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She turns around to find the car approaching her and panics, her steps backtracking as she gets closer to the rail.
The car jerks violently away at the last second, slamming into my bike instead. Metal shrieks against metal as it’s crushed into the railing but I barely register it over the blood roaring in my ears.
No.
No. No. No.
I hear a loud splash a heartbeat later.
Then I throw myself over the railing after her.
You’re not going to die, because I’m going to save you, solnyshko.
TWENTY-THREE
Sergei
Present
When I came to, I found myself in a hospital bed, I had a few broken ribs, a minor head injury that could’ve been fatal had Roman not found me when he did, and I had some trouble using my voice.
But that wasn’t it.
I couldn’t find her, and breathing felt fucking wrong, like my body just refused to work without her. I was spiralling, completely all over the place until Roman slapped some sense into me.
Apparently, he had a tracker on my bike, and he was fucking pissed that I’d made it to the other side of London, nearly two hours out from Oxfordshire.
He was furious—seething—but there was relief threaded through it. Grateful that he’d found me before it was too late.
Alina was crying in the corner, and Alec looked like he wanted to knock my head off, whether for making her cry or just for being a complete waste of space.
Probably both.
Roman told me that I was alone, there wasn’t a girl with me, but I remembered blood on her forehead. I remembered diving in after her, the water swallowing us whole as I held onto her so she wouldn’t drift away with the current.
She was in my arms, and then she wasn’t.
My mind was filled with her. Her memories, her laugh, her adorably scrunched up face.
The first day, I tore through the hospital looking for her, chasing the smallest chance of seeing her again, like a single glimpse would be enough to calm the raging storm churning within me.
On the second day, I was already going through the hospital records on my computer, pulling up security footages, checking every possible angle, refusing to accept that she could just vanish without a trace.
By the third day, I’d lost whatever restraint I had left and escaped barefoot, ignoring the pull of my broken ribs, holding myself together just long enough before I fainted right after exiting the hospital building and woke up to Roman and Alec staring down at me, furious.
They threatened to tie me to the bed, and I told them to fuck off.
On the fourth day, Roman handed me everything—footage from the bridge, from the surrounding areas, hospital records within the radius for the past week—only so I could stop tearing myself apart.
But the tapes where useless. There was a technical glitch that wiped everything. Just like that night.
On the fifth day, he said she could be dead, and I hit him so hard he went down becoming one with the tiled hospital floor, because that was the only thing I refused to believe.
She cannot fucking die.
She is not allowed to die.
On the sixth day, I slipped out again and drove back to the bridge, staying there all night on the same stretch of pavement, repaired now, like my bike had never crashed into those railings, like none of it had happened.
