39
AVERY
"Nick,no!"
The gun is cold against my temple. Nadiyah's arm is a vise around my ribs, and the rooftop gravel grinds beneath my shoes as my body strains toward him on instinct even though I don’t dare move.
He's willing to die for me. For our child.
The thought of it is beyond unbearable. Because I cannot save myself and lose him. I can't carry our baby into a world he's not in. The two things are the same thing. To me, they have always been the same thing.
A ragged sob escapes me. I want to shake my head, reject everything about his whole horrific situation, but the gun at my temple is a reminder that nothing I want matters right now.
Nadiyah inhales, her body a constant pressure against my back. I can hear the weight of her breathing, the shakiness of the air she expels next to my ear.
"No." There is finality in the word. No room for negotiation. "You have nothing to offer me," she tells Nick. "You don't get to control this."
"Nadiy—"
"Enough!" Her sharp response silences him.
His face collapses. I see the defeat in his face. I feel his desperate gambit collapse. The jaw he's been clenching goes slack, and his raised hands start to shake, nearly imperceptibly, but I see it. I know what this is doing to him.
“Enough,” Nadiyah says again. “You will not die today.”
Part of me is relieved—so relieved I nearly sob—because I couldn't bear to watch Nick die at the end of Nadiyah’s grief-driven madness any more than he can bear to see me here.
But she didn't wait all these months for an apology or a sacrifice. She already told me what she wants. I already know what I am to her.
And she wants him to feel what that helplessness tastes like.
Nadiyah's arm tightens around my torso, and then we're moving. Not toward Nick. Away from him. Sideways and backward, toward the edge of the rooftop, each step deliberate and unhurried.
Gravel crunches under our feet. I have no choice but to move with her. She’s the one propelling us, and I'm just cargo being dragged toward a destination I can feel getting closer with every step.
Nick surges forward. "No!" His voice roars across the distance. "Damn it—let her go!"
His plea has no effect at all. I stumble as she pulls me farther from him. The steady clamp of her arm around my ribs, the gun barrel cold at my temple, the relentless backward motion eating up the space between us and the drop.
The wind gusts harder as we near the edge. It pulls at my hair, whips it across my face. City sounds rise from below—constant traffic, a distant horn, the ordinary rhythm of any afternoon.
Nick is frozen in place, hands still raised, every muscle locked against the urge to charge forward. The breadth of thoseshoulders, their strength I've curled against in sleep, pressed my mouth to in the dark, are rigid now with a restraint that looks like it's costing him everything. One wrong move, one more wrong word, and Nadiyah might—
I can't finish the thought.
"Nadiyah, please." The words rise from somewhere desperate and instinctive. "Stop. Just… stop moving for a second. We can talk about this."
Her grip tightens. The movement doesn't slow.
"Stop." Nick's voice again, but different now. Quiet. Cracked. Breaking. "Nadiyah. Please."
Across the widening distance, his face changes.
Tears streak his cheeks.
My throat closes at the sight of his pain. Emotion seizes behind my ribs so hard I can't breathe—a physical blow, delivered without contact. Because I know this man's face in every expression it holds. I have traced that jaw with my fingers, kissed those dark lashes, memorized the topography of him in the dark. And I have never seen this.
"You want me to beg?" His voice is raw, wrecked. "I will, Nadiyah. I'm fucking begging you. Don't do this to her. Please. Let Avery go."
