In one smooth motion, I grab her wrist and pull her off the ledge — straight into my arms.
She collides with my chest, a soft thud of bones and breath, and her face buries itself in the crook of my neck.
I freeze for a heartbeat before my arms move on their own, wrapping around her and pulling her in. It feels natural. Wrong but natural. Like something I was always supposed to do.
I press my face into the crown of her hair. Lavender—soft, almost medicinal—slides under my nose. It hits like an illicit drug, warm and impossible, and for a second the world narrows to the rhythm of her breath against my collarbone.
“You’re okay?”
Then I feel it — her chest rising and falling too quickly, a single shaky sob slipping from her lips.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur.
I don’t hesitate. I scoop her up fully and carry her toward the elevator. She’s spiraling, caught in a storm, and for once I’m the one steady in the middle of it.
Her arms loop around my neck, her breath hot against my skin.
“You’re having a panic attack,” I say softly as the elevator doors close. “Breathe slower.”
“That’s it,” I murmur, doing my best to sound comforting. My voice feels foreign in my own throat — soft, cautious, not my natural setting.
“I’m going to put you down. Can you stand?”
She hesitates, then nods against my neck as her breathing slows to something almost steady.
“You’re okay now,” I say, startled at the softness in my own tone.
“Don’t say it,” she whispers muffled. “Don’t say I’m okay.”
“All right,” I say. “Then tell me what you want.”
She draws back, and for a sliver of a second, I can study her like a map. Her cheekbones are high; there’s a scar near her hairline—delicate, pale—and her hands have the calluses of someone who does not have a life of leisure. The boots she wears have mud on them the wrong way for a woman who’s lived in this neighborhood her whole life. She is complicated and small and defiant and ruined, and maybe exactly what I don’t need.
“I wanted the world to shut up,” she says finally. “To stop pretending to be kinder than it is.”
“You picked a great spot for that.” I don’t know why I’m being sarcastic. Maybe because sarcasm is the only defense I can layer over the thing that’s happening under my ribs. Maybe because I’m afraid that if I am honest, I will pull her into my orbit and never be able to let her go.
“I don’t know you. But I know what it looks like when someone’s about to give up. I’ve been there, bella.”
Her eyes close, frustration and pain flickering across her face like lightning. “I don’t need a savior or some guy with a god complex telling me it’s all going to be fine.”
A corner of my mouth lifts. God complex. She has no idea who I am.
“I wasn’t trying to comfort you,” I say, voice low. “And you picked the wrong rooftop — because I don’t shut up. It’s a pain getting blood out of concrete, bella.”
“Asshole,” she breathes.
It shouldn’t thrill me. But it does.
Her palm is still pressed to my chest, and I’m hyperaware of it — how small she is, how soft, how close. The lavender hits me again and my restraint frays one more thread.
She’s everything I should avoid right now — messy, emotional, unpredictable.
“Listen,” I tell her. “You go down, you come to the lobby, you get the hell out of my elevator, and you sit in my lobby until you feel the anger has enough oxygen to breathe without trying to kill you.”
“You’re angry,” she says quietly, like she’s just figured out a puzzle.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
