“Fuck,” I raged and slammed the door shut, shaking the room. I hurled the bottle of Hazarin at the wall. It bounced off and rolled on the floor, whole and unfazed.
I yanked my clothes on, my shaking fingers tripping over buttons and tugging on boots that wouldn’t fucking cooperate. Adrenaline surged in my veins as I jabbed the elevator buttons. Thea had sixteen flights to take on foot. I could make it. I could catch her.
“Come on,” I seethed, jabbing the button again and again. Finally, it arrived and made an agonizingly slow journey down to the lobby. I spat another curse as it stopped on the tenth floor to let a guy on.
He took one look at my face and stepped back. “I’ll get the next one.”
In the lobby, my eyes darted around, begging for signs of Thea. I raced to the stairwell and threw open the door, hoping to hear her footsteps echoing down stairs. But for my shaking breaths, there was silence.
“Did a blond woman come past here?” I asked the guy at the front desk.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said, maddeningly calm. “Lots of people come past here.”
I ran out the front door, searching up and down the sidewalks, across the street. No sign of Thea.
Back into the lobby, I watched the elevators and the stairwell. Minutes ticked by. Elevators opened and people got off. None of them Thea.
She’s gone. You lost her. You failed. You don’t get to cry…
I sank onto a chair in the hotel lobby, my head in my hands. It was too much. I felt too much. For Thea. For everything. Years and years of numbed feelings started to break free and well up in me; tried to spill over dams, break through walls. A deluge I was going to drown in if I didn’t keep it back. But I was so goddamned tired of trying.
My shoulders rounded, my stomach clenched.
You don’t get to cry. Not ever…
Chapter 34
Thea
I walked fast, keeping my head down to shield my crying eyes from passersby. With no plan or guide, I turned down one random street or another. They all looked the same now. The magic was seeping out of the city.
I glanced over my shoulder again and again, hoping Jimmy wasn’t following me. Praying he was.
I sagged against a wall, pain flooding me until I could hardly see or breathe. I cried inside-out, sobbing until my stomach ached.
A woman passing by put her hand on my shoulder. “Tough day, honey?”
I nodded and forced a smile, wanting to collapse into her arms. “I’ll be okay, thanks.”
She gave me a final pat and moved on. I wiped my eyes and breathed until the tightness in my stomach loosened.
“What do I do now?”
Go back to Jimmy.
I’d run from sheer terror, not knowing what to do but to get away from the terrible reality, now that Jimmy knew. It hadn’t felt real until he knew. My heart ached to be with him, but he’d make me go back to Blue Ridge. He promised to keep me safe. It was inked in my skin forever.
I can’t go back.
My soul recoiled at the idea of returning to that airless, vast desert that was as wide as eternity and as small as a pin. But death—real, or the death of the amnesia—awaited me and I had to choose one.
Not yet.
I wandered into Central Park and sat on a bench.
I sat for hours, remembering. I recalled my entire life. As far back as I could go and all the way up to the accident, where memory leap-frogged from sudden blackness into the murky nightmare of two years at Blue Ridge. It arrived at the moment I woke up and took me through every moment since, in all their clarity and joy.
How could I go back?
Several times, I tried to muster the energy to get up and see another little piece of New York, but I stayed on that bench until morning gave way to afternoon. My stomach growled. My bladder complained.
I found a Starbucks and bought a doughnut. I threw it away after three bites. I used the restroom, then wandered like a sleepwalker. The pure joy and happiness of being here with Jimmy had been a fleeting dream, and my life in amnesia was the merciless reality, waiting for me to wake up.
I wandered until I looked up to see the monolith that towered over me. Some internal compass brought me to the Empire State Building at twilight. The sun’s light was gold and turning to amber. The sky so blue it seemed like a piece of colored paper stretched above me.
I stepped inside the cool confines of the lobby and paid the admission to the Observation Deck. Along with a handful of tourists, I boarded an elevator that shot straight up to the eighty-sixth floor, making everyone’s ears pop. The doors opened on the deck and the city lay spread beneath me.
An overwhelming tide of grief washed over me. This view was supposed to be the culmination of my dream and it was crumbling to ash with every breath I took. Every beat of my heart. Seconds ticking down to an oblivion of my choosing.
I gripped the railing as I stepped out of the center of the building and went down to the ledge. A fence tipped with tall, menacing claws curved over the top to keep people from climbing up. Or jumping.
I pressed my face to the crisscrossing bars and stared out over Manhattan, shivering. It was cooler up here. Tears sprung to my eyes in frustration that I was too cold to have these last quiet moments in stillness. I had to keep moving.
I walked around the perimeter of the Observation Deck, arms crossed, hugging myself.
I rounded the corner and Jimmy was there.
He stood with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, leaning against one curved corner of the deck and looking away from me. He was so ruggedly beautiful against the skyline, his eyes shadowed and his stubble dark. A strange warmth flooded through me and it took me a second to realize I was happy. Overjoyed. Brimming with it. Because of him.
I raised my fingers to make a pretend camera, and he looked over as I pressed the imaginary shutter.
I lowered my hands. “Hi.”
He stood up straight, pulled his hands from his pockets as I crossed the distance between us.
“What were you doing just now?” he asked.
“On The Office, Pam told her Jim to take mental pictures of the best moments,” I said, my voice already breaking. “Because everything goes by so fast.”
Wordlessly, Jim wrapped me in his arms and enveloped me in his strong arms. He kissed my forehead, then pressed his cheek to mine while I gripped the lapels of his jacket with both hands, my face buried in his neck, safe in the warm darkness there.
“How long have you been here?”
“All day,” he said gruffly.
“You’ve been waiting here for me all day?”
“I knew you’d come.”
He kissed my temple, my cheek, and my lips before pulling away. His eyes were bloodshot and shadowed, the threat of tears in their brown depths. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the bottle of Hazarin.
“This is yours,” he said, pressing it into my hand.
I stared at the bottle, then at him. “You won’t stop me from taking it?”
He shook his head, though it looked as if it cost him everything to do it. “It’s your choice.”
I smiled through my tears. “Not much of one, is it?”
“The fucking worst.”
My eyes spilled over. “I’m so grateful for the time we had. When I saw you up here, waiting for me… It hit me how happy I’ve been with you.”