Time slowed to a crawl.
The gunshot echoed. Jayce's body jerked backward. Blood blossomed up his shoulder as he staggered, his own weapon clattering against the metal catwalk.
"JAYCE!" Scarlett started screaming, but it wasn't fear in her voice it was anger. "You betrayed me! You chose her over me!"
She pointed the gun at him again, her hand trembling violently.
"NO!" I didn't think. I just moved on."
I grabbed the metal pipe from the ground by my feet and hurled it with all my strength. It spun through the air and hit Scarlett's wrist with a sickening crack. Her gun slipped from her hand, past the railing and into shadow.
It was agony, and Scarlett moaned as she grabbed at her wrist. Chloe threw the tablet down and bolted, her heels clacking in panic as she dashed through a side door.
"Call 911!" I heard Daniel yell at me, racing for the stairs to get Jayce.
I picked up the phone that Scarlett had thrown away and, my hand trembling so much I could hardly place the call, fumbled with the dial. The operator's voice was businesslike and efficient, asking questions I could hardly process.
"Shooting...warehouse on Riverside Drive, people hurt, hurry please..."
Daniel got to Jayce, hands on the wound. Blood seeped through his fingers. "Stay with me," he commanded. "You're going to be okay."
Jayce was very white in the face, breathing faintly. "Did I... did I do good?"
"You did a great job," Daniel said firmly. "Now focus on breathing."
Scarlett was on the catwalk, tending to her crushed wrist with tears of pain rolling down her cheeks. "This was not supposed to happen," she wailed. "We were meant to be. It was going to be perfect."
"You shot him!" I screamed up at her. "You just shot the person that you say you love!"
"Because he betrayed me!" She stared down at us, her beautiful face twisted into something ugly and broken. "Just like everyone betrays me! My dad left. My mother married your father and never mentioned me. You took the place in my family that I was supposed to take. And then you took Jayce too!"
"I never stole anything from you," I said, my voice trembling. "You destroyed everything yourself."
In the distance, sirens wailed, coming closer.
Scarlett staggered to her feet and clutched at her wrist. "You think this is over? You think you've won?" She cackled, a manic and terrifying sound. "I still have the evidence. The photos. The videos. Even if I fall, I'm bringing whoever with me.
"We have the recorded speech of Addison," Daniel replied abruptly. "Every word of your confession. Your threats. You were going to murder us. You're done, Scarlett."
Her face was drained of color. "No. No, that's not, I can explain."
"Explain to the police." Daniel's voice was steel. "Explain to the judge. Tell everyone how you threatened to kill innocent people over being rejected."
The warehouse doors burst open. Police swarmed the room, guns drawn, shouting commands.
"Hands up! Nobody moves!"
Everything became chaotic. Scarlett was pounced on by officers, handcuffed and as she screamed that she was the victim, we had attacked her. Paramedics ran to Jayce's side, darting with a stretcher. Daniel attempted to remain at the man's side, but officers restrained him for questioning.
I stood there and did nothing, while my world just broke into a million pieces.
The waiting room of the hospital stank of antiseptic and bad coffee. Daniel at my side, a blanket over my shoulders never left me. They separated us and grilled us for hours, our stories matching Addison's recording and live feeds Scarlett had so imbecilically left streaming on Chloe's tablet.
"Miss Miller?"
A doctor came running up and I leapt to my feet. "How is he? Is Jayce."
"He's stable. The bullet passed through his shoulder and did not hit any major arteries. He was lucky." The doctor smiled tiredly. "He's asking for you."
I looked at Daniel, who gave a nod. "Go. He saved our lives. You owe him that much."
Jayce seemed small in the hospital bed, his shoulder wrapped in bandages, an IV attached to his arm. His face brightened up when he saw me. "Brook."
"Hey." I took a chair by his bed, uncertain of what to say. This had been the boy who cheated on me, who called me boring, who assaulted me in that library. But he was also the boy who had saved my life.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "For everything. Cheating. The things I said. Tonight when I held you," He shut his eyes. "I was drunk and dumb and angry. But that's no excuse. I hurt you. Over and over."
"Why did you come?" I asked. "To the warehouse. Why did you help us?"
