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She takes a deep breath, holding it high in her shoulders, shaking her hands out. From here, she could be anyone. She could pull herself back up onto the platform and take the stairs two at a time up into the muggy night. She gazes off down the track, peering into freedom, and August wonders if this is the last time she’ll ever get to see the set of Jane’s smirk, her long legs, her soft black hair swept up off her brow.
What if it’s the last time?
What if this is August’s last chance?
Wes told Isaiah. Winfield probably tells Lucie every day. Niko and Myla are going to get married. And August? August is going to let the girl who changed her entire life disappear without ever telling her, because she’s afraid of how it’ll hurt.
She feels the knife in her pocket, heavy and light all at once.
Fuck caution.
“Hey, Subway Girl,” August calls out.
Jane turns to her, eyebrows raised, and August reaches for her phone and mutes the mic.
“I love you.”
Her voice echoes off the glass ceiling, off the silver of the trains stored on the side of the tracks, out toward the street and the moonlit beach beyond.
“I’m in absolute fuck-off, life-ruining love with you, and I can’t—I can’t do this and not tell you,” she goes on. Jane’s staring at her with her mouth popped open in soft surprise. “Maybe you already know, maybe it’s obvious and saying it is just gonna make this harder, but—God, I love you.”
August’s mouth keeps moving, half-shouting into the empty tracks, and she barely knows what she’s saying anymore, but she can’t stop.
“I fell in love with you the day I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice. That’s—that’s magic. You’re the first thing I’ve believed in since—since I don’t even remember, okay, you’re—you’re movies and destiny and every stupid, impossible thing, and it’s not because of the fucking train, it’s because of you. It’s because you fight and you care and you’re always kind but never easy, and you won’t let anything take that away from you. You’re my fucking hero, Jane. I don’t care if you think you’re not one. You are.”
The last two words flutter down between the slats of the elevated tracks, past Jane’s feet and onto the street below. Jane’s still looking up at her, eyes bright, feet planted. Seconds to go and unforgettable.
“Of course,” Jane says. Her voice comes from deep in the solid center of her chest—her protest voice, projected up to the platform. It could wake the dead. “Of course I love you. I could go back and have a whole life and get old and never see you again, and you would still be it. You were—you are the love of my life.”
Myla’s voice crackles out of August’s pocket. “Ready?”
August’s eyes don’t leave Jane’s as she pulls her phone out and unmutes the mic.
“I’m ready,” Jane says.
August breathes in, knuckles white.
“She’s ready.”
“Now.”
And everything goes black.
Silence, nothing but the shock of darkness. The street outside the station goes dark too, eerily quiet and still. August’s lungs refuse to release. She remembers what Jane said, the day they danced with strangers on a stalled train. The emergency lights.
They flicker on, and August half expects them to flood down onto a deserted track, but there’s Jane, feet on the third rail. That kind of shock would have killed anyone else. She doesn’t even look startled.
“Oh my God,” August says. “Did it—are you—?”
“I—” Jane’s voice is hoarse, almost staticky. “I don’t know.”
She makes a weird, jerky motion with one foot, trying to take a step outside of the tracks.
She can’t.
“It didn’t—” August has to swallow twice to get her throat to cooperate. She holds her phone closer to her mouth. “It didn’t work, Myla. She’s still stuck.”
“Fuck,” she swears. “Was anything off? Was the timing right? Are you sure she was touching the third rail?”
