Broken Loop

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Loop #12 - Highway Plunge

The dashboard clock read 5:17 PM when Jade Hartman pressed her foot to the accelerator and merged onto the coastal highway. The late afternoon sun slanted golden across the Pacific, turning ripples into molten light. Pines stared down from the bluff, needles stirred by a salt-tinged breeze. Jade inhaled deeply, seeking solace in the horizon's promise of infinity.

But solace slipped through her fingers like sand.

Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. Heart pounded with a mix of freedom and dread. Two weeks ago, she'd stared at the ER ceiling, listening to Aiden's soft confession—how every loop, every rescue, had cost him fragments of his life. Her heart wrenched for the scars he bore. Her mind curled into dark spirals again, whispering a final act of escape.

The car's engine purred but offered no comfort. She flicked on the radio—soft jazz drifting through tinny speakers—but the notes felt distant, muffled by her panic. She clicked it off. She needed silence.

At milepost 24, the road curved sharply, guardrails old and pitted by salt. The overlook spilled into a rocky cove three hundred feet below. Tourists slowed and pointed their phones; hikers paused to breathe in the view. Jade slipped past them, turn signal blinking like a heartbeat. She eased onto the pullover, wheels crunching gravel, and killed the engine.

The world held its breath.

She slid out of the car, heart hammering. The sunset painted the sky in blood-orange, magenta, and bruised violet. Below, waves spat against the rocks with a distant roar. The wind tugged at her hair, as though coaxing tears from her eyes.

Jade swallowed hard. She reminded herself it wasn't the view that drew her here but the edge. One step, and gravity would finish the work Aiden's loops never could. One moment, a farewell; the next, oblivion.

Her breath shuddered. She placed a hand on the guardrail's weathered metal, tracing a rivet with her fingertips. Memories converged on the precipice: the first time Aiden pulled her back from the fire escape; the split-second he dove onto subway tracks; the groan of broken bathroom tiles as he dragged her from the bathtub. Each near-death had been a chapter in their fractured biography.

But Aiden's heart was brittle, and she couldn't ask him to break again.

She closed her eyes. The wind whispered through her lungs. She pictured him mapping her spiral on butcher-paper—pinpointing each wound, each betrayal, each loop. And the green nodes of hope. She ran a finger across the mental timeline: therapy resumed... workshop resubmission... rescue from CAR CRASH... echoing into tonight's final node.

A ragged breath.

She climbed onto the guardrail—one leg over, then the other—so that her fingertips brushed the sky. The wind ramped up, tugging at her clothes, dislodging a tear from her cheek. Below, waves called her name.

A moment of perfect stillness.

"Jade."

A voice—soft, urgent—cut through the static in her mind. She glanced down at the car's hood, polished gleaming black in the dying light. Aiden's face loomed, sweat-speckled, eyes alight with terror.

She froze.

He had chased her all the way from the apartment, engine shrieking around every curve. He slipped to a stop behind her car, his Prius's tires wedged in gravel. The engine idled, whining; he hadn't killed it.

"Get down," he shouted, voice cracking like a whip.

Her heart collapsed. She stepped back—but her other foot slipped over the rail's edge.

"Aiden!"

He abandoned the car and bolted across the gravel, arms outstretched. Each step was a lunge into fear and resolve. When he reached the guardrail, he scrambled up, stumbling over wild grasses and broken shards of driftwood.