Slowly.
Down to Nadiyah's side.
The arm holding Avery against her loosens, just enough.
I see the moment it happens. Avery's gaze is still locked on mine. I nod, almost imperceptibly.Come on, baby. Come to me.
She takes a small step forward. Nadiyah doesn't stop her. Then Avery takes another. Deliberately. Carefully. Moving away from the ledge, away from the gun. Toward me.
I'm already in motion, my feet closing the distance to her.At last.
We collide somewhere in the middle of the rooftop.
My arms close around her, fierce, desperate, crushing her against my chest like I can fold her inside me and keep her there forever.
"Ah, God." My voice is rougher than I've ever heard it as I hold her close. "Avery."
The solidity of her body against mine. Warm. Real.Alive.
I press my face into the curve of her neck and hold there, breathing her in like oxygen, like the first breath after drowning. Her hands grip me so hard I can feel her knuckles pressing into my spine.
Her heartbeat hammers against my chest. Or maybe that's mine. I can't separate them anymore, can't find the line between her body and my own.
I don't want to.
I don't ever want to find that line again.
"I've got you." The words come out wrecked, barely recognizable as my own voice. "I've got you, angel. You're safe. You're both safe."
Her whole body shudders against mine. A sob escapes her, relief and terror and exhaustion tangled together. I hold her tighter. My hand spreads across her lower back, pressing her closer. My other hand cradles the back of her head, my fingers threading through her hair.
She's alive.
Our baby is alive.
Everything I am, everything I have, is standing in the circle of my arms.
For one suspended moment, there is nothing else. No rooftop. No wind. No grieving woman behind us. Just Avery's bodyagainst mine and the sound of her breathing and the steady, living drum of her heartbeat against my chest.
Then I hear it.
The soft rasp of metal on gravel.
I look up, still holding Avery. Nadiyah has set the gun down at her feet. A deliberate action—not dropping it, but gently laying it aside. Like she's done with it.
Then she steps backward.
Once.
Twice.
Nadiyah's face isn't contorted with rage anymore. It's filled with something worse: horror. At herself. At what she almost did. At what she's become.
"I can't go to prison." Her voice breaks. "You’re right, Avery. I can’t do that to Sami. Years of seeing me behind bars. Growing up with that shame. I can't make him carry that."
Her dark eyes move to me. "I wanted you to feel what I felt." She's sobbing now, the words barely intelligible. "I wanted you to understand what you took from me. And now—" Her voice cracks completely. "Now my son has seen me do something terrible. My mother sees what I've become. I've shamed myself. Shamed Omar's memory. Everything I did, I did for him, and this is what I've become."
Inside me, rage is finally breaking loose from the place I've been holding it down. This woman pointed a gun at my pregnant wife. Dragged her to the edge of a building. She nearly murdered the two people who matter more to me than my own life. Every nerve in my body wants to let that fury have its voice, to tell her exactly what she almost cost me and what I'd do to anyone who tried it again.
