Brightest As We Fall

by Cleo Peitsche

  “Three.”

  Chapter 59

  “One,” Jason said.

  DeeAnn squeezed his hand. She’s so determined.

  “Two.”

  He’d been wrong again, but he hadn’t realized it until just now. He had nothing but regrets. Thousands of them. That he’d never be able to take DeeAnn on a real honeymoon. That he wouldn’t get a chance to watch her glow for weeks, suspecting she was pregnant, knowing she was waiting for the perfect moment to tell him.

  She would never complete the single item on her bucket list.

  But it wasn’t only the big things that Jason regretted stealing from her. DeeAnn would never experience uncountable little joys because of him. New flavors of chocolate, and different shades of green to paint her nails.

  Because of his bad choices, all leading to this moment.

  Jason knew a girl once. Everyone called her Cookie. Not his type, just an acquaintance. He didn’t even remember her real name. She’d had this theory about how the past didn’t exist. That all that mattered was one blinking moment. Then the next one. Then the next.

  It was the kind of faux-deep insight that Jason associated with stoned people, but Cookie had been sober.

  He’d told her that the past was what defined the present, so it was all that mattered. Reputation mattered. The respect other people showed you mattered. At that point in his life, Jason had been obsessed with his image, but he still stood by the basic idea.

  No, Cookie had insisted. The past created the present, but that was all. The present was its own thing, and no one could prove that the past had ever really existed.

  She’d lost him completely there. Talking with Cookie always ended that way.

  The memory flashed through Jason’s mind, infinite connections in a sliver of a second.

  Was this his life flashing before his eyes? He hoped not, because there were better things to think about. Like Katie and DeeAnn.

  What if Cookie was partially right? Jason couldn’t change his past, and he’d learned the hard way that he couldn’t outrun it.

  But could he change everything in this present moment and give DeeAnn a future?

  The bottom of the quarry lay a thousand football fields below. He and DeeAnn couldn’t both survive, but what if…

  What if Jason created a future for her out of nothing but hope and love?

  Gunshots exploded through the meadow.

  “Three.” Jason pulled DeeAnn against him. As they jumped together, he twisted.

  He glimpsed even more cars. Men and women ran toward the tower, guns drawn.

  All of that was already in the past. Only the present mattered.

  Live, he thought.

  Chapter 60

  Jason floated through empty space, holding DeeAnn close.

  He needed to make sure he cushioned her fall so that she could get up and run.

  If only he had wings.

  If only he hadn’t had to jump.

  The world went black.

  A symphony of screaming pain welcomed Jason back to the world. His only thought was for her. For his wife.

  He lay on the ground, staring up at an absurdly blue sky. The wind blew, and tips of scraggly branches appeared on the right of his field of vision. When the wind stopped, the branches disappeared.

  If not for the pain, he’d have thought he was still falling.

  Breathing hurt. It felt like his back was broken. The sour taste of blood filled his mouth, and he was pretty sure he was bleeding from his nose and places on his head.

  How could he possibly still be alive?

  The answer: he wasn’t.

  So this is hell.

  It was a pleasant day, a cloudless sky. Exactly like the sky above him when he was stretched out on the tower with DeeAnn.

  “DeeAnn,” he tried to say, and it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his skull. He turned his head, maybe an inch, but he could see much more now.

  He figured he was halfway down the quarry. Stunted trees clung to the rock overhead. A single hawk glided far above him, but he couldn’t follow its progress. After a moment, it returned.

  Not a hawk. A helicopter.

  Sleep, Jason thought. His eyelids grew heavy. One side of his chest hurt almost as much as his head.

  Five minutes of sleep would make him feel better…

  No. He couldn’t. He had to find DeeAnn, had to make sure she was all right.

  He had to tell her to run.

  She’s smart. She’ll understand. She’s probably gone already, far away, safe. The thought filled Jason with immeasurable joy.

  But he couldn’t sleep until he knew for sure.

  Gathering every last bit of strength left to him, he lifted his head.

  A sharp spike of agony, then blessed numbness. The vertigo hit then, unlike anything he’d ever experienced. As if he’d been dropped into a snow globe and now someone was shaking it violently.

  Chapter 61

  Light surrounds me, which is funny because I am everywhere and nowhere.

  Now I’m in a meadow, my father beside me. He’s wearing a pair of ill-advised denim shorts. I remember them from when I was fourteen. Some lady he was dating made them for him after he’d ripped the knee of his favorite jeans.

  “Nice day for a phone charger,” Dad says.

  “Huh?” I’m on my back, held down by invisible forces. I try to get up but can’t.

  That’s fine. I’m comfortable.

  I’ve been hanging out with Dad for years. Starting from the beginning, except this time I remember him flying home, and I see that quasi-military haircut I’ve only known in photos. Funny to think of Dad as having hair at all, actually, because he was almost fully bald at thirty.

  He picks me up for the first time and holds me awkwardly. Christ, he’s young. A kid, really.

  “My princess,” he murmurs, his eyes full of awe but also fear. “We’re gonna be fine, kid. You’re going to have the best life ever.”

