There’s no traffic on the bridge, so I just slam to a stop.

Somehow I have the presence of mind to put on my hazard lights before climbing out of the Tesla, but my dramatic entrance has already caught the attention of the jumper. I can see her thin form clear as day, scaled up the barrier that’s supposed to keep people from jumping. It’s not a mesh like I thought—I’ve never trusted myself to come to the bridge or even drive over it—but rather a bunch of thin, vertical metal rods about six inches apart. The girl in the white hoodie is halfway up, somehow scaling it by gripping the rods with her hands and bracing her feet—as if she’s rock climbing a giant jail cell door.

She’s paused in her ascent to scowl down at me. “Go away!” she yells.

“You don’t need to do this!” I yell back. I’m scanning the rods, but I’m no climber. And I’m seriously out of shape—my main exercise comes from wrenching corks out of wine bottles.

“I have to!” she screeches. There’s a weird guttural tone to her voice. “You don’t understand!” Then she turns away from me and keeps climbing.

She’s young—maybe twenty?—and fit and thin. She’s totally going to make it.

“I’m coming after you!” I have no idea what I’m saying, but I kick off my flats, so my feet are bare, then I despair looking down at my office-ready skirt. I quickly unzip that and let it fall, stepping out and hurrying over to the barrier. “I don’t even know how to climb,” I call up to her as I pull on the gloves from my coat and scramble up on the thin edge of the solid base. “But I’m coming after you!”

She says nothing, but she stops to look down at me again.

I give it my best effort. My hands are chilled immediately, despite the gloves. My legs are fucking freezing. But my bare feet give me enough traction that I can climb a couple feet. I won’t die if I fall from this height—probably—but I will if I go much higher.

I climb a couple more feet.

“What are you doing?” Her voice is screechy and scared.

I pause and look up. “I told you. I’m coming after you.”

“You can’t… don’t do that!” Now there’s anger scratching her words.

“Well, I may not be able to.” My muscles are screaming, and the cold is seeping into my hands. I can’t help the chatter of my teeth. “How do you keep hold? It’s fucking cold up here.”

“Go back!” she screams, but I can hear the desperation in her voice.

“Come down,” I say, as calmly as I can with my heart thundering in my ears.

“No!”

“Then I’m coming up.” I reach to haul myself up further, but my fingers are turning to ice. My grip doesn’t hold, and I slide a little. “Aagh!” I can’t help grunting out, but the panic gets my fingers moving again, stopping the slip.

“What are you…” The girl above me lets out a series of curses.

I’m holding my position because my arms are weakening, and I’m honestly not sure if I can go up anymore. But when I look up, the girl is working her way down. To me.

The cursing continues, but I can’t help the smile cracking my face. I try to tame it because I don’t want to scare her off. She’s working her way down slowly, inching like an expert climber—one foot, then the other, then one handhold, then another.

“I really can’t climb. Like at all,” I say, just to let her know that I know she’s coming for me.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she spits down at me but keeps coming.

I manage not to laugh. My fingers really are going numb.

She pauses and lifts a hand from her grip on the rod to shake a finger at me. “I’m getting you down, but then I’m going up again. Don’t try to stop me!”

“Why would you do that?” I have to shift my bare feet on the rods because it feels like the cold is slicing through them. I shiver, and it almost works my hands loose, making my heart hammer.

She’s working her way toward me again. “I have to. There’s something wrong with me.” She says this matter-of-factly as if she has a broken nail and now she must end it all. But maybe it’s something worse than that. Maybe she has incurable cancer or something.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with your climbing skills.” I’m not sure what’s the right thing to say. How do you talk someone out of killing themselves? There has been nothing in the last three years that anyone’s said to me that ever made a damn bit of difference.

“I killed my boyfriend,” she says, still coming for me.

That jerks my head up.

“See?” she says. “You’re a fucking idiot to come after me.” She’s still coming. Only ten feet away now.

I swallow. “How did it happen?” There has to be more to this. I wrack my brain, trying to remember if suicidal people generally are murderers and… I have no real clue. I mean, maybe? But she can’t be coming down to kill me—letting me come after her would accomplish that.

Because I really can’t climb. And now I’m having a hard time figuring out how I’m going to get down either.

“He was an asshole,” she screeches. “That’s what happened.” She gets closer, and now I can see the dark circles under her eyes, the wildness of them. Her hair is stringy and long and falling out of the hoodie that’s barely clinging to her head. She stops just a few feet above me and to the left. She starts going sideways towards me.

“I don’t know how to get down,” I admit to her.

“No fucking shit,” she hisses. She’s close now, just to the side, her feet right above my head. “You shouldn’t have come after me.” She scowls at me like she’s rethinking helping me, then she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, clinging to the bars. “I found him fucking my roommate, okay?” she says, eyes still shut. “And I just… I just… was so angry.” I can hear all the rage in the scratching of her voice. “It was like something broke inside me, and I just hit him with my backpack, again and again, until he… until he stopped moving.” I can see the shudder run through her body. She opens her eyes. “There’s something wrong with me.”

I swallow. “Let’s just get down, and we’ll figure it out, okay? My fingers are frozen.”

She grimaces and then shifts her feet, but one slides out from under her. Alarm jolts through my body. Her climbing shoes paw at the rods but the more desperate she becomes, the more they slip. She groans, hanging on by just her handgrip now.

