“I don’t know how to thrive!” she sobbed, her forehead falling to my shoulder.
Desperation exploded out of me. “Then let me help you! Jesus, Jenna. Saving you is saving me. Saving you is saving every single person inside right now because, if you jump, Mark gets to take that much more from all of us—and dammit, I don’t want to lose you. Please, I am begging. Stay with me, and let him be dead.”
For the longest second of my life, Jenna was silent. Nothing but the quiet sob of a shattered woman.
I held my breath, and as I waited for her to say something, anything at all, my lungs burned, tears dripped off my chin, and I had not the first fucking clue what my next move would be. Frantically, I tried to calculate it, all the same.
“You’ll stay with me?” she finally choked out.
“Yes, I swear.”
“Okay.”
One word and new life burst inside me. I didn’t remember the crying woman, but somewhere deep down, Sally was there with us. And as Jenna scrambled back over the railing, both of us collapsing onto the ground, our chests heaving, our hearts pounding, alive, together, and away from a man who could never hurt us again, the relief Sally felt was staggering.
As we held each other, crying and shivering, she clung to me like a broken child. And I held her like the mother I’d never had.
We startled when the downstairs door slammed shut. “Easy,” I whispered. “It’s Bowen. He’s late for the first time in his entire life. I’ll blame it on the open bar, but there is a solid chance he’ll get a strike on his nerd card for it. We’ll have to cut him some slack.”
She laughed through tears. “I’m going to tell him you tried to climb out on the ledge.”
“Don’t you dare. I’m not even married yet and he’ll divorce me.”
She hugged me tighter.
It could have been anybody walking up to the rooftop. But I knew my man, and I’d been gone far too long for him not to worry. Sure enough, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Nice Ass rounded the corner.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for—” His body turned to granite. “What’s wrong?”
Oh Lord, he was not what a watered flower looked like. He was about to lose his shit.
I cleared my throat and braced myself. “First of all, nothing is wrong—anymore. Everything and everyone is fine. Nobody is bleeding or injured. But I need you to get on the phone and call an ambulance.”
“What the fuck!” he boomed, rushing toward us.
“Noooo,” Jenna whined.
“Yep,” I replied. “It’s going to be a whole thing of getting you happy and healthy again. But this is just the beginning for you, Jenna. We’ll be there for you every step of the way.” I crinkled my nose. “And I say we because he’s probably going to have me surgically attached to his hip after this.”
Bowen dropped to his knees in front of us. He rested one hand on Jenna’s shoulder as he used the other to pat me down, searching for nonexistent injuries. “Why do we need an ambulance? Should I get Tyson? What happened?”
I cupped the side of his face.
A lot had happened.
And not just on the rooftop.
We’d survived the unimaginable. Fought a war against fate. Fallen in love not once, not twice, but three times. Had secrets tear us apart and truths reunite us. Triumphed over evil. And loved harder than any two people in the history of the universe.
I hadn’t always been a believer. But Bowen and I were soul mates. Plain and simple. Our love should have died in the depths of our darkness, but the sun still existed even when it wasn’t shining.
“It’s all going to be okay now,” I murmured, my eyes imploring him to trust me.
He didn’t seem convinced as he dug his phone from his pocket.
But he didn’t need to be.
Fate was in control. It always had been.
Bowen
Six years later…
“Would you stop apologizing already?” Remi laughed into the phone, our sleeping daughter tucked against her chest. “Seriously, Jenna, I’d rather have you here next week when Bowen goes back to work anyway.” She flared her eyes at me. “Then you can tell me all the juicy details about Trevor.”
“Who the hell is Trevor?” I whispered.
Remi made kissy faces in the air and then went back to talking. “I know you hate to miss a pool party, but two trips in two weeks would be silly. And next week, I can have you all to myself.”
I lifted my hands in the whole what am I, chopped liver? way and her only response was to pass me Eden. The poor baby had been up most of the night crying, only sleeping when we held her.
After the night on the rooftop at our engagement party, Jenna became a fixture in our lives. I’d been clueless to how long the line of Mark Friedman’s victims had been, but in my eyes, it only made his absence from the world that much sweeter. After Jenna’s short stint in the hospital, Remi paid for Jenna to check into an inpatient treatment facility. Aaron and I had both offered to help too, but Remi was having none of it. She’d always struggled with the loss and pain involved in her receiving the settlement money. Hell, we’d all struggled with it. But she’d told me it was nice to finally see it give someone their life back.