  All the events I knew only from his stories, I now see. We live them together. The apartment with the yellow bathroom. The neighbor who wants to babysit me so she can hit on my playboy father. I’m learning to ride my bike, and it’s impossible until it isn’t. Dad holding my hand while I get my ears pierced in second grade because even though I want earrings like all of my friends, I’m such a chicken about it.

  “I miss you so much.” Jason’s voice whispers down from the sky.

  “Holy crap,” I say, and try to sit up. It doesn’t work. I’m not sure where I am. Wasn’t I just baking cookies for Santa? Yet I’m in bed.

  “I tried to reconcile with my parents,” Jason says.

  “Do you hear that?” Dad asks, making that silly face he always makes when he’s pointing out something obvious and thinks I’m being a doofus. His jaw is half covered in shaving foam, and I smell geranium leaves. I hear the delicate scrape of the razor against his skin.

  “My father hasn’t changed at all,” Jason says. “We talked on the phone for maybe two minutes, and the asshole was trying to get away after thirty seconds. My mom wouldn’t even take my call. But I did it. I reached out. Because even though you never said so, I know you wanted me to.”

  Dad plops a plate of potato slices beside me on the floor. I’m lying on my stomach in our living room. The sketchbook in front of me shows a half-finished wooden tower at the edge of a meadow.

  “You forgot the ketchup,” I grumble, sitting up. My toenails are painted green. There was some old makeup in the box of my mother’s things. She favored bold colors, greens and blues and purples. Nothing is usable after these ten years, but I’ve been ordering similar colors online.

  “We’re out. Someone used the last of it and didn’t say anything.” Dad drops into his favorite recliner and belches. “You hear that?”

  “You’re so gross,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  He snickers. “Not that. The voice. He was talking about his sister turning into a lion. He says he can’t live wit
hout you. Do you believe him?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” I say, frowning. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I heard from Jason.

  “Then you should go before it’s too late.” Dad tilts his head. “Unless you want to stay. You can stay.”

  My heart stutters. “Should I?”

  He shakes his head. “You really shouldn’t.”

  I see bright light. It’s very, very quiet.

  Jason.

  I want to scream his name, but I can’t move my mouth. This time, there’s a reason: something is stuck in my throat.

  All of a sudden I’m wide awake. Panicked, I claw at the tubes swirling around my face.

  “You’re all right!” A nurse is leaning over me, pulling my arms down and then pinning them to the bed.

  I’m so weak that it’s easy for her to restrain me.

  “You’re all right,” she says, leaning in close.

  Mom?

  She glances up and says something in Spanish to someone I can’t see.

  A second nurse approaches and studies a plastic bag hanging from a metal pole. She, too, looks like my mother.

  Then, peace comes, and warmth, almost as perfect as Jason’s touch.

  When I wake again, it’s dark outside, and I’m alone.

  Chapter 62

  A can of soda perched between the sling and the cast on his right arm, and bags of chips and cracker packages shoved in wherever he could get them to fit, Jason hobbled his way through the door to DeeAnn’s room.

  He sensed that something had changed. But he’d been there nonstop for the last six days, and every time he returned from fetching food, or shaking off the pins and needles in his legs by walking up and down the corridor, or the occasional physical therapy session, he thought the same thing.

  He was always wrong.

  But then he noticed the monitor.

  DeeAnn’s heart rate was higher. Almost ninety beats per minute. And rising.

  Jason dropped his junk food bonanza and rushed to her side.

  The nurses had threatened to kick him out if he kept summoning them, so he wanted to be sure before he sounded the alarm yet again.

  DeeAnn’s eyes struggled to open. She made a gasping, choking noise.

  Jason mashed the emergency button. A nurse came in, then rushed out, and a minute later medical staff swarmed the room.

  Someone shoved Jason out of the way, which made his entire body erupt in agony.

  He shuffled backward, pressed himself against the wall, and watched. He barely felt his own injuries, which weren’t nearly as bad as when he and DeeAnn were brought in, over a month ago.

  Finally, someone noticed he was still there and shooed him out.

  They didn’t tell him to leave the hospital, that visiting hours were over. Jason had fought and won that battle. They couldn’t evict him from the building, because he hadn’t been discharged. He was technically still a patient.

  An hour passed.

  A doctor entered the room, then exited ten minutes later.

  “What’s happening?” Jason rushed forward in a clumsy and laughable flailing of cast-encased limbs and joints that didn’t want to work properly.

  The doctor, one Jason had never seen before, somehow recognized him. “She’s awake,” he said, but Jason could tell there was more to the story.

  “And?”

  “DeeAnn is going to have a long recovery ahead of her. But she’s stable. No obvious brain damage.”

  A month of anguish and stress fell away, and Jason staggered back, sagging against the nearby wall. Apparently, worry was the only thing that had been keeping him upright. “When can I see her?”

  “In about fifteen minutes.” The doctor touched Jason’s shoulder. “Quite an adventure you’ve had. Are you looking after yourself?”

  Jason nodded distractedly.

  “All right, then. One of the nurses will let you know when you can enter.”

  Despite the doctor’s reassurances and the nurses’ calm demeanors as they exited, Jason managed to work himself into a new panic.

