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I glance up at the guard. “He assures me that I’ll be able to get back in.”
Drew’s beautiful lips press into a firm line. “I think I should come along to make sure.”
My heart swells. Drew has no idea how often I imagined him saving me whenever I got into tough spots as a kid. His family might not come from money, but they had a beautiful brick house, two parents, and the sort of home life I longed for. I always knew he would sweep me away from the dark, sad, dirty house with no mother and a father who rarely spoke to any of us after she died. My father still doesn’t.
And here he is. Drew. It’s hero time.
We enter the bowels of the club. The offices are dark on a Saturday night. At the end of the hall, we turn into a large room filled with rows of stacked chairs. There’s a huge set of double doors on the back wall, which I assume is where deliveries are made. We seem to be heading for that.
This seems weird. There should be dozens of random exits to a sprawling building like this. Alarm bells start to ring. “My punishment is only for fifteen minutes, though, right?”
“Sure,” Jeremy says.
Drew must also start to feel concern, because he says, “So you’re sure we can walk around for a while, and then she can come back in?”
The guard smiles again. “Sure.”
He unlocks one of the double doors and opens it to the cool night air. Outside is a concrete ledge that juts over a pit. Just as I figured, this is where deliveries arrive.
Jeremy angles me toward the door. “Go on now.”
“But—”
“Out you go.” He gives me a hefty push.
I stumble forward onto the concrete ledge. There isn’t much space before the sharp drop where trucks pull up.
“Watch that!” Drew shouts.
I hear nothing else. My heel snaps, caught in the ridge between the concrete and the metal edge of the loading dock. I wave my arms, trying to sidestep and move toward the stairs I see to the right.
But I’m off balance. I can’t find my footing on the broken heel.
I tilt forward to stare into the concrete hole.
Then, like a big ol’ peach careening off a grocery store display, I start to fall.
