Page 151 of The Wrong Heart

I don’t do that, because before I step out of the cemetery and reach my car, my phone rings.

Leah.

My fingers swipe to accept the call, and I place the cell phone to my ear. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Girl, don’t freak out. Where are you?”

“What?”

Static and poor reception crackle in my ear.

“Have you seen the news?”

There’s panic laced into her tone, causing goosebumps to pimple my flesh. I swallow through a worried frown. “No, I… what is it? What’s wrong?”

Leah falters before continuing. “It’s Parker, babe. He’s on the news,” she says with careful urgency. “It’s a breaking report…”

My blood runs cold.

I can’t breathe.

“He’s hanging off the Delavan Bay Bridge.”

—THIRTY-SEVEN—

Ireally fucking hate heights.

There’s no good reason for it. It’s not like my fear of the dark, where it was conditioned into me as a child due to traumatic circumstances. This is just some random, shitty phobia I decided I had while working a high rise job with co-workers a good five years back, before I broke off to do my own thing. I’d glanced down from the scaffolding and almost pissed myself.

So, when I was contracted for a roofing job last April, my knee-jerk reaction was to turn it down. Bree said she’d get me out of it if that’s what I really wanted, but shit, money was tight that year, and honestly, I kind of felt like a pussy… so, I took the job.

And then I fell off that goddamn roof.

It was a two-story drop that nearly killed me, and if it weren’t for a big ass sycamore tree that partially cushioned my fall on the way down, I likely would have died on impact.

Instead, I landed myself in the hospital with a broken fucking back and a grade three concussion.

At the time, death would have been a welcome alternative. When they were wheeling me through the hospital on that stretcher, and I finally came to… I was pissed.

Why couldn’t it just be over?

I craved peace, but all I got were six long, torturous months out of work, unbearable pain, and medical bills out the ass. A dark cloud of depression funneled through me, blackening my veins, poisoning my thoughts, and while I was stuck in my house, bedridden and crippled, all I wanted to do was die.

Work was my outlet. My saving grace. I needed to keep moving, remain in motion, stay busy—but that was stolen from me. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heal properly and be able to work again, and the prospect was dauntingly terrifying.

On a particularly grim night over the summer, delirious on painkillers and feeling little hope for the future, I told Bree to just fucking kill me. Smother me with a pillow. Lace my Fruity Pebbles with rat poison or some shit. Didn’t matter. I just wanted out.

She lost her mind, of course, freaked the hell out and almost had me committed right then and there. From that point forward, my sister stopped by my house daily to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid, and as soon as I was up walking around again, regaining some semblance of my only marginally better life, she enrolled me in those dumb meetings.

That’s where I met her.

Melody.

My moon.

That’s when everything changed for me, and I guess I have that roof to thank.

But as I’m standing on this goddamn bridge with a complete stranger, staring over the edge into an endless black abyss, I can say for damn certain, I stillreallyfucking hate heights.

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