“Hold on!” I say, but I can’t move. I’m barely holding on myself. “You can do this—”

She slips a little, then her grip catches. She growls out more curses and kicks at the bars. Suddenly, she stops her flailing and just hangs by her gloved hands. I can see her slowly losing her grip.

“No!” I say. “Just slide down. It’s okay. I’ll get down—

“I’m sorry,” she breathes out.

Then she lets go.

“No!” I screech, lunging out to grab her. My fingers hook on her hoodie, but it yanks my other hand loose.

I scream—but before I can fall even a heart-stopping foot, something catches me.

Someone catches me.

My angel.

Cassiel appeared out of nowhere, and now his arm is wrapped around my waist. He’s caught the jumper too—by the wrist—and she’s dangling below us, kicking and staring up at the angel above her with wide eyes. His white wings are spread, and he’s holding me tight against him and his nearly bare chest.

I can’t even come close to breathing.

“I have you,” he says, voice hoarse, his face mere inches from mine.

Yes, you do. But those words stay safely locked in my throat, even as my mouth falls open. Belatedly, I throw my arm around the back of his neck, but it’s unnecessary. He has us both. He’s saved us both. The three of us float up slightly, like Cassiel’s catching his balance or something, and then we slowly drift down to the road.

The girl’s feet touch first, and by the time Cassiel and I land on solid ground, she’s wildly trying to flee, leaning as far from Cassiel as she can and yanking on the wrist he still has locked in his grip.

He’s ignoring her, staring at me instead—no, staring at my lips—and breathing hard, like this has taxed him physically. His arm is still tight around my waist, and I feel the rise and fall of his chest. But he’s not winded. I swear he’s going to kiss me… until suddenly, he releases me and turns to face the girl. A blade appears in his hand, and he raises it toward her.

“No!” I yelp, throwing my hands out to stop him.

But he’s already yanked the girl close and sunk the blade into her chest. She screams, and I jerk back, hands over my mouth. The girl writhes against him, and he’s holding her now—gently, like a lover—trapping her flailing arm to her side while he shoves the blade in deeper. She throws her head back, and an unholy wail emanates from her. It lasts and lasts, and I have to move my hands from my mouth to cover my ears.

When it’s done, she slumps against him.

I watch, horrified, but I can’t wrench my gaze away.

Cassiel quickly tucks his short blade in a sheath at his side and cups the girl’s face in his hand. Then he kisses her… and it’s like the sun breaking through the clouds.

A Life Kiss.

He said it before—and my mind is long past questioning the reality of this now; this is happening in front of me—and a strange jealousy is mixed in with the relief that the realization brings me. He wasn’t killing her with that blade… somehow that was saving her. Or something. And now he’s breathing life into her the way he did with me. Watching the girl clutch onto his shoulders, I remember—viscerally—the surge of joy and bliss when Cassiel’s lips were pressed to mine.

And with a heart-wrenching sadness, I realize this is a thing he does. He’s an angel. He swoops in and saves people who are attacked by vampires or falling from bridges, and he literally breathes life back into them. What he did with me… it was nothing special.

To him.

To me… it was everything.

And this girl—she desperately needs it. That assuages the bitter tang of jealousy that’s welled up in my heart.

He finally releases her, and she steps back, dazed, but no longer trying to flee. “Fear not,” he says gently, even though she’s not going anywhere. “I’ve freed you from the demon which possessed you. You can go forth and sin no more.”

She just blinks and stares at him. And certainly he’s stare-worthy, standing in his white toga gleaming in the moonlight, the perfect male specimen. It makes a strange sense that he would be perfectly beautiful, this heavenly creature that’s saved me. And now her. But the amazement on her face isn’t for his good looks—it’s for how she feels.

I know because I felt it, too.

She flicks a look as if to say, Is this real?

I get that, too. “It’s okay,” I say to her. “You’re not broken. Not anymore.”

Her mouth drops open, and with the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, she slowly stumbles backward. Finally, she turns and runs, heading back the way she came when she first ran onto the bridge. In the distance, I see flashing lights headed toward the bridge. No siren, just the lights. The 911 call I placed…

Cassiel turns back to me, and the intensity of his stare stops my breath again. I want to thank him for saving me—three times now? It’s like he’s my personal Guardian Angel, but don’t dare let those words pass by my lips. I don’t want to break the spell where he’s looking at me in a way that’s heating every part of my body. He seems to war with something—it’s written in the twitches of his jaw—but then he suddenly strides up to me, closing the distance between us to practically nothing.

“I have a question for you.” He’s staring into my eyes.

“Yes?” I have no air, so the word comes out as a gasp.

“Not here,” he says, roughly. Then he holds out his hand for me to take.

I don’t even hesitate—I slip my hand into his. He’s hot… as in temperature. His gaze drops down along my body, and I remember I’m half dressed. “Get your clothes,” he says, voice still hushed, then he releases my hand.

I scurry over to get my skirt, which lies in a puddle next to the wall. I slide that on quickly then manage to slip on my shoes. When I look up, he’s standing next to my car with that blazing expression again, like he’s been watching my every move.

I hurry up to him. “Where are we going?” I ask, breathless, my mind blank of possibilities. I have no idea what happens next. But even so, I expect nothing like what he actually does.

Without a word, he places one hand on the trunk of my car, and the other grasps hold of mine. Then suddenly, I feel like everything inside me squeezes…

And the world moves.