Then my feet are sliding out from under me, my body slipping out of his grasp, and I am falling. The last thing I see is his pale, shocked face, his hand still outstretched toward me. Then the darkness swallows me, and the world is nothing but wind and stone.

I fall. Or rather, I tumble. My body careens off every outcropping of stone and every protruding branch. I flail around, grasping for any kind of handhold. For a minute my fingers close around a clump of exposed roots. Then the roots tear free from the earth, and gravity has me again.

When I land, my lungs claw inside my chest for what seems like ages before I can take a breath. The world is brilliant with agony, shimmering and surreal. When my eyes focus again, I can see a shard of bone protruding from my left leg.

From somewhere nearby I can hear something scrambling around. I try to pull myself up on my elbows, but everything goes white with the effort. Sweat and blood drip down into my face. And he’s here now, standing over me. Ethan.

“Please help me,” I croak. “My leg’s broken. I can’t walk.”

Ethan kneels down next to me. For a minute his face is cloaked in shadows. He fumbles around next to me—I can’t see what he’s doing. Every time I try to move my head the world spins. But then a cool white light illuminates the angles of his face. He’s pulled my iPhone out from my purse—I can make out the polka dots on its Kate Spade cover.

“There’s no service down here,” I say. Pain ripples out from my leg in sickening waves. “Please. You have to walk back to the parking lot and call 911.”

He looks down at me, his face strangely blank in the electronic glow of the phone. It’s almost like he doesn’t recognize me. For some reason this scares me more than anything that happened at the top of the cliff. I start to cry, my body heaving in choked, painful sobs.

“I can’t believe you made me do this,” he says, his voice hollow with disappointment. “After everything I did for you. I didn’t want this. I thought you were different, Sutton.”

Then he’s kneeling down over me, fumbling at my shirt collar. His fingers close around the locket at my throat, and he pulls so sharply the chain breaks.

“Give it back!” I scream, my breath ragged. “Give it back, you asshole!” But he’s already moved away from me, into the shadows. The gentle twinkle of the stars has become pulsing and rhythmic. They throb in time with my heartbeat, flaring and then fading, flaring and fading.