17. Cassidy
SEVENTEEN
CASSIDY
I just wanted to cook my girl some breakfast, but no. Miami’s finest are about to bust in and put a bullet in me before I can explain a goddamn thing.
I snatch up the duffel by the kitchen island and swing it over my shoulder. “We have to go, now!”
Bindi jerks, her eyes darting from me to the door, wide and terrified. “How . . . how can we escape from a high-rise apartment?” She takes a step back, breath coming in short gasps. We are fourteen floors up with nowhere to run—that’s what she sees.
I shake my head before crossing the room, and grabbing her wrist. My grip is firm as I pull her toward me. She doesn’t move at first, her feet frozen, her body locked with fear. My eyes meet her, and I give her a single nod.
Trust me.
And for one split second, I’m sixteen again, dragging her down a moonlit alley with stolen cash in my jacket and a siren howling somewhere behind us.
I tug her, causing her to stumble, but eventually she gets her footing and we start moving.
Another slam hits the door. A battering ram?
What the fuck. The wood groans and a whimper escapes Bindi.
Then she jerks away from me.
“Bigsby,” she chokes out, twisting from my grip and sprinting toward the couch. The cat’s crouched low behind it, tail fluffed like a pipe cleaner.
“Bindi, we don’t have time?—”
“I’m not leaving him!”
She drops to her knees, reaching under the couch. Bigsby scrambles away at first, but eventually she coaxes him into her arms. She pulls open the closet door and kicks aside a pile of laundry and tucks him inside.
“There,” she whispers, tearing open a bag of food and tossing some into a shoebox lid. She fills a mason jar with water from the sink, spilling half of it as she slides it beside him. “You stay hidden, okay? Be good. Be brave.”
Bigsby meows once and she presses her forehead to his fur. “You’re smarter than you look. Don’t make me regret this.”
I hear the door crack again, louder this time—wood splintering.
“Now, Bindi!”
I lunge, hook my arm around her waist, and haul her up before she can say another word. She lets out a cry, but I don’t stop. Her body collides with mine as we move toward the balcony door
“No time left,” I growl into her ear.
There’s another deafening crash. The door’s barely hanging on, dangling on one hinge. It’s seconds from caving.
Heat slams into us as I throw open the balcony door, the two of us tumbling outside.
Bindi leans over the railing, peering down.
A tiny hiss of breath escapes her lips. I know what she sees—a long, long drop—but directly below us, perhaps ten or twelve feet down, the next apartment’s balcony juts out further than Jordyn’s balcony.
If we dangle from our railing, it might be only a ten-foot drop to that terrace .
Doable . . . if we don’t slip, and if the wind doesn’t decide to fling us off the side of the building. If whoever lives below doesn’t raise the alarm when two fugitives land on their porch.
I swing a leg over the balcony railing. Beside me, Bindi mirrors the motion without a word. In the dim light, I catch a wild gleam in her eye—fear layered over with that reckless thrill she lives for. A shaky grin flickers over her face.
“Just like old times, huh?”
Despite everything, a breathy chuckle slips out of me. She’s not wrong. How many times did we sneak out of second-story windows as cops closed in? We were delinquents with big delusions back then.
Then, the sound of the front door finally being shoved open breaks me out of my trip down memory lane. A beam of flashlight sweeps across the living room behind us.
Time’s up.
I grip the railing and haul myself over the outer edge. My sneakers find a narrow ledge on the building’s exterior, just below the railing—barely wide enough for the toes of my shoes. My arms strain, keeping a white-knuckle hold on the metal bar above me as I steady myself.
Bindi is right next to me, hanging on with both hands now, her boots dangling by their laces from her wrist. Her breathing is fast and shallow.
I hear a faint, Oh God, under her breath as she glances down into the dizzying abyss.
My stomach lurches too at the sight, but adrenaline and determination shove the vertigo aside.
“I’ll go first. I’ll catch you.”
She opens her mouth, but one of the cops barks, “He’s not in the bedroom. Check the balcony!”
That hurries her.
She nods tersely, and I give her one last look, her eyes locking on mine. Then I let my body drop over the ledge.
I’m falling, stomach shooting into my throat. Then, CRASH . I collide with the balcony below, landing right on a woven wicker love seat, and it shatters under the impact with a splintery crack. The cushions whoosh out a cloud of dust. Pain jolts up my spine.
For a moment, I can’t breathe—the wind was knocked clean out of me—but I’m alive. No sharp agony of a broken leg or back.
