I gritted my teeth.
He was hurting himself.
He was hurting himself because of me.
“Cove,” I shouted, forcing his name into something lower than the desperation trying to break through my voice. “Stop running!”
He did not stop.
Of course, he did not stop.
From his perspective, stopping meant me reaching him, and me reaching him meant whatever terrible conclusion his frightened mind had already decided would follow. He did not understand. He could not understand, not yet, not with the image of the body still fresh in his mind and my confession still hanging between us.
If he would only let me explain.
If he would only stand still long enough for me to tell him that I had never once considered hurting him, that the man in the tank had meant nothing, that none of this changed what Cove was to me except in the single unbearable way that I could no longer allow him the freedom to leave before he understood.
I turned the next corner just as Cove reached the exit of the aquarium wing. He struck the frame hard with one hand, caught himself, and launched himself out into the hallway without looking back. The careless force of the movement made my stomach twist, because Cove was not careless. Cove was precise. Cove was attentive to thresholds, surfaces, glass, water, and the smallest shifts in animal behavior. Panic had reduced him to a state of momentum, and every uncontrolled motion looked terribly foreign on him.
The atmosphere changed abruptly past the door, the cool, blue-lit hush of the aquarium giving way to the slightly warmer darkness of the rest of the house.
Cove ran toward the front entry.
I was not surprised, but still deeply, physically frustrated, not because he had chosen the obvious exit, but because his choice made sense, and I hated every circumstance that had made it so. He had no phone. No car. No driver waiting. He could not truly leave the property, not without reaching the road on foot, but panic did not require feasibility to become dangerous.
“Cove, don’t go out that door,” I said, though I doubted he heard me over the harsh sound of his breathing.
The door predictably slammed open as he reached it, and cold night air rushed in with the force of the sea behind it.
Cove ran outside without slowing, the night swallowing him up from view almost instantly.
“Fuck,” I breathed, and followed.
Outside, the property lights carved dim pathways across stone and low landscaping, but beyond them, the cliffside fell into darkness. The ocean roared below with a violence that seemed to rise through the ground itself, waves striking rock hard enough to send spray lifting into the air. The wind was sharp with salt, and strong enough to pull at my wet sleeves and shove strands of hair across my forehead.
Cove did not run toward the gate. I watched the angle of his body, the blind direction of his flight, the way he veered away from the drive and toward the outer viewing area, and everything inside me went cold.
No.
Not there.
“Cove!” I shouted, cursing as the wind tore his name apart.
He kept moving, not thinking, perhaps not even seeing clearly in the dark. He was fast because fear made him fast,but he was also unsteady, his steps broken by the uneven stone beneath him.
“The cliff is ahead,” I called, pushing more command into my voice than I wanted to use. “Stop!”
He glanced back, and if only for the fraction of a second, I was privy to the wet shine of his eyes, the panic blown open across his face, the terrible proof that he had heard me and understood only that I was closer than before.
Then he ran harder.
My chest tightened until breathing became difficult.
I accelerated, closing the distance by several yards before forcing myself to slow again when he staggered near the edge of the lit path. If I ran at him now, if I lunged, if he startled in the wrong direction, the drop would do what I never would.
The ground narrowed ahead. The safer walking path curved left toward the railed overlook, but Cove had missed it completely. He was headed toward the rougher edge beyond the terrace, where wind-cut stone met open air, and the cliff dropped sheer to the water below.
“Cove,please,” I said, the word coming out raw and frankly terrified. “Stop. The edge is close.”
