Page 15 of Just a Heartbeat Away

As a twelve-year-old foster kid, grieving her parents and lost in a whirlpool of a new life she didn’t want, Via had just been getting comfortable at her first foster home when she’d been unceremoniously ousted. The couple’s birth daughter, Megan, hadn’t liked Via for one reason or another, and just like that, Via was tossed into another home. A group home that time. She’d slept on a metal bunk bed in a room with a glowing red exit sign over the door that kept her awake at night. Even at thirteen, she’d found that painfully ironic. Because there was no exit from this life she’d found herself in.

She’d gotten booted from that home when two of the other girls became convinced that she was stealing from them. She hadn’t been, but it hadn’t mattered. Within months of arriving, she’d been on the doorstep of a new foster home, her permanent one at that point. Jetty’s home. Fin’s home. But she’d learned her lesson.

Blend in. No waves. No drama.

In her mind, life was a car, speeding down the highway with a blindfolded driver. Everyone crashed at some point. Whether you survived or not just depended on what kind of car you had.

She’d spent every minute since she left Jetty’s house making sure she had the safest model of car she could find. A good education. A good job. A little money in the bank. A lease on a nice apartment. Every day that she worked hard was like one more seat belt over her chest, keeping her safe.

The idea of Evan quitting his job was essentially inconceivable to Via. Like unbuckling his seat belt on the highway.

“You want me to just stay there? Where there’s no respect for my time or my skills?”

Via rose to clear their dinner dishes. “No, of course not. But if you quit, that’s it. Kaput. No more paychecks.”

“That’s the general idea.”

She bit back on her frustration. She was trying her absolute hardest to understand this from his perspective. Just because it was a good job, with good benefits, didn’t mean he had to stay there. Especially not if it made him miserable. “I’m just saying that if you give two weeks’ notice, which is standard, you can leave guilt-free, get paid for another two weeks and possibly find something else in the meantime.”

“Yeah, and I’d have toworktherefor another two weeks, which you’re conveniently glossing over.”

“I’m not—” She broke off and pinched the bridge of her nose as she leaned over the sink. She loved Evan, she really did, but conversations like this often spiraled off into arguments. And even more so lately, since she’d become busy with her new job. Evan didn’t quite understand how stressful life transitions were for Via. How much she needed her focus to be in one place right now. Not to mention the fact that a public quitting scene, like the one Evan was dead-set on, made Via’s chest tighten with anxiety.

She knew she couldn’t out-and-out tell him he shouldn’t do it. He took any disagreement very personally. Via could do this. She was a trained counselor, for God’s sake. She changed tack. “It scares me to think of you without a job, Evan. You know how sink or swim New York is.”

He knows it theoretically, a small voice said in her mind. Via, on the other hand, knew it quite personally.

“Well, good thing I have a damned good flotation device for a girlfriend.”

She turned to him, and he was smiling at her up from under his hair in that way that made her knees weak. He gestured her over, and she went to him. He pulled her in between his legs and took her hands.

“I’m not asking for money or anything, V. I’m just asking for your support. I need to quit this job.”

She nodded. She’d been waiting her whole life to be stable enough to offer support to someone else. After all, it was just Via on Via’s team. She had Serafine, of course, but in terms of a financial safety net, Via only had what was currently sitting in her bank account. She asked herself one question:Do I love Evan?And that was all the answer she needed. When you loved someone, you did everything you could to support them.

“Okay. Do what you need to do, babe.” She leaned down into his kiss and let him sweep her away.

Later, when she slid out of her bed to get a glass of water, trying not to wake up Evan as she did so, Via let the panic flood her. She sat in her dark kitchen, staring at a black window that threw her reflection right back at her. The wordsflotation devicecircled in her head like ravens.

ITWASFOURweeks into school and Via had joyfully settled into her new schedule. She saw students in the morning and did paperwork in the afternoons. She had regular appointments with a few different students once a week, but most of her time was spent putting out fires with students who’d been flagged by their teachers.

Billy Oaks showed up at school with a black eye? Send him to Miss DeRosa.

Kendra Dobbs’s parents are getting a divorce? Send her to Miss DeRosa.

Jessica Rodriguez hauled off and punched a third grader? Send her to Miss DeRosa.

Miss DeRosa, for the record, was loving it. This was the only reason she’d taken on so many student loans. Why she’d spent so much time in school when she could have been working. Because working with kids who needed her? Truly needed her? There was just nothing that beat it.

Serafine was convinced that Via was in the middle of some cosmic death match with Karma. That because Via hadn’t slipped through the cracks of the system and had eventually been filtered into a loving foster home, she felt that she owed it to other kids to make the system work for them. But Via didn’t really care what the reasons were. All she knew was that at the end of the school day on her fourth Monday at PS 128, she felt like spiking her dang messenger bag.

She’d really, really done her job well. She’d straight-up conquered some problems for some kids. She’d had four appointments that morning, all of which had ended up on a positive note, and she’d finished her paperwork. That staff meeting was lucky she didn’t moonwalk her way right in.

Without thinking, letting her adrenaline rush lead the way, Via found herself plunking down right next to Sebastian Dorner. She hadn’t been avoiding him, but she’d been mindful of just how much all the other ladies at the school enjoyed gossiping about the fabulous Mr. Dorner.

“Hi!” he said in something like surprise. “Wow. You’re, like, glowing. Did you get engaged or something?”

Her mind stuttered. Engaged?Yeah. No.“No. I just had a really, really good day at work.”

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