  He became convinced that DeeAnn would be unconscious again.

  But she was awake, and her face lit up when she saw him.

  “What happened?” Her voice was raspy, and she winced.

  “Don’t talk. You had a breathing tube when you first came in. Your throat is probably raw.”

  DeeAnn nodded, then said, “What happened to you? You’re all banged up.”

  Jason quieted her with a kiss. He was used to the strange new scents that clung to her. Chemical and antiseptic. He didn’t care. He kissed her again, breathing her in, then carefully settled on the side of her bed. He glanced around the room, making certain they were alone.

  Someone had gathered up the soda and crackers and chips and piled them on the chair where Jason usually sat and slept.

  “Nod or shake your head,” he said. “Do you remember going out to the quarry?”

  DeeAnn’s brow wrinkled. “Sort of?”

  “Quiet. I don’t want to have to spank you.”

  That made her laugh, then wince. She was already getting tired. Jason hadn’t expected that. After all, she’d been doing nothing but sleeping.

  “I should let you rest,” he said, but DeeAnn shook her head. Her eyes implored him to stay.

  “You want to know what happened?”

  She nodded.

  “We jumped into the quarry. You probably forgot that.”

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  “Then you remember more than I do. For me, we were climbing a wooden tower, then we were flying. I don’t remember what happened between, though I’ve been filled in. Let me back up. Cindy’s office was bugged. Not by Parauda—a whole bunch of dirty cops and FBI agents lost their jobs. It’s all over the news.”

  He stopped. Maybe it wasn’t the time to tell DeeAnn that they’d become heroes. She would point out that they didn’t deserve it, and he agreed with her.

  “Parauda had nothing to do with the bugs in Cindy’s office, but he knew she was my lawyer. He requested an immediate alert if I ever contacted her. Which he got the night we left Vegas. They couldn’t trace us that time, because the bugs were audio and video only. But part of a goddamn store sign appeared in the video when Cindy taped my statement.”

  “Fuck,” DeeAnn whispered.

  “Parauda called it in anonymously, but that was later traced. You won’t be surprised to learn that I was right about why I was on the Most Wanted list. Parauda did plan to kill me last month. He even got a few shots off—”

  “Last month?”

  Oh, right. Jason took DeeAnn’s hand in his. Her skin was dry and slightly cool. “You’re fine now, but you’ve been in a coma.”

  “I know, but no one told me…” Coughing, she shook her head.

  Jason gently placed his phone on her stomach. “Write messages on the note app.”

  DeeAnn nodded but didn’t pick it up. She looked at him expectantly.

  “I feel like I’m jumping all over the place. Parauda found us by tracking my phone, which he only knew to do because he saw a blurry sign at the edge of the video I made with Cindy. He watched my statement in real time. While I was talking about how corrupt he is, he already had someone looking at the cellular signals in the area. He rallied the forces, got them all worked up about how dangerous I was. If we hadn’t jumped…”

  Jason had to stop there to collect himself.

  “The only reason we’re alive is because Cindy used every last bit of her influence to get an alert about Parauda blasted all over Nevada, California, and Utah. This next part you can see later… There’s footage online from the police body cameras. Parauda was running toward the tower, weapon drawn. He fired on us, would have hit us if we hadn’t jumped. An FBI agent who ended up tagging along got the alert and tackled Parauda before he could execute us.”

  Frowning, DeeAnn picked up the phone. I want to thank that agent, she wrote.

  Jason nodded
. “Oh, you’ll get your chance to meet Brax because guess who’s now handling my case? That’s the next thing to tell you. I had to surrender the million dollars we stole.”

  DeeAnn frowned again and began to tap on the phone screen. Jason placed his hand over hers. He shook his head once, and his gaze flickered meaningfully around the room, indicating that he thought they were being monitored.

  Slowly, DeeAnn nodded.

  “I hope you’re not disappointed in me.” He was referring to keeping such a big chunk of the money, and he knew she would understand that.

  DeeAnn snorted. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. You know, I dreamed of you.” Her hoarse voice sounded painful, but she was smiling.

  “People in comas don’t dream,” he teased.

  She frowned and shook her head. Jason had missed her stubbornness. A wave of emotion washed over him.

  “I’m glad you’re awake.” He smiled. “The nurses said for me to talk to you, that it couldn’t hurt. I had to supply your half of the conversations. You were very agreeable, and I was never wrong.”

  DeeAnn was still shaking her head. She appeared to be lost in thought, like she was trying to make sense of something. Then she smiled and seemed to come back to him. She wrote on the phone. You called your parents?

  “You remember that?”

  She wrote again. I’m proud of you for trying.

  He shrugged.

  “Thank you for saving my life, Jason. You took all the broken bones.”

  “Don’t hurt your throat.”

  “It’s not so bad. Right now, I feel like I was screaming at a concert all night and then caught the flu.” She stifled a yawn.

  “What did it feel like before?”

  “Like I also chugged bleach during the concert.” Her blinks were coming closer together and lasting longer. She’d be asleep soon.

  “DeeAnn? I have something else to tell you. You’re not going to like it.”