“Calm down,” the man says, motioning forward. “No, listen to me, Caleb, I’m sure I can get him out of it. He did run, yes, and he shouldn’t have, but he called nine-one-one, and the man you shot is going to live. Your brother is going to be fine.”

“He’s going to live?” Caleb asks, his voice desperate and nearly breathless.

I see the relief wash through him beneath all of that anger and rage and fear.

“Yes,” the man says. “He’s in stable condition. It was a shoulder wound.”

“And my brother? You fucking swear on your life he’s not going to be charged?”

“Caleb, I’m not going to swear it,” the man says, “because I want to be completely honest with you. But his chances are very good. The only thing he did wrong was run, but he didn’t go far. He did everything else right. I believe he’ll be fine. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure that he is. I know he’s innocent. He’s got a good heart. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I know a good man when I see one.” He pauses, looks at me and then back at Caleb. “I’m looking at two good men right now. And one good woman. People who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. People who have screwed up and who will have to face charges no matter what, but people who still have a chance to prove that they’re good people.”

The woman in the flowered dress breaks into sobs of her own. The clerk holds her next to him.

“Let them go, Caleb,” the cop says.

“I will,” he says. “You go back outside and I’ll send them out after you.”

“What about you?” the man asks suspiciously. “Are you going to give yourself up?”

“I want to think about it,” Caleb says. “But I’ll let them go.”

The man nods, accepting what Caleb gives him. He leaves the store.

Caleb paces back and forth in front of the drink coolers, staying out of sight of the front windows. Then he stops and points at the three hostages.

“Go,” he says motioning his free hand toward the front doors. “I’m sorry that I put you through this. I’m so sorry.”

The woman in the flowered dress raises her eyes to him and then immediately bolts out of the store sobbing hysterically.

“Bray,” Caleb says turning to her, “I’m sorry for being such a dick.” He looks at me. “I really am.”

“I know,” I say.

Bray just sits there quietly with her back pressed against the wall. Her tears have dried up, her face devoid of any emotion.

Caleb goes to the door and opens it enough that he can yell out, “I’m going to come out! I’m going to surrender!”

Bray gets up, and her movement surprises me. She walks past me and goes toward the end of the candy bar aisle.

I follow behind her.

“Put the gun on the floor and come out with your hands up!”

Caleb sets the gun on the floor right in front of the door, raises his hands high above his head, turns around, and pushes the glass door open with his back.

The second the door closes, I see Bray’s dark hair whip behind her as she runs toward the door. I panic inside when she falls to the floor and grabs Caleb’s gun and then backs herself against the bread display.

“What are you doing?” I approach her carefully. My heart is hammering against my rib cage. “Baby… please… please don’t—”

She shoves the gun underneath her chin, pushing her head back against a loaf of bread, and her finger rests on the trigger.

I fall to my knees, tears streaming down my face. I feel like I’m going to throw up my heart is beating so fast.

“God, please, Bray… please… if you do this, if you take your life in front of me it will kill me. I love you so fucking much. I always have. I always will.” I’m choking on my tears, and the back of my throat burns. “You remember that pact we made when we were kids? Best friends always. Do you remember?” I inched closer on my hands and knees. My hands are shaking so badly I can hardly hold my body up. Bray’s face holds no emotion. None. She just looks at me through glass eyes, but the more I talk to her, the more I remind her how much I love her, the more I see the faintest of emotion flicker inside the glass. I see the Bray I’ve known and loved since I was nine years old, the one stronger than the darkness that lives inside of her. “I know you remember. But you’re more to me than my best friend. You always have been. My heart beats for you. If you die, every part of what makes me human will die.”

Her hand begins to shake. It makes me nervous. Her finger on the trigger… I don’t want her to shake.

“God damn it, Bray… I love you! Don’t put me through this!”

“I can’t be locked up!” she screams. “I can’t live like that! Away from you! You’re all I have in this world! All I’ve ever had!”

“I’ll be there!” I scream back at her with every ounce of emotion my body can produce. “I would never leave you alone! Do you understand me?! Never! I don’t care how long it takes, Bray, I will wait for you!”

And then the significance of the moment hits me.

“I will die for you, Bray! I will die WITH you!”

Her lips quiver uncontrollably. She stares deeply into my eyes for what feels like forever. And then she shakes her head no, the barrel of the gun moving with the movement of her head.

“Don’t say that!” she roars.

“I will!” I scream, and then I try to calm myself enough to make her understand. I inch closer. “Brayelle, this, this moment right here is the ‘anything’ I vowed to you last night. You didn’t ask me to prove it, but I’m going to prove it anyway—don’t look away from my eyes,” I say, and she looks back up. “Stay with me. Right here.” I point at my eyes with my index and middle finger. “If this is what you really want, then I go down with you. I don’t want to live without you, either. We’re in this together. We always have been. I won’t abandon you now. I’ll die with you if you think death is the only way.”

She shakes her head, over and over, and tries fruitlessly to produce words.

“I don’t want you to die because of me,” she finally says, her voice raspy from crying so much and so hard.

“I want to live, Bray,” I say breathily, and with desperation. “I want to live a life with you. I want to marry you. I want to grow old and have babies with you. I want to live. But I’m prepared to die. Do you understand?”

“Why are you doing this?!” Her features are tortured, her body trembling.

“Because we belong together! In life and in death! Because without you I’m dead anyway!”

She throws her head back against the bread shelf and screams, dropping the gun on the floor. I grab her and scoop her up in my arms and crush her so hard against me that it takes the breath out of my lungs. We cry into each other, her fingers grasping my shirt, mine digging into her back.

“Baby, I fucking love you so much. I’ll never let you go,” I murmur into her neck.

The police burst through the door, but I can only faintly hear them. They’re ghosts, like Bray had always been to her parents. I only see and hear and feel Bray when they’re pulling us apart. I only hear her yelling out my name as everything else around us is mute. My heart breaks as she is reaching out for me and I know I can’t reach back. Everything seems to happen in slow motion.

“I won’t abandon you,” I say almost in a whisper, as she’s being dragged away with her hands behind her back. “I won’t abandon you.”

And then she’s gone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

One year and two weeks later…