My heart is going to kill me.
It pumped with such force, her body moved along with the frantic beats.
“Jonas,” she whispered, tears raining down her cheeks. “Jonas.”
Something was wrong. Very wrong, or he would be there. He never would have let her reach the bridge in the first place. She would have to save herself. Not only because she desperately wanted to live, but because Jonas might die without her and the mere possibility nearly ripped her down the middle.
She could die without telling him she loved him.
No.
No, she owed it to both of them not to lose hope. If he was in danger, she would damn well expect him to live. To make it back to her.
There was no way she could stand there for much longer without making a move. That was for certain. Already her legs were wobbling from maintaining total stillness on the tiny ledge—and yes, she knew without looking down that it was tiny, because her toes hung over the edge.
Panic welled in her throat and the condensation of her shuddering breaths wafted around her face. Anger broke through the soil of her fear like a little green sprout, growing larger and larger. Someone had put her here. Someone who wanted her harmed. Dead. Seymour might have been killed, but there was obviously another vampire who sought to do her harm. Had Seymour ever really been the threat to begin with? Whoever put her on this bridge was following the same pattern of not outright killing her, but flouting the rules by putting her in a position to do it herself. And this…just like her trip to the Belt Parkway, would look like a suicide, wouldn’t it?
Whoever wanted her dead might get away with it.
No, she couldn’t let that happen.
With a long, slow intake of breath, Ginny turned her head to the left, searching for a handhold. Anything she could inch toward and grasp, to keep herself from pitching forward into the icy black. There was nothing. Just a flat, light blue wall of painted-over steel. Light blue. I must be on the Verrazano, she thought dimly, trying not to succumb to the despair of finding no anchor.
Carefully, she placed her palms flat on the bumpy surface behind her, breathing in and out. In and out. She closed her eyes and tried to find her center, find anything that would help her maintain motionlessness.
She might have been able to stay that way long enough for Jonas to find her, if it weren’t for the crash. In a weird way, she felt it coming. Perhaps because of the dream wherein she toppled off the cliff to the jagged rocks below.
This was unavoidable, wasn’t it?
Tires screeched overhead and Ginny braced, her teeth drawing blood on her lower lip. Metal crunched and the bridge vibrated beneath her feet. All it took was the tiniest shake and she stumbled forward, her foot catching nothing but air. It didn’t happen in slow motion, the fall. It was a downward drop at a hundred miles an hour with no control of her body, limbs pinwheeling, a shriek rupturing her vocal cords. Ginny squeezed her eyes shut and in those final seconds, thought of beautiful emerald eyes…
Weightlessness.
Her pulse rioted in her ears. A fog horn wailed in the distance.
No impact.
Nothing.
Another dream?
Had she been having another dream?
Cautiously, Ginny opened her eyes to find Jonas above her, mid-jump. Jumping off the bridge, his hands extended down toward her. As he drew closer, it became obvious that she wasn’t moving. Was she hovering? A peek to the side told Ginny she’d stopped several feet above the ominous, black water.
“I’ve got you,” he shouted, voice hoarse, commanding. “I’ve got you, Ginny.”
He reached her then, wrapped both arms around her waist and twisted, flipping their positions so his back would hit the water first, and everything sped up. They landed with a splash, sinking down into the ink in a swath of bubbles, the freezing cold temperature flaying her skin. It seemed to take forever for them to surface, when in reality it was probably only seconds. Jonas took her face in his hands and scrutinized her closely, rasping indecipherable words to himself, appearing on the verge of total madness.
“You fell. Christ, you fell. You fell. You fell.”
Ginny sucked in a hysterical sound, her adrenaline taking a sharp nose-dive and she burst into tears, a ripple moving through her body before gripping her in violent shakes, stirring the water where they bobbed like buoys.
“Oh, Ginny. Love, no tears. Please, please.” He kissed her mouth hard, followed by her cheeks, forehead and nose. Rough touches of his mouth that made her cry all the harder for some reason. “You just made my heart start beating again, baby, now you’re tearing it out.”
“H-h-how did I get there? I just…and then…I thought I was going to—”
He stopped her with another rough kiss, his unsteady hands stroking her wet hair. “I woke up with silver across my chest and you were halfway out the window. Fucking gone and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move.”
“How did you get it off?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it was possible, but you were moving out of my reach and I just…I broke out. It had no hold over me.”
Involuntarily, her hand touched his chest, as if to strip away the metal after the fact. She found a deep trench of red, angry branded skin, instead. “Jonas. Why isn’t it healing faster?”
“You worry over a flesh wound when you just fell of a bridge?” he gritted out, squeezing her shoulders. “Jesus Christ, I have to get you out of here. I have to get you somewhere safe.”
Ginny was too drained to protest when Jonas tossed her onto his back and started swimming. Her head lolled on his shoulder and she watched the water fly past at a rapid pace.
“Talk to me, love,” he whispered morosely. “I keep seeing you fall.”
Talk? She could barely keep her eyes open. Apparently her brain was handling the stress of falling to her death by calling it a day. “I dreamed of you,” she murmured, dazed. “I was dreaming of you this whole time.”
“Dreaming of me?”
She hummed, rubbing her face on his wet shoulder. “Outside the fair. You were waiting for me underneath the tree in your hat and suspenders.” Absently, she noticed Jonas’s back muscles bunching, the rhythm of his strokes faltering. “I tried to come to you, but the person in the red hood ruined everything.”
“Ginny,” he rasped, lifting her out of the water onto a dock and climbing out beside her. She started to lie down on the wooden planks, but he caught her in his arms, lifting her to his chest. “Stay awake.” He shook her lightly. “Finish the rest.”
“You told me to go back, but I didn’t listen. I needed you.” She tucked her head under his chin and let the drowsiness close in. “We needed each other.”
The last thing she remembered before sleep claimed her was Jonas staring down at her in shock. And oddly…recognition.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ginny woke up on soft, heavenly bed sheets to a trio of angry male voices.
She cracked an eyelid open, expecting to find Jonas, Tucker and Elias in the same room with her, but she was greeted by nothing but darkness. Cautiously, she walked her fingers across a fluffy pillow and found something hard. A side table? She scooted over a few more inches, levered up and switched on a lamp, finding herself somewhere unfamiliar.