(Five)

Mike calls me into his office. I expect the worst when he tells me to sit. Last time he dragged me in here, I lost my job. Apparently, I'm still causing him problems.

"What hours are you supposed to work, Cullen?"

I try to work out if it's a trick question, but he gets impatient and answers for me. "Nine to five. That's all. I'm not paying you to work through the night. I'm also not paying you to crash and burn."

"I'm paying for that already, aren't I?" I say, thinking of the pile of obituaries outstanding on my desk.

He smooths his hand down his tie and sucks his stomach in, leaning back in his chair. "If you want to look at it like that, then yes, you're doing your time. But no more and no less."

A prison metaphor—how apt. "It's not about money," I say—my finances are the least of my worries. Being a recluse pretty much earns for itself. It's the free time I don't want.

"No, it's about your health. I only have to take one look at you to know you're not sleeping." A call comes in and he answers, muffling the receiver with his shoulder so he can finish the lecture. "You need to take care of yourself. No one else will. Don't push it, Edward."

I push the chair back and salute him as I leave.

My life is split into two—before the event, and after. No one knows what the event is, not even me. There might have been several—more than several. They might have been nothing. Or maybe something was there all along—a tiny crack waiting to blow wide open. I don't have the energy to work it out. Everything I have, I put into not drowning myself in liquor. Apart from the small part I'm dedicating to her.

I used to be a war correspondent. Now I write obituaries. Mike thought it would help, seeing what people have achieved with their lives. That, and he couldn't trust I wouldn't get myself killed in a warzone. He doesn't understand I'm my own battlefield.

I used to live my dream, but I passed out and woke up in a nightmare.

I used to be drunk, now I'm sober.

I used to be alive.

I should have stopped the first time. Or the fourth, fifth, sixth. I should have let the glimpse I got into her life be enough, but that's always been my way. It only takes a little taste.

The signs are all too easy to mistake for other things: excitement, nerves, and often lust. But I've done this too many times to be mistaken. She's filling my mind up, giving me excuses. I sit here waiting to catch sight of her every Thursday night, pulling together all the little details I've gathered about her, the things I've witnessed, wondering who she is. There's the boyfriend, who hasn't been back around since the last time I saw him. There's the way she walks: slowly, as if she's in no rush to do anything. Her wicked and sometimes false laughter, especially when she jokes with her boss. He acts like he owns her, too. I see the way she edges away from him—he still doesn't get the message. She always arrives alone and gets off the 345 bus. I imagine she lives north of the city, not far from me. But I don't care about any of this. I can't.

Tonight's meeting was rough. I'm sick of coming to this building. I listened to another sad fuck cry over his addiction, my patience wearing thin—a toothpick ready to bite in two. Emmett wasn't around. He's gone to Tulsa for a week. God knows what's taken him to that shithole. He said it was business; we've all got a lot of business to attend to, only it's hardly ever at a desk.

The night is clear, and if I squint hard enough, I can see the shadows of the stars. It's no match for the sky over Helmand Valley. I haven't thought about that for a long time. I try not to. But you feel like you can see a whole world out there. It reminds me of what I've lost, reminds me why I'm trying so hard to move on. It reminds me exactly why I shouldn't be here.

I don't even allow myself one last glance as I head to the bus stop.

It's only when I wrench my attention from my boots that I realize she's left early, too. The figure on the sidewalk is unmistakable. I can hear her on the phone, arguing. Her voice is hoarse with anger and tears. I look up and catch her eyes. They're black holes. Two open wounds. She drops her head and passes by. My heart is hammering—I've been caught.

Her body is hunched into itself as she carries on walking, and then, with an abrupt yell, she comes to a stop and throws her phone into the street. It shatters on impact. A group of men walking on the other side of the road whoop and holler at her. Their laughter instantly pisses me off; her, too, as she flips them the bird and yells at them to fuck off.

I know I need to diffuse whatever situation she's ignited, so I start off after her. I warn the men with a look over my shoulder, and the fuckers seem to read me right, carrying on in the opposite direction. But when I turn the corner, she's gone. The only thing in sight is the Meridian bridge, illuminated by the sparse streetlights. I hope she's had enough sense to hail a cab, go home. Which is what I should be doing. So I take a shortcut over the bridge to the next bus stop. The wind is sharp; I turn up the collar of my jacket, shove my hands in my pockets. The roads are quiet, the bridge blocked off for maintenance.

I usually don't look down into the water; heights are another of my weaknesses. But something forces my attention. It's then that I see she hasn't caught a bus or a cab. She isn't planning on going home at all, because she's standing on the bridge's edge, leaning into the wind. She lets go with one hand, and my heart leaps to my throat.