"Because I overheard Scarlett on the phone earlier tonight. She was with Chloe, and they were talking about how she was going to murder you both and stage it as a suicide-murder."
His voice cracked. "And I understood she was not who I thought. Hell, I wasn't the guy that I thought I was. But I couldn't have her killing you. Even if I fucked up really bad, you didn't deserve that."
Tears pricked my eyes. "Thank you. You saved our lives."
"Yeah, well." He managed a weak smile. "I guess I did one thing right after all." His expression turned serious. "I'm going to be testifying against her. Report everything the affair, the blackmail-the works to the police. And Brook? I'm done. With her, with lying, with being that guy. I'm going to therapy. I'm going to fix myself."
"I just hope you do," I said and meant it. "You deserve to be better."
"So do you." He glanced at the door, where Daniel stood. "He's good for you. I can see it. "They way you look at him. You never looked at me that way."
"Jayce,"
"It's okay. Really." He squeezed my hand weakly. "Be happy, Brook. And that's all I ask of you now."
I left his room in tears not of sadness but confusion. Grief for what we'd been. Relief that we'd survived. Hope for whatever comes next.
Daniel pulled me into his arms. "How is he?"
"He's going to be okay. Physically, at least." I pulled back to look at him. "What about us? The investigation, your job, the dean."
"Dean Morrison dropped in while you were in there. Daniel's expression was carefully neutral. Addison has it on tape, and Jayce is going to testify at my trial." They're dropping everything based on him. I'm being reinstated."
Joy surged through me. "That's amazing!"
"With conditions." His jaw tightened. "I can't teach you. You'll have to switch over to another professor for psychology. And we can't appear together around campus. No relationship until you graduate."
My heart sank. "So we just... wait? For four years?"
"Unless. "You are …" He moved a strand of hair from in front of my ear, ever so gently. "Unless you transfer. To another university. Where I'm not your professor."
"Daniel, I can't change my whole life around."
"I know. I'm not asking you to." He pulled back, creating distance. "I'd like you to think about what it is inside of you that you truly want. Because I cannot be your professor and your whatever-we-are. It's not fair to me and it's not fair to you."
As soon as I was about to answer, my phone rang. My dad. I'd even written the threats against our families and the terror I felt over those pictures out of my memory.
"Dad? Are you okay? Is Mom."
"We're fine, sweetheart. Cops rounded up Scarlett's "associates" and discovered they were incredibly dumb teenagers she hired to snap the photos. "At no point was anybody actually in danger." His voice cracked. "But you were. "Brooklyn, what the fuck happened tonight?
"It's a long story. Can I come home? Just for tonight?"
"Of course. We'll be waiting."
I put down the phone and fell back, waves of exhaustion crashing over me. "I need to go home. See my family. Process... everything."
"Daniel nodded, comprehension in his eyes. "We both need time. To get that far and then figure out what happens next."
"What if I don't want time? But what if I already know what I want?
"Then tell me." He put his hands on the sides of my face. "What do you want, Brooklyn?"
I opened my mouth to reply, to say I need you, to tell him everything be damned.
"Brooklyn Miller?"
Two detectives came, their faces solemn.
" We require you to come down to the station. There's a new story to Scarlett.
"What kind of development?"
The detectives exchanged glances. "Scarlett have bonded out an hour ago. She walked out of custody."
My blood turned to ice. "What? How is that possible? She tried to kill people!"
"Her family has money. A lot of it. And her lawyer is very good." The detective's face was grim. '"We have an officer monitoring your apartment and your parents' home, but Miss Miller, you had better be very careful before the trial. Scarlett threatened on her way out.
"What threats?" Daniel demanded.
"She said, and I quote: 'This is not over. Brooklyn took everything from me. Now I am going to strip it all away from her, beginning with the ones she cares about." "
Daniel wrapped his arm around me possessively. "She can't be serious. She's facing attempted murder charges."
"Which makes her desperate. And desperate people are dangerous." The detective gave me a card. "Anything you see of her, anything you hear from her, you call me." Understand?"
I accepted the card with numb fingers. We'd survived the warehouse. Survived her violence. But it wasn't over.
Scarlett was free.