Page 155 of The Wrong Heart

“What’s on the other side?” Milo asks in a low, weary tone, his voice hardly audible over the commotion behind us and the heavy draft that coasts through.

Melody steals my thoughts once again, her previous words to me lighting me up like a moonbeam. I reply with surety, “What you put there.”

A palpability hovers between us, a striking sense of clarity, and I think this is it, I finally got through to this guy, and I can crawl off this fucking bridge and go home to wallow in my own personal misery—but then I hear it.

Her voice.

It’s Melody.

“Parker!”

My body swivels along the ledge, turning to face her, toseeher, to drink her in beneath the glimmering night sky. Our eyes lock from a few yards away, and she’s hysterical, trying to run to me, but she’s being held back by a beefy cop.

“Melody.”

Her name is only a whisper on my tongue, a tender breath, and I know she can’t hear me, but I say it anyway. It calms me.

I’m calm.

Milo follows my stare. “That your girl?”

“I really fucking hope so.”

“Hell, man, you—”

The moment he spins back to face me, everything goes to shit.

The air leaves my lungs when Milo slips, losing his footing. He scrambles to keep his grip on the rail as my one arm instinctively reaches out for him, but I miss, and he fumbles, and then he’s freefalling face-first into Delavan Bay as my heart sinks to the bottom of the water before he even hits the surface.

Motherfuck.

Everything happens in slow motion, or maybe it’s a split second, I’m not really fucking sure, but all I know is that I’m left with another choice.

Melody shrieks, clawing her way through the wall of cops, who let her go in order to race down the bridge towards the other side of the bank.

“No! Parker, don’t you dare!”

She’s running to me, sobbing and desperate, and all I want to do is climb back over the railing, scoop her into my arms, and kiss away her trails of tears.

But I don’t.

All I do is smile.

Then I let go of the guardrail and jump in after him, while Melody’s horrified cry follows me all the way down to the dark, icy water.

Redemption is a bitch.

—THIRTY-EIGHT—

I’m on that downtown streetall over again, my lungs perforating, my limbs staggering, my heart skyrocketing with unbridled terror.

“No! Parker, don’t you dare!”

It’s more than a request, more than a plea. It’s the ultimate demand.

My truest wish.

He holds my stare for a second, only a second, as I lessen our gap and sprint towards the guardrail, where the man I love is dangling fifty feet above the water. I see the battle on his face. The struggle. It’s only a flash before his eyes spark green and gallant, and then…

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