She's not laughing in exhilaration. Her face is still, tears falling a hundred feet below. I approach her slowly, not wanting to startle her.

"Having a bad night, huh?"

She wobbles, and it's an electric shock to my system. I pounce forward, but she rights herself in time and swings around to grab on to the metalwork. "What the hell? You can't scare people like that."

"Sorry. I'm not sure how you're supposed to approach someone who's about to jump off a bridge." I shrug, trying to act calm even though my pulse is out of control. Gusts of wind whip her hair around her face, her skirt tangled in her legs.

"I'm not jumping," she replies, but she turns back to the water, her spine pressed against the struts as she begins to let go again.

"What are you doing, then?" I ask, raking my mind for anything to help me. I'm sure I saw on TV that the best thing to do is keep them talking, but then maybe that was a hostage negotiation. "Checking out the scenery?"

She laughs through the tears pouring down her cheeks. She's going to kill me. "No. The scenery here is terrible."

"So, what then?" I ask, edging closer, trying to work out the best place to grab her if she jumps.

"I wanted to see if I could fly." She lets go, and stands a little straighter. My stomach does another dive.

"Oh, right. I've done that before," I say, moving slowly.

"You have?" She turns and wobbles again. Her carelessness is making me sweat. "How'd that go for you?"

She's beautiful in her unravelling, and something about her like this, so lost, pulls the truth from me. "I'm still counting the injuries." I pause, trying to coax her. "You should get down from there. You don't want to do that."

She looks at me like she wants me to talk her out of it, but then her face hardens. "You don't know the first thing about me."

Not true.

"Tell me something, then," I prompt.

Another laugh breaks through her tears, this one drowning in unhappiness. "Just leave me alone."

I shrug off my jacket, and snap my neck, like I'm preparing for a fight. And I am, just not the one I'm used to. "I can't do that," I say, swinging a leg over the railing until I'm balancing at her side. "What's that famous saying? 'You jump, I jump', right?"

She shakes her head, her eyes reflecting every bit of surprise and sadness welling up inside of her. "You're crazy."

"No crazier than you."

"Is that supposed to make it better?"

I grip the bars behind me, my shirt snapping against my chest. "I hate to break it to you, but we're both suspended hundreds of feet above water. I don't think anything's making this situation better."

She frowns, and I take an instinctive step to the side, disturbing her balance. "Don't come any closer!" she shrieks into the night.

I hold out a hand. "Hey, it's fine. I'm not going to touch you. We're just talking."

Her eyes squeeze shut, shutting me out or locking herself in, I can't tell.

"What's your name?" she asks after a moment. I can barely hear her, the wind grappling her words and launching them past my shoulder.

I hesitate to give it to her, but I have to barter something. "Edward."

"You ever save anybody before, Edward?"

"No, first time," I answer, trying not to look down. "How am I doing?"

She stares right ahead, right into her problems. "You could be worse."

I think back to empty nights and empty bottles and empty skies. Vomit-tracked alleyways and broken ribs. Girls in dirty bathrooms, girls on their knees. The silence of a funeral. The exit from my own life.

"Yeah, I could be worse," I echo.

My words are barely out, when her shoe slips, her balance disappearing. I react faster than I've ever had to before. I grab her skirt, yanking her backward until my arm is firmly around her waist. She cries out as her leg catches on the hard edge of the railings. She wrestles against my strength, but I want her more than she doesn't want herself.

Adrenaline surges through my body, knocking me to the floor. We're a tangled heap until I roll her off me. I don't let her go as she sobs, as she wildly lashes out at me. "Get off me! I don't want to do this!"

I can't help but wonder what it is she doesn't want to do. I hope the answer is die. Slowly, she begins to calm down. I hold her tighter, her muscles relaxing as she sucks in breath after breath. Then she shudders, grabbing on to my shirt, her whole body vibrating with emotion as she buries her face in my neck. Relief or regret, it could be either.

It's only when I can catch my breath that I realize what I've done. Where I am with this girl in my arms. I should let go, walk away, but I don't.

When she finally looks up at me, her face swollen and eyes full of a life I saved, I can't help but wonder if it would have been safer for us both to let her fall.

AN: Thank you so much to those of you reading and reviewing. I love to see in your heads.

All the love to Kim for this chapter. She made it shine. To Choc and Cat for their help too.

TLS featured ACOY in their What we're reading and Nursery fic posts this week. So all the kisses to them (kimmy, my Penn, especially).

Have a good week.

Sparrow x