Chapter 153 The Weight of Winter
Briar's POV
My body felt like it was burning from the inside out, fever making everything blur at the edges, but I forced myself to focus on Willow's face. She stood a few feet away on the rooftop, her expression eerily calm despite everything that had just happened, and something about that calmness terrified me more than any of Julian's threats ever had.
"Lucian," I said, my voice coming out hoarse and weak. "Can you give us a minute? I need to talk to Willow alone."
Lucian's hand tightened on my arm, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that showed he'd noticed something was wrong. His jaw clenched, that telltale muscle ticking as he fought his protective instincts. After a long moment, he nodded slowly and leaned close, breath warm against my ear. "If anything feels off, call for me immediately. I'll be right downstairs." He shot Willow a warning look before heading to the stairwell, his footsteps echoing as he disappeared.
Willow moved toward me, shrugging out of her coat as she approached. She draped it over my shoulders, her fingers barely brushing my arms as she adjusted it, and I realized I'd been shaking without even noticing. "You're shivering," she said, her voice flat. "You've got a baby in there. Don't freeze to death out here."
Movement below caught my attention. Through the gaps in the rooftop railing, I could see figures working on something large and inflatable. My heart kicked into overdrive because I recognized what they were setting up even from five stories up—a rescue airbag, the kind emergency services used for jumpers.
Willow turned away from me to face the city skyline, her profile sharp against the glow of distant streetlights. She tilted her head back slightly, and when she spoke her voice was so quiet I almost missed it over the wind. "This winter's wind is too cold. It makes it impossible to see what's ahead. Let's just end it tonight."
The words hit me like a physical blow. I remembered our conversation in the car, her question that had seemed so abstract: "Which season would you want your soul to die in?" She hadn't been speaking philosophically. She'd been planning this.
"Willow, wait—" I started to say, but she was already moving.
She turned toward the edge with deliberate steps, each one measured and final. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath, and I heard her voice drift back to me, barely audible. "I really hate it. I really hate peanuts."
Her body tilted forward, leaning over the edge, and instinct overrode every rational thought in my head. I lunged toward her, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind, grabbing her with every ounce of strength I had left. For one suspended moment we teetered on the edge together, and then gravity made its choice. We fell.
The world tilted sideways and my stomach dropped as we plunged through the cold night air. Wind screamed in my ears and Willow's body was rigid in my arms, her back pressed against my chest as we tumbled through space. Something wet hit my cheek and I realized she was crying, tears streaming up toward the sky as we fell, and her voice reached me through the rush of air, cracked and desperate. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, could only hold on tighter as the ground rushed up to meet us. In the last fraction of a second before impact, I caught a glimpse of the white rescue airbag spread out below us, and then we hit. The airbag absorbed the impact with a tremendous whoosh of displaced air, and the combination of that shock and my raging fever was too much. Darkness swallowed me whole.
---
I woke to the antiseptic smell of hospital and steady beeping. My eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, but I forced them open to find white ceiling tiles and Lucian sitting in the chair beside my bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, looking more exhausted than I'd ever seen him.
"You're awake," he said, his head snapping up. Relief flooded his features, quickly followed by anger. "What the hell were you thinking, jumping off a building while you're pregnant and running a fever?"
"I saw the airbag," I croaked. "I knew we'd be okay."
"You saw the airbag," he repeated, taking a deep breath to calm himself. "Briar, you were burning up with fever and you decided to trust your judgment about safely falling five stories."
I couldn't bring myself to regret it. "Is Willow okay?"
Lucian's expression shifted. "She woke up about an hour before you did. The police took her into custody as soon as the doctors cleared her. She's being charged with kidnapping. Julian was here, actually. He's the one who carried her to the ambulance."
The information settled over me like a heavy blanket, and I felt an unexpected pang of pain in my chest. Willow was alive, but she was going to prison, and somehow that felt like another kind of death.
"How did you find us?" I asked.
"You sent me your location, remember?" Lucian reached out and took my hand. "I combined that with what I knew about Willow's psychology. She'd want somewhere high up, somewhere with a clear view. The abandoned factory was the obvious choice."
"Did Julian say anything about his father?"
"Dominic was arrested last night," Lucian said with grim satisfaction. "The Council raided Sterling Manor at dawn. Sterling Pharmaceuticals' stock is in freefall. Half their business partners have already pulled out."
---
A week passed in a blur of doctor's visits and bed rest. The first thing I did when cleared to work was to apologize to Vincent in person. Lucian had apparently called ahead, because Vincent was surprisingly gracious when I walked into his office.
I left his office feeling lighter than I had in weeks, and I was halfway to my car. I had one more stop to make. Willow's coat was still in my car, and I'd decided to have it professionally cleaned before sending it to her. The woman behind the counter at the dry cleaner smiled as I approached, checking the pockets with practiced efficiency.
"Oh, there's something in here," she said, pulling out a photograph. "Do you want to keep this separate?"
I found myself staring at an image that made my chest tighten. The photo showed Willow and Julian standing in front of Sterling Pharmaceuticals' main building, a coffee cart visible in the background. Golden hour lighting painted everything in warm tones, and both of them were smiling—not polished public smiles, but genuine expressions of happiness that transformed their faces into something younger and more vulnerable.
I held the photograph carefully, studying the way Julian's hand rested on Willow's shoulder, the way she leaned slightly into his space. This wasn't a formal portrait. This was a captured moment of real connection, and I understood instinctively that it might be the only evidence that such moments had ever existed between them.