Chapter 179: The Edge

Chapter 179: The Edge
The car made a sound every few seconds. A low, stressed creak from the metal where it sat against the guardrail.
Del could feel the angle of it, the way the floor tilted slightly toward Oliver's side, toward the drop. She was pressed back against her seat, and her door was above the road, and his was above nothing.
"Del, I need you to help me.” Oliver’s voice was different from any version of it she'd heard before. Not charming. “I can't get my legs out. You have to do exactly what I tell you to do. Okay?"
But Del didn't move and just looked at him. He shifted slightly, and the car made the sound again, and both of them went still until it settled.
"Listen to me, okay? Just listen. I need you to brace the seat — if you push the seat back, it might release the pressure on my legs, it's caught on the bottom of the dash, just —"
"Oliver," she said.
"— just push it back, there's a lever on the side, it's the same as yours —"
"Oliver, stop."
He stopped.
They sat in the tilted car and looked at each other, and the guardrail made the sound again.
"I'll change," Oliver suddenly said.
“Oliver…”
"I mean it." He held her gaze, and his voice was completely even, not pleading, just saying it. "Whatever you want me to be. I'll be it. Tell me what it looks like, and I'll be it, Del. I'm serious. We don't have to go to El Salvador, we don't have to go anywhere, we can turn around right now, we can go back, we can figure out something else, I will do anything —"
"You can't change this," she said.
"I can."
"Oliver."
"I can. People change. It happens."
"Not this," she said. "Not what you are. Not what you need."
He shook his head. "You don't know that."
"I asked you a question," Del said. "In the car. About the world running out of rotten people."
Oliver closed his eyes briefly.
"Answer it honestly," she said. "If there was rotten fruit left. No one on your list, no one to find, no predators, no abusers, nothing. Just a regular world full of regular people. Would you have been okay? Would you have just lived your life?"
"Del, this isn't —"
"Would you have been okay, Oliver?"
The car creaked. Wind moved over the road outside. Somewhere below them, whatever was below them, it was quiet.
Oliver looked at her, and she could see him trying to find the answer that would work, the one that would be true enough to be believable and shaped right to be what she needed to hear.
He couldn't find it.
She watched him not find it.
And then his face did something she hadn't seen it do before. It just stopped. All the charm, the careful positioning of everything he said and showed — it stopped, and what was underneath was a man bleeding from his head and pinned in a car, and genuinely did not know how to answer the question she was asking.
"No," he said.
Del felt her eyes fill.
"No, I wouldn't have been okay," he said. "I'd have found something. I'd have found someone. I don't know if it would have looked the same, but I'd have found a way to —" He stopped. He looked at the wheel, then looked back at her. "That's what you wanted me to say."
"I wanted you to say something different," Del said.
He looked at her.
"I wanted you to tell me I was wrong," she said, and her voice was going now, she could feel it, the crying she'd been holding back. "I wanted you to have an answer that I hadn't already figured out because I didn't want to be right about this. I wanted there to be something you could say that would change it." She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth for a second. "I wanted to help you. I wanted that to be possible."
"It is possible," Oliver said. "Del —"
"It's not." She shook her head, and the tears went, and she let them because there was no point anymore. "You needed it. Not them, you. That means there will always be a them because there will always be a you that needs it and I can't —" She stopped. "I can't be the person standing next to that. I can't do it."
Oliver's face broke the way faces broke when a person understood something had ended and there was nothing left to negotiate.
"Del, please," he said.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry for what happened to you when you were a kid. I'm sorry for what your father did and I'm sorry for what it made you and I'm sorry that none of that is something I can fix." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I'm really sorry, Oliver."
"Don't do that," he said. "Don't say sorry and then —"
"I know."
"Del."
"I know."
She looked at the bag on the floor by her feet.
She hadn't planned this part. Her hand moved to the bag because she had no money, no phone, and no idea where she was exactly. She pulled it into her lap.
"Del, don't —"
She got her door open. It was heavy at this angle, pushing up against gravity, and she had to use her shoulder to get it and hold it and pull herself up and out. The car shifted when she moved. They both went still. The guardrail held.
She got her feet onto the road and was standing on the asphalt. The sun was on her face, and she was shaking.
"Del, you can't just leave me here,” Oliver said from inside the car. “Del, come back, please, the car is going to —"
She stood at the door and looked at him. Bloody and trapped, the same face that had sat across from her in the cafe and refused to take no for an answer, the same face she'd genuinely loved in the way you could love something that was also destroying you.
"I'm sorry," she said and stepped back from the door.
The car held for two seconds.
Then the guardrail gave way with a sound like a gunshot, and the car went over the edge, and she did not watch it fall. She turned away before it happened. She stood facing the road with her back to the drop and the bag against her chest, and she heard the sound of it, the distant impact, and she did not look.
She stood there and cried for Liza and for the girl she'd been before any of this started and for the girl she was now.
She cried because she was alone for the first time in months.
She cried for Oliver because she loved him, and she'd still done it anyway.
Then her legs gave out.