CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Lissa bolts toward the exit, but Grant and I charge, going wide to cut off her escape.
She lunges at Grant, poised to pistol-whip him in the head, and he breaks out his classic dodge-and-strike.
I seize the gun from her hand and throw it toward the other end of the station; when I twist back toward Lissa, she greets me with a handful of chunky gold rings to the face.
I reach out to grab her around the waist, but she darts out of reach, leaving me to crash to the ground.
She knocks Grant aside with an elbow to the jaw, and I manage to grab at her ankle and pull her off-balance.
She lands in a heap, her other gun skidding across the floor until it falls onto the tracks.
I get to my feet before Lissa and reach for her hands, the zip ties burning a hole in my pocket, but she twists away at the last second and I just barely dodge a headbutt.
The sirens overhead have grown louder, and the whole platform buzzes with energy. She’s back up and full of fight, shaking out her arms. But Grant and I still have the upper hand. We stand between her and the exit.
The official exit, anyway. We all seem to realize this at the same time as a wild spark flares in Lissa’s eyes, and she turns to launch herself onto the tracks. We race after her, our footsteps crunching on the gravel between the tracks, the tunnel rumbling around us.
Grant catches up first, grabbing her arm. She twists and he anticipates her strike to his face but doesn’t expect the way she loops her foot behind his and trips him. He crashes to the ground and she runs straight over him, planting one platform boot directly on his chest to use as a springboard.
She lands in front of me in a crouch, and I see it too late: when she pops back up, her hands are full of gravel, and she sends a spray of it directly into my eyes.
The shock makes me cry out, and I rush to clear my eyes with one hand, searching the air in front of me with the other.
I come up empty. I hear the dull thud of a punch and a hiss of pain.
When I can see again, I catch just a glimpse of Grant and the trickle of blood streaming from his nose.
I swallow down the sick feeling rushing through me.
But I don’t have long to dwell on it, because a pink-haired maniac is rushing at me again.
I duck at the last second, seizing her by the legs and hauling her into a fireman’s carry.
I manage to slam her back onto the platform and scramble after her.
We’re a blur of kicks and punches, and it’s several strikes and dodges before I realize that Grant hasn’t followed us.
With Lissa in a headlock, I whirl toward the tracks.
Grant is crouched, frowning at his foot.
“Grant?”
“Zip tie,” he calls, and now I see the white plastic tethering his shoe to the tracks, and the way he’s trying and failing to tug his foot free. “Right after she punched me in the face.”
“Thanks for trying to restrain me,” Lissa chokes out. “Really appreciated the extra resources.” I squeeze harder as she tries to claw my arm away with her sparkly pink nails. It’s then that I realize the distant, ambient rumbling is not so distant and ambient anymore.
“Use your shoelace!” I yell to Grant.
“That’s what it’s tied to,” he calls.
“THEN UNTIE IT,” I shriek.
“I’m working on it!”
Lissa takes advantage of my distraction, wrenching herself out of the headlock and throwing me backward into the grimy platform wall. I try to dart for Grant, but Lissa shoves me back, pinning me with a forearm against my throat.
“Real talk, girl-to-girl,” she says. “This is pathetic. See how much weaker you are when you’re focused on him?”
I pull at her arm, tuning her out as I crane for a look at the tracks. All the strength in the world is nothing to the building roar from down the tunnel and the mounting fear that Grant won’t get free in time.
I have to get to him. I have to help him get away. I turn my focus back on Lissa, jabbing my thumbs at her eyes. She leans away just in time and returns laughing in my face, never letting up the pressure on my neck.
“Theeeere it is,” she sings. “You see? You feel that fire that lights you up when you really fight? That’s all you can really count on.”
“No, it isn’t,” I croak. “I can count on Grant.”
“In a minute, you’ll be able to count the pieces of him that have been squashed into the tracks.”
My ears ring as I strain for leverage on her arm. She sneers at me. Grant struggles in my periphery. A light begins to glow from down the tunnel, igniting his silhouette. The noise shakes the station.
Lissa presses harder. “I’m doing you a favor,” she says. “He’ll break you down. You’ll see that all of this, everything you think you have together, was nothing. A beautiful delusion.”
She’s dancing on the edge of the truth, but missing it completely. This all may disappear like a dream soon, but it’s not nothing. It matters. And it can’t end this way.
I try to pry her wrist away, and she steels herself against my grip.
