And right beneath her constellation, a faint trail illuminates the way.
I lower the star-taker, letting it slip from my fingers.
I’ve suffered this moment on an endless loop. Altering variables, simulating outcomes, searching for the one where I don’t lose her. Dreading the second when I can no longer defy this sinister influence.
Standing at the precipice, I step closer to the edge of the cliff. The waves roar, crashing higher, spitting up against the rocks. Something vicious stirs in my blood as I strip away my jacket and wrench off my tie, allowing the serrated wind to sink its teeth into my skin.
When observing an event, the observer cannot interfere.
I’ve known the exact month, day, hour, minute—down to the goddamn second her heart would stop beating.
And I’ve known there’d be nothing I could do to stop it from happening.
I can’t save her.
When a star begins to die, there’s no preventing its collapse. Stellar death is an intense, violent event. Those fleeting moments before the end are breathtakingly beautiful, the destruction inevitable.
It leaves an impression in the void, an echo felt long after its heart goes dark.
And her absence will leave a cavernous abyss.
As the markers on my astronomical watch align closer, the sky falls darker, and a discordant chord bangs through my vessels. Gravity becomes secondary to this deeper, darker pull within.
The void whispers, the seductive urge to jump. To surrender. To succumb to forces beyond control.
And I answer its call.
With the next frigid gust, I pull in a shuddering breath. My foot slips along the rocky incline as I look down into the turbulent waters below.
There’s no fear of falling in space, only the silent terror of becoming adrift. Frozen, motionless.
Yet there’s a paradoxical truth to the danger of that all-consuming force—a force that can simply be removed just by falling.
Removing resistance.
I once swore I’d fight an ocean for her—a battle now waged against the dark, violent waters of my mind.
Loving Collins was never a jump. Not even a leap.
The instant I saw her, I was already in freefall, experiencing that brief moment of terrifying, exhilarating weightlessness just before the plummet, stretched into infinity.
I close my eyes?—
And step off the cliff.
The wind screams in my ears, a rush stealing my breath as adrenaline floods my bloodstream. For a fleeting moment, I surrender to the freefall, right before the ocean swallows me.
Plunged into an icy grave, all light vanishes. The freezing water is a brutal shock to my system. Salt water fills my mouth as a ruthless wave twists my body, wrenching me under.
Disoriented, I claw in every direction until I break the surface. Dragging in a sharp breath, I fill my burning lungs. Every molecule of my body wants to freeze, to let the undercurrent drag my motionless form to the bottom.
With an obstinate will born of sheer stubborn determination, I thrust one arm in front of the other, carving a path through the vicious crosscurrent.
The turbulent waves batter me, but I latch onto that faint beat, the fading cadence of her heart. Fighting the pull, I stroke hard, muscles igniting in fire. Between the heaving waves, the craft comes into view.
I push harder, cutting through the swelling current toward the capsized Zodiac rocking against the jagged sea stacks. Amid the undulating breakers, I catch a glimpse of her—an angel in my scope. Her surf-beaten body clings to the edge of a rock.
Time dilates, feeling as though the seconds it takes to reach her are never-ending, stretched by an impossible distance I can’t close. Each warped strike of a second is a slice through the cavity of my chest as I slowly watch her slip beneath the surface.
