I wished I didn’t have to do this, but Plan E was already formed in my mind. I looked into his troubled eyes, at the knit in his brow, the pinch of his full lips, and longed to say the words on my tongue,I think I love you, but that would only hurt him more than what I was already going to do.
I still had one arm hooked around his back, half embracing him, but I pushed my other arm up between us and slowly opened my hand. “I would be safe, but I wouldn’t be free.”
He flinched at the sight of the diamond nestled in my dirty palm. I’d wrestled it from Olena’s grip without her noticing while she was busy choking the life out of me. She’d died with it in my hand.
Bray’s mouth twitched up at the corners. “How’d you—?” he began to ask as I stepped back from him. Realization dawned over his face. My ticket to freedom was right there in my hand. And my escape was about thirty seconds from being in the exact right place for me to hop on board.
When I’d leaned back to gaze at the sky while Olena tried to kill me, I’d clocked a freight barge slowly approaching the bridge. Given its height, it wouldjustclear the bottom of thebridge, leaving a short enough distance someone who knew how to take a fall could manage it if they jumped.
I knew how to take a fall, and I had already decided if Olena somehow didn’t kill me, I was going to jump.
But I hadn’t planned on Bray showing up. Again. He’d been a wrench in all my plans, from the day we met. And now, staring at me with his bottomless gray eyes, begging me to do the right thing, he was a wrench once more.
“Erin …” he said as I took another step backward, toward the railing. “Don’t.”
As much as I wanted it—as much as my heart was screaming for it—a life with him was impossible. A federal agent and a career criminal could never work.
But whatwaspossible, what was within reach, was my freedom. Something I’d been chasing my whole life. The thing I wanted more than anything, and the thing I’d sworn to myself in my loneliest moments I’d take if I ever got the chance, no matter what.
“Erin, please,” Bray pled again. He stepped closer with his arm out. Pain strained his voice. “You don’t have to do this. There’s got to be another way.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see the barge passing under the bridge. It was a twenty-foot drop at most. I might roll an ankle, but I’d have plenty of time for it to heal while I stowed away on the trip to China, or wherever this ship was headed. And then I’d find my way to Javi, sell this godforsaken diamond, pay the moms, and start a new life. Off anyone’s radar. I could be whoever I wanted to be.
The man in front of me was begging me to stay and be me. But I didn’t even know whomewas. Not here, not in this place where I’d been a rotating cast of characters for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t deny myself the chance to figure out who I really was. Not even if it meant losing the only person who I think ever really loved me.
The boat was as close as it was going to get. It was now or never.
“Erin,” Bray said once more. His heart was breaking, and it was almost more than I could take.
I gave him a half smile, wishing I could give him more. “I told you I’d disappoint you.” Then I tucked the diamond in my dress, turned, and jumped over the rail.
EPILOGUE
One year and six months later
The October afternoon was the slow, lazy kind that felt like summer making a final stand while a hand made of crisper days pulled it toward autumn. Summer tended to linger in Georgia though. It was something I remembered from a job here years ago, and one of the many reasons I’d chosen the state as my new home. Another reason was a university that didn’t do a deep dive on my fabricated high school transcripts before accepting me.
I sat in the quad now at a picnic table under a willow tree idly stroking the thick breeze. I had my latest reading assignment spread on the table and was jotting notes in my notebook. My dog Buster’s leash hooked around my ankle beneath the table, but he was too loyal to leave my side anyway. The leash was a formality and really just a way to keep the campus security guards off my back. I sipped my sweet tea left over from lunch and turned the page in my book.
I was several weeks into my first official semester—ever—and relishing every moment of it. The routine of going to class, doing homework, visiting office hours. Riding my bike through the quaint college town and not worrying anyone was watchingor trying to kill me. Heading home to my cute little apartment off campus with a regular lock on the door and no armed guard babysitting me. I’d even made friends with a few classmates, even though I was nearly a decade older than them.
It was everything I’d ever wanted, and I finally had it. On my own terms.
That night I’d jumped off the bridge, Bray didn’t follow me. He apparently didn’t try to stop the boat from leaving the bay, and if he did, it hadn’t worked. I’d stowed away undetected on board for days, stealing in and out of empty cabins and borrowing a maintenance crew outfit I’d found in a locker. We’d ended up at a port in Panama. From there, I backchanneled my way to Javi, who was equal parts stunned and thrilled to hear from me.
I stayed in South America for a while, trying out different cities, different countries, until an ache for home called me back. I missed hot dogs, and the Fourth of July. And even the stupid Super Bowl. Most of all, I wanted my own place, and a dog, and to take classes at a local university simply because I was interested.
So I reached out to yorkiedork123, who helped forge me a new identity, and returned to the US. I kept my word to the moms and wired their cut of the diamond money into the account Melanie had told me to, though I never set foot in Del Rio again. They cleared their debts and may have carried on misbehaving or maybe not, I couldn’t be sure. That part of my life was over. I was a new person. Every day becoming moremethan I’d ever been and enjoying figuring out who exactly I was.
I turned another page in my book as Buster sat up with a small whine. He’d stretched out in the sun at my feet, exposing his soft white belly, but now he came to my side and nudged my leg with his nose. He was a Border collie mix with a black and white coat and enormous ears. Those ears were the best security system I’d ever had.
“What is it?” I cooed at him and stroked his soft head.
He looked off toward the grassy quad and panted. I thought he’d caught sight of the Frisbee a group of students were throwing around and wanted to go snatch it, but then I noticed someone walking toward our table.
A man with a bulky frame, shiny brown hair, and gray eyes I could see even from a distance.
My heart flipped over, and I couldn’t tell if it was fear or straight-up longing. Perhaps a mix of both.
