Page 47 of The Fall Before Flight

The words filter through me like new snowfall, soft and delicate. “Another,” I whisper.

“Most days, I have no idea what to say to you. None of my usual techniques have worked, which has been incredibly difficult for me to adjust to. I’ve never treated someone so completely impermeable and at the same time so transparent. And I’m deeply afraid it was too soon for you to remember. That I’ve caused you irreparable harm.”

I lick my lips and taste the first wave of silent, salty tears. “If it were a girl, I was going to name her Julia, after my mother. A boy would have been Jackson. I never told Jameson because I… I had this feeling. This fear. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s something all women feel when they have life inside them—this vague dread that something bad is right around the corner. I don’t know. But now, I wonder if that feeling was because I knew deep down I didn’t deserve something so amazing in my life. That it was going to be taken away.”

The tears come harder. Silent heaves convulsing my torso. Chastain shifts, his fingers leaving mine, but before I can feel the loss, his arms come around me. I tuck my head beneath his chin and melt into him. The only safe place in my world.

“I’m sorry, Amelia,” he murmurs. “I’m so very, very sorry. But you’re wrong. What happened was a terrible accident. You deserved that child, just as you deserve every happiness life has to offer. Someday, you’ll have it. I promise.”

“I don’t believe you,” I rasp.

“You will.”

18

COOL WATERS

DAY 15

Two weeks after the accident, I woke up in the hospital. My multiple injuries on their own hadn’t been life-threatening, but I’d been kept heavily sedated until then. Apparently whenever they’d roused me before, I’d been extremely confused, easily agitated—read: prone to violence—and in general a pain in the ass.

When I was lucid and mellow for a solid twenty-four hours, a kind-faced grief counselor told me the news of my miscarriage. Irreparable trauma. No heartbeat.

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about—I hadn’t been pregnant.

Afterward, Jameson came in and tried again to tell me what happened. He was crying. Sobbing really. So sorry for me because he knew how much I wanted the baby, even if it was douchebag Kevin’s. He wished he’d bought me extra gelato the night before the accident, when I’d made him run out to appease my craving. He felt responsible.

Which was silly—I’d never been pregnant.

There were times during my sojourn in the hospital that I doubted my sanity. The grief counsellor kept coming back. Every day, she’d sit quietly beside my bed. Every day, she’d tell me she was there to listen if I wanted to talk.

If it hadn’t been such a deranged proposition, I might have decided I was the victim of an elaborate prank. Except broken bones aren’t funny. Neither is being told you miscarried your baby at eleven weeks.

I really didn’t remember.

When I was released, Jameson took me back to his condo. Now, I have a vague recollection of a bottle of pain pills. I took a lot of them. Too many. Mainly because I felt like I was dreaming and needed to wake up. Because everyone believed the same lie. I was sick of being treated like porcelain and I needed an out. Escape from this bad drama.

Oops.

“A suicide attempt isn’t an oops,” says Leo softly.

Leo.

I can’t think of him as Chastain anymore. Not since losing myself and finding myself and kissing him. He tasted like cool water on hot rocks. Burning stars in a freezing firmament. I can’t get the taste of him out of my head. Know I won’t—not for a long, long time.

Nor will I forget the experience in the labyrinth yesterday. The exchange of secrets, the long walk into them and into him. My tears on his shirt and the imprint of his hand in mine. The long walk out, the pure exhaustion of having purged poison from a deep wound.

I slept for fourteen hours straight.

There’s no sign today of the uncertainty he revealed about my treatment. We’re back to business. At least on his end.

When I don’t answer his leading statement, he eventually asks, “What do you remember next?”

I sigh. “You.”

He nods. “Do you remember where you were?”

“UCLA. Psychiatric Unit.”

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