Chapter 1 Matteo #2
The edge of her lip quivers, and something softens in my chest—a dangerous, traitorous softness. Her scent hits me then, lavender and something green, like an afterthought of a garden in a city that forgot how to grow things. I should pull away. I don’t.
“I wasn’t actually going to jump,” she mutters. “I just like dramatic altitudes when I’m falling apart.”
There’s a wildness in her, but something soft, too. She doesn’t look like a jumper. I can see it in her eyes. But this isn’t about what she wants; it’s about what she thinks she deserves.
“So who was it?” I take a step closer, closing the space between us. “A boyfriend? An ex? Did he ghost you like you never mattered? Cheat on you? With your best friend?”
My voice sharpens, a blade twisting. “Or maybe you got fired? Screwed over by someone who smiled to your face?”
She stiffens, eyes narrowing to slits. “None of your business.”
“I think it is.”
“It’s not.”
She looks down, leaning forward ever so slightly toward the ten-floor drop. For a heartbeat, I think she’s going to do it, but then she closes her eyes and exhales, heavy and trembling.
Her resolve is cracking. I can see it, piece by piece, falling away.
“If I’m being honest with you,” I say quietly, “I’d probably do the same.”
“What?” Her gaze flicks to mine — quick, uncertain, like she’s not sure she heard me right.
“Jumping,” I say, glancing over the ledge. “Yeah, I get it. Life fucking sucks. It’s hard. Nothing ever goes the way you want. Jumping feels easier.”
“I’m not going to jump,” she blurts, too fast. Too defensive.
“Good,” I reply, voice flat. “Because I’m not in the mood to start my day with a police report and trauma counseling.”
Her lip twitches; she’s about to tell me to fuck off. But she doesn’t. She just stares at me, like I’ve intruded on something sacred. Maybe I have.
I glance at her feet. One shifts, barely noticeable. Her breathing’s too fast. Her hands are trembling.
In one smooth motion, I grab her wrist and pull her off the ledge — straight into my arms.
She collides with my chest, a soft thud of bones and breath, and her face buries itself in the crook of my neck.
I freeze for a heartbeat before my arms move on their own, wrapping around her and pulling her in. It feels natural. Wrong but natural. Like something I was always supposed to do.
I press my face into the crown of her hair. Lavender—soft, almost medicinal—slides under my nose. It hits like an illicit drug, warm and impossible, and for a second the world narrows to the rhythm of her breath against my collarbone.
“You’re okay?”
Then I feel it — her chest rising and falling too quickly, a single shaky sob slipping from her lips.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur.
I don’t hesitate. I scoop her up fully and carry her toward the elevator. She’s spiraling, caught in a storm, and for once I’m the one steady in the middle of it.
Her arms loop around my neck, her breath hot against my skin.
“You’re having a panic attack,” I say softly as the elevator doors close. “Breathe slower.”
“That’s it,” I murmur, doing my best to sound comforting. My voice feels foreign in my own throat — soft, cautious, not my natural setting.
“I’m going to put you down. Can you stand?”
She hesitates, then nods against my neck as her breathing slows to something almost steady.
“You’re okay now,” I say, startled at the softness in my own tone.
“Don’t say it,” she whispers muffled. “Don’t say I’m okay.”
“All right,” I say. “Then tell me what you want.”
She draws back, and for a sliver of a second, I can study her like a map.
Her cheekbones are high; there’s a scar near her hairline—delicate, pale—and her hands have the calluses of someone who does not have a life of leisure.
The boots she wears have mud on them the wrong way for a woman who’s lived in this neighborhood her whole life.
She is complicated and small and defiant and ruined, and maybe exactly what I don’t need.
“I wanted the world to shut up,” she says finally. “To stop pretending to be kinder than it is.”
“You picked a great spot for that.” I don’t know why I’m being sarcastic. Maybe because sarcasm is the only defense I can layer over the thing that’s happening under my ribs. Maybe because I’m afraid that if I am honest, I will pull her into my orbit and never be able to let her go.
“I don’t know you. But I know what it looks like when someone’s about to give up. I’ve been there, bella.”
Her eyes close, frustration and pain flickering across her face like lightning. “I don’t need a savior or some guy with a god complex telling me it’s all going to be fine.”
A corner of my mouth lifts. God complex. She has no idea who I am.
“I wasn’t trying to comfort you,” I say, voice low. “And you picked the wrong rooftop — because I don’t shut up. It’s a pain getting blood out of concrete, bella.”
“Asshole,” she breathes.
It shouldn’t thrill me. But it does.
Her palm is still pressed to my chest, and I’m hyperaware of it — how small she is, how soft, how close. The lavender hits me again and my restraint frays one more thread.
She’s everything I should avoid right now — messy, emotional, unpredictable.
“Listen,” I tell her. “You go down, you come to the lobby, you get the hell out of my elevator, and you sit in my lobby until you feel the anger has enough oxygen to breathe without trying to kill you.”
“You’re angry,” she says quietly, like she’s just figured out a puzzle.
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Not just about me. You’re angry at the world. Like it owes you something.”
A low chuckle escapes me. “You were on a rooftop trying to jump, and you’re analyzing me?”
She doesn’t flinch. “You wear it like armor. The sarcasm. The cold.”
I should be offended. Instead, I feel… seen. Uncomfortably so.
“I’m not cold,” I say.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “That’s what makes it worse.”
Before I can get a word out, she takes a shaky step closer. Her fingers brush mine, just barely. Like a question.
“I don’t know who you are,” she says, “but thank you for stopping me.”
And for one suspended second, I almost forget there’s a war waiting outside. Because the war inside her feels more real than anything I’ve ever fought.
The elevator doors slide open with a soft chime.
“I should go,” she whispers — but she doesn’t wait for an answer. She bolts, like hell itself is nipping at her heels.
But not before her eyes flick back to mine, just once.
Like she’s afraid of remembering me.
Or of me remembering her.
I want to chase after her. Every part of me screams to. But I don’t.
I just stand there and watch — watch her slip through the building’s front door and vanish around the corner.
Her scent lingers in the elevator, faint and stubborn like she’s already trying to haunt me.
I breathe it in, one last time, then step out.
I don’t know her name. I don’t know her story. But Rossi — our security — taps my shoulder in the lobby. “She dropped this, sir.”
It’s a coffee receipt from La Colombe, the ink running at one corner. The paper folds into my hand like a promise someone couldn’t keep.
War can wait a breath, but not for long.