Above, I hear Bindi muffle a cry—whether in alarm or relief, I can’t tell. I roll off the wreckage, sucking in a ragged breath. My shoulder’s definitely wrenched, and my ribs ache, but nothing’s catastrophic. I look up, craning my neck.
Bindi’s hanging from the penthouse railing now, her boots dangling in the empty air, T-shirt riding up just enough to flash a glimpse of lace, and if we weren’t in a life-threatening situation, I would probably make some horny joke.
A shot cracks out, sparks fly off the railing inches from her hand. They’re shooting at her. Those badge-wearing psychos are fucking shooting at her!
Rage and terror ignite in my chest. “Bindi, drop!” I shout, already positioning myself beneath her, arms out, legs braced.
She doesn’t hesitate, and she releases her grip, her silhouette plunging toward me.
I catch her as best I can—my hands snagging under her arms as she slams into me. The momentum knocks us both over, and my back hits the balcony floor with her on top of me, driving the breath from my lungs for the second time.
For a moment, neither of us moves, stunned by the impact and expecting a follow-up hail of bullets. But none comes. The angle now protects us from our attackers above. I hear them shouting, frustrated they can’t get a clear shot. Not this second, anyway.
Bindi’s face is inches from mine, her ponytail loose, crimson hair tumbling around us.
Her eyes are huge and wild as they search my face.
My mouth opens to ask if she’s okay, to tell her we have to move, but all that comes out is a broken, breathless laugh.
It just . . . bubbles up out of me, the absurdity and relief crashing together.
Bindi blinks, then a giggle escapes her as well. Soon, we’re both laughing in shock, shaky and soundless. We did it. We’re alive.
Her hand is braced on my chest, right over my heartbeat. I think she feels it thundering beneath her fingers.
I feel everything.
Her weight, her warmth, how she trembles, her closeness.
Her gaze flicks to my mouth, just for a heartbeat, then back to my eyes.
I stop breathing.
I see it in her eyes—the pull. The war behind those green eyes. The same electric energy we both kept caged for so long until the night I shoved her out that bedroom window with my foster father’s blood on my hands and a promise in my throat.
I’ll find you, no matter how far. A million miles won’t stop me.
Her hand is still on my chest, fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt. My hand lifts on instinct—or memory—and brushes a strand of her tangled red mess behind her ear. Her breath catches.
So does mine.
She doesn’t move. Am I supposed to? Fuck. I don’t know how to do this.
I tilt forward, barely, just enough that I feel her breath on mine. The space between us folds smaller, tighter.
Her eyes flutter, and my pulse hammers so loudly I think she can hear it.
So close.
So fucking close.
“THEY’RE MOVING!” someone shouts above us
Bindi jerks back, eyes wide. I suck in a breath, my hand dropping, and the moment vanishes, swallowed by gunfire echoes and reality slamming back in.
“We have to go,” she says, breathless .
“I know,” I rasp.
I grab Bindi’s hand and pull her toward the sliding glass door of the apartment whose balcony we’ve invaded. My back’s still ringing from the fall, and she’s got blood on her lip and fire in her eyes. I don’t even think twice about dragging her with me.
Pressing against the wall, I test the door—locked. Of-fucking-course. I feel Bindi shift beside me, already withdrawing a small, flat tool from inside her boot. She wedges it into the doorframe.
It takes only seconds before I hear the click. Bindi slides the balcony door open, and we slip gratefully into the dark coolness of the apartment. I draw the door almost closed behind us, leaving the tiniest gap so it won’t make a sound.
Inside, the interior is nearly pitch black, lit only by the faint spill of city glow through the drapes and the tiny green LED of a microwave in what looks like the kitchen. The air is scented with floral air freshener and vanilla.
As my eyes adjust, shapes emerge—a plush sofa, a glass coffee table, a shelf of picture frames by the hallway. My gaze snags on one of them, and in the dim light, I can make out a man with a broad smile and a little girl perched on his shoulders, her gap-toothed grin frozen in time.
A family photo.
A pang spears through my chest. People who live in places like this—people with family portraits on the wall—don’t live in our world.
Once, Bindi and I dared to imagine we could have something like this—a home.
Safety. But it was a childish fantasy, and we learned young that our life would never be picture-perfect.
For an instant, the smiling faces blur into a memory—Bindi at twelve, our foster father’s whiskey-soaked snarl, and me at fourteen, standing in front of her with a shaking kitchen knife. I blink hard, willing the ghost away.
This place isn’t ours, and it could never be .