“You fucking bitch,” he growls, as the sheets of paper come free. He flings them from him in disgust, letting the air scatter them along the narrow strip between the bench and the cliff.
He drops the notebook to the ground between his feet before collapsing forward, his head in his hands.
She’s gone. She’s gone and left him nothing. Nothing he can use. The bloody book stares up at him, and he’s about to kick the thing away when the breeze flutters the blank pages at the end, and he sees it, scribbled on the inside cover, heavily slanted, but undeniably legible.
A key.
A key to all the little shorthand symbols, the meanings behind the letters and the scribbles, and only then does he remember the last time they fought about her penmanship, and she told him, didn’t she, that it was right there.
Malcolm looks up as the pages he’s torn out flutter away toward the cliff, caught up in that crisp Scottish breeze.
“No, no, no!” he stammers, scrambling after them.
He catches two, stumbles before snatching up the third, but the wind steals the fourth out from under his fingers, whipping it toward the edge of the cliff. He lunges, shoes skimming the loose pebbles at the land’s brittle edge, and manages to catch the corner of the paper before the breeze can drag it out of reach.
Malcolm lets out a triumphant roar, hands shaking as he looks down at the paper he’s just caught, the one with the diagram. And maybe it’s the surge of panic that’s cleared his head, sobered him right up, but suddenly, even without the key, he sees the shape of it.
Laid out on the page.
The ending that lit up Sienna’s eyes last night, and now he knows why, because by god, it’s good. Genius, even. Unexpected and yet inevitable, somehow. Like all the best endings.
And it’s his.
Malcolm clutches the papers to his chest, and laughs, and cries, because he’s going to win. He’s finally going to—
“DON’T!” screams a nearby voice.
Malcolm’s head whips toward the sound, and as it does, his left foot shifts back ever so slightly, and the ground beneath it crumbles. His arms windmill, and the pages fly up into the air as he clings to balance, and he might have gone right over the edge if not for the wind, gusting like a pair of hands against his back.
He regains his footing and sees Jaxon, of all people, running toward him, hands outstretched, as if Malcolm means tojump, which is absurd, and he’s about to tell him so when the cliff’s edge gives way beneath him.
And he falls.
He falls, cold air rushing past him, and it’s true what they say, time really does slow down. The heartbeats stretch, and he sees the crow, now wheeling overhead, and in the churning sky beyond, he sees his life, not the mistakes or the missed opportunities, no, he sees his life rollingforward, sees himself sitting at a dark wood desk, his characters immortalized in glass behind his head, and the shelves full of books withhisname printed on the spine, like a chanting crowd, and Malcolm smiles, right before he—
Jaxon
Chapter One
IFJAXON HAD HIS PHONE, HE NEVERwould have heard it.
If he’d had his phone, he would have had the music up all the way, his senses drowned and his mind a galaxy away. But all Jaxon has on that day’s run is the pound of his feet and his own shallow breath, which is how he hears the wail. An almost animal sound.
He picks up his pace, rounds the corner, and mounts the last rise just in time to see a shape standing at the edge of the cliff.
Jaxon left his glasses back at the castle, but even from here, he can see the figure facing the sea, hands clutching at his chest, head bowed as if in grief.
And all he can think is, Oh shit, he’s going to jump.
“Don’t!” he shouts, surging forward, even though his legs are spent. He runs as fast as he can, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because time is slowing down, seconds stretching out as the shape, which is now resolving into Malcolm, turns, and Jaxon sees that he’s holding sheets of paper to his chest, because he lets go, and they go flying in the wind, and he steps backward, the loose rock skitters at his feet, and—
Maybe he meant to do it.
Maybe he slipped.
Jaxon can’t tell. He just knows that he’s almost there, his hand literally skimming Malcolm’s, when he goes tumbling back over the edge, and Jaxon’s hand closes over nothing but air.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he stammers, because for a second he thinks he won’t be able to stop, that he’ll follow the other man over the side, but then his heels dig in and he staggers to a stop a few inches from the edge, heart pounding.
