I was coming down—I didn’t want to die.
“Hey,” Rowan’s soft, sleepy voice is just barely audible beneath the weight of my sobs. “Little angel, come here.”
His warm hand spreads across my abdomen, and he tugs gently from where he’s lying next to me, still half asleep.
I stare into the darkness of his bedroom, just barely able to make out the outline of his corkboard hanging past the foot of the bed.
Aaron had talked me down from the ledge.
We both died at my hands, and all for nothing.
“Elijah,” Rowan tries again, sitting up, his voice now clearer the more he wakes. “You’re panicking. I need you to breathe for me.”
“Rowan,” I gasp, eyes still trained on the outline of the notebook papers hung in front of me. “Rowan.”
“I’m here, you’re okay. It was just a dream.”
“No! It wasn’t—” Another violent sob leaves my body, and he rests his head onto my shoulder.
What happened to me? What girl was I speaking of? The way I spoke, I made it sound as if I were assaulted.
And my parents? Had they both killed themselves?
“It wasn’t what?” Rowan pushes, and I turn my face to stick it into his thick neck.
“It was a memory,” I whisper.
His hand tightens from where it now rests on my hip, and he breathes out a heavy sigh. “Tell me about it.”
“I can’t,” I cry. “It was so bad. And it was all my fault. We died, and it was all my fucking fault, Rowan. I’m sorry. I’m so—”
“None of that,” he interrupts. “I don’t want your apologies. It’s over now, do you hear me? It’s over.”
“But—”
“I’m alive, and so are you. We’re together. Sometimes destiny is out of our hands, you know? All that matters is that we found each other again.”
I know that. I know I should be grateful just to be by his side. But I can’t help thinking of Benjamin and Aaron, and how desperate they were to stay together.
How I ripped their happiness away, just to cultivate my own.
“I love you,” I hear myself say, and Rowan rubs his nose over the side of my face.
“I love you too, Eli. Now let’s lie back down, okay? It’s 5 a.m.”
I let him pull me down, curling up against his chest as he runs a hand leisurely through my hair.
But my mind is still on the bridge; I’m still watching us die after I had decided I wanted to live.
“You had saved me, you know,” I say, and Rowan’s hand pauses in its movement.
“What?” he asks.
“I was going to jump, and you talked me down,” I clarify.
“Then—”
“I fell. I fell right off the ledge just as our fingers brushed. Fucked right?”
