Page 136 of The New Couple in 5B

“Let me go, Chad,” I say, still playing confused.

“I can’t do that, Rosie. I love you.”

Far in the distance, I think I hear sirens. Too far. Too late.

Am I going to die in this apartment like Willa Winter, at the hands of my husband?

Will the Windermere win after all?

The buzzer rings then, long and loud, startling us both. I turn quickly and start to run.

But he’s on me fast, taking me down to the floor hard, putting a strong hand over my mouth as the buzzer keeps ringing.

“Did you call the police?” he asks sadly.

I shake my head. Then I bring up my knee hard into his groin. His eyes go wide with pain, and he issues an agonized groan, falls off to the side. I get up and start to run again.

Through the living room and the narrow dining room, the tiny kitchen. He’s up quickly, right behind me, roaring my name.

I get out the back door and slam it hard, listen to him fumbling with the latch as I bust through the fire door, which now, with recent updates, sounds an alarm.

Bells start ringing, loud and chaotic. I turn to race down the stairs.

But there’s Miles, looking wicked and wearing a terrible, toothy smile.

I back away from him, heading up and up and up, when Chad bursts out the fire door and is pounding up the stairs after me.

Finally, I make it to the roof, bursting outside to find it snowing. The lights all around the building are a blanket of stars, and everything seems so quiet, the street noise and sirens so distant, the tar roof dark. The air is frigid.

Suddenly, everything just feels too heavy. All the running we do. The hustling, the fighting. Clinging to faith that things will turn out all right, even when all evidence points to the contrary. Believing the lies told by people we love. Trying to figure it all out. Do the right things. Acquire. Achieve.

My husband, the monster, exits the roof door. With brute strength, he breaks the handle off and lets the door close behind him. We’re trapped up here now, together.

“I thought we could make a life apart from all the things I’ve done wrong, you know?”

I am up against the edge of the building and he’s coming closer.

“There’s a light that comes from within you, Rosie. Something bright and right and true. Pure goodness. And I thought if someone like you could love me, then I must—on some level—be okay.”

He looks so sad, so broken. My heart still aches for him. My instinct is to comfort him, to hold him. But I stay where I am.

“I know,” I say, softly.

“I thought if I could get this place for us, it would be like our little oasis. And we could build a life, a good one.”

“I thought so, too.”

“I did pressure Ivan to give us the apartment. It wasn’t hard. I just reminded him that we were the ones caring for him. That Dana abandoned him. He was so weak. I don’t know if he wanted to sign those papers. But he did.”

Poor Ivan. He was barely clinging to reality at the end. In my heart, I always knew he wanted the place to go to Dana.

“She didn’t deserve it,” Chad says. “We did. And I thought if we could have it, then everything wrong and bad—I would just leave that part of myself in the past.”

“I know,” I say, trying to stay solid.

“But they just kept coming for me. They just kept hounding me. Dana with her threats. She was going to tell you that I was having an affair with Lilian—which I wasn’t.”

He shakes his head.

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