling you for—"
"I need to die," I said.
Silence.
Then: "Where are you?"
I told her.
"Don't move," Harley said. "Don't talk to anyone. I'm coming."
She hung up.
I set the phone down and closed my eyes. My ribs hurt. My head hurt. Everything hurt.
But for the first time in six years, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
—
Harley arrived two hours later. She walked into the room, took one look at me — the bandages, the monitors, the prenatal readout on the screen beside my bed — and stopped in the doorway.
"Jesus Christ," she said quietly.
I tried to sit up. Pain shot through my side and I gasped.
"Don't." Harley crossed the room in three steps and pushed me gently back against the pillows. She pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. Her face was very calm. Very still. "Tell me what happened."
I told her.
She didn't interrupt. She didn't ask questions. She just listened.
When I finished she was quiet for a long time. Then she opened her laptop.
"Okay," she said. "We're going to do this right."
"Harley—"
"No." She looked at me. Her eyes were hard. "You don't get to talk me out of this. You called me. You asked. So we're doing it. And we're doing it so well that bastard will never find you. Not in this lifetime."
She started typing.
I watched her fingers move across the keys and felt something unclench in my chest. Not hope. Something quieter than that.
Relief.
"Thank you," I whispered.
Harley didn't look up. "Don't thank me yet. We've got work to do."