“You’re better than this and you know it,” she hisses into my face. “You don’t actually believe in this shit. Love isn’t real!”
“YES IT IS,” I shout, using every last bit of my energy to twist and throw her off me right as the thundering crescendos to a fever pitch. She flies backward, flung like a rag doll.
Right into the side of the train as it flashes by.
I can’t hear myself scream in the vacuum of the tunnel, with the train roaring past and the blood pounding in my ears. But when I come up for air, my throat is raw.
The train is gone in an instant, speeding away as if Grant were nothing. Every part of me is numb, staggering to the platform’s edge like I’m dragging my own corpse. I can’t stop myself from looking for him, even if I know it’s going to be the worst sight of my life.
There, lying right between the rails, is Grant—face down, hands covering his head, one shoe untied.
Breathing hard.
He lifts his head and looks around; his face frozen in shock. Then he pushes up, checks himself over for injuries, and stares at me.
“Holy shit,” he exhales.
A strangled sound comes out of me as I collapse on the floor.
Grant scrambles to the edge of the platform and hoists himself up, then scoops me into his arms. His trembling fingers clutch the nape of my neck, his other arm wound tight around me. I bury my face in his shoulder, my fists twisting knots into his jacket.
“Lissa,” he says, out of breath, and we look up to find her crumpled on the ground—alive, though bloodied and failing in her effort to drag herself away.
The clatter from above reaches our level. The pedestrian tunnel brightens with the bobbing of flashlights followed by a swarm of police, Wally leading the charge.
“Hands where I can see them!” he shouts at Lissa. Her battered hands are already in plain sight, splayed against the dusty tile floor, so she merely slumps in defeat.
All the air rushes out of me at once. It’s done.
Grant looks me over, studying me, his thumbs skimming my cheeks.
“We made it,” he says. “We’re okay.”
“We’re okay,” I echo, trying to believe it. Willing my limbs to stop shaking.
His mouth quirks into a soft smile, his face smeared with blood like mine must be.
“Hey,” he says gently. “You didn’t throw up.”
“I still might,” I say shakily. “I feel really sick.”
“I know.” He kisses the top of my head. “Baby steps.”
Beyond us, Wally reads Lissa her rights.
She’s cuffed and carted away on a stretcher, while other officers mutter into radios and inspect the scene.
Someone tries to offer us medical attention, which we decline; someone else gives us scratchy blankets and asks us pointless questions.
We’re congratulated and smiled at and I can’t seem to feel the victory, only the finality of it all.
Winning only happens at the end. This is the end.
As the police proceedings wrap up, Wally comes over to thank us for our help.
“You have Lesley to thank too,” says Grant.
Wally falls silent, his eyes fixed on the dirty floor.
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “I’ve dreaded those words for a long time,” he finally says.
“Now I just wish he were here to gloat.” With a brusque throat-clearing, he straightens and adds, “Rest assured, he’ll be properly honored for his role.
We’ll dedicate a plaque or a fountain or something. ”
“A bench,” I say, my voice thick. “He’d love that.”
Wally nods. “A bench, then.”
He asks if we’re sure we don’t want to get checked out at the hospital, and when we tell him we’re fine, he offers us a lift home.
Home. The word sends a crackle of pain through my chest.
Grant and I answer at the same time.
“We’ll walk.”
· · ·
THE WALK BACK to Lesley’s house feels precarious, like at any moment the sidewalk might open and swallow us up. The momentary relief of Lissa’s defeat has largely faded, overtaken by the rising tide of dread. It’s like I can feel the words THE END breathing down my neck.
I fixate on Grant’s footsteps, the careful way he walks when he’s deep in thought.
There are so many tiny, perfect details about him—the warmth of his voice, the freckle on his right index finger.
I have to wonder if Anna invented them all or if there’s any of him that’s beyond her, just for me.
I can’t imagine her knowing him like I do.
The house is unnaturally quiet when we return, and it feels wrong for us to be there alone, so we settle on the front steps.
It would be a nice scene to end on. The hero and heroine side by side, victorious in the afternoon sun, facing the promise of their life together now that they’ve beaten the bad guy.
But the thing is, that’s a promise that can’t be fulfilled. No matter how much time Anna writes for us—a montage of happiness that lasts days or weeks, an epilogue a year later—one way or another, the story ends. There’s a last word on a last page and a cold, hard back cover to seal it all in.