The early, brisk mid-November air nipped at my cheeks and the tip of my nose through the crack in my window. Leaving before sunrise hadn't been ideal, but I knew if I stuck around long enough for my brother to see me off, there'd be a good possibility of cold feet, and I wasn't going to chance it. Plus, heading for Interstate 40 with little to no traffic was a blessing and I wasn't going to mistake it for anything else.

I was only about an hour out from my brother's small condo in the middle of LA when it happened. I was crossing over a concrete bridge to start my long journey to the other side of the country, when a hooded figure staggered out from the darkness. If it weren't for a quick reflexive redirection of the wheel and slamming on the breaks, the person would have been under my fender. If it hadn't been for my headlights, I no doubt wouldn't have seen them at all. Throwing a quick glance over my shoulder to be sure no cars were headed our way, I parked on the side of the bridge and snuck another peek outside my window and into the dark.

It took my eyes a minute to adjust and catch the reflection of white sneakers a few feet away. My internal confliction of my own safety kept me in my seat, the fingers of my right hand slowly curling around my phone, ready to call the police, when the figure stumbled right in front of my car and fell across the hood. However, this intoxicated action had my phone slipping from my grip and I threw both my hands over my chest, shaking my head in desperation for the last five minutes to be a hallucination caused by my lack of sleep over the last couple days.

"Jacob." the name formed but I couldn't force it passed my parted lips, not that he'd have been able to hear it through the windshield anyway.

My left hand fiddled with my seatbelt as I opened my door with my right, nearly throwing myself out of the car and on to the cold asphalt.

Jacob's slouched figure was still across my hood, his head thrown back, eyes trained at the starless sky. For a moment, I thought he'd been knocked unconscious or possibly passed out, but my nails tapping the side mirror sent his head whipping in my direction and he had to hold on to one of the windshield wipers to keep from falling again.

My brights were casting him in a white glow, and the closer I edged, the more I considered hopping back in my car and speeding out of here.

The boy I'd left at my father's funeral had become the ghost of a man over the last year. The boyish features had faded into sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and five o' clock shadow. His dark hair was a mess; greasy, matted, and unkept just past his collarbone. The last time I'd seen him his hair had been in a very well groomed and maintained fade, and he surely didn't look as if it hadn't seen a shower head in months.

But it was his eyes, blue eyes that'd he ld a glint of amusement or mischief every time I'd meet them in the halls or cafeteria in high school, that had become lifeless. Vacant. They were dilated, dark, and wide in shock as he stared at me.

"W. . . what are you doing?" I asked once I'd found my voice again. "I almost hit you! Are you crazy?"

He fell back a step and blinked rapidly, as if he were sure I was a fragment of his imagination.

"Jacob? Are you high?" I extended a hand, then reconsidered and let it fall limply to my side. "Or drunk? Should I call your sister or—"

"Are you really here?" his hoarse words interrupted me mid-sentence and I decided I better distance myself in case this took a turn for the worst.

As desperately as I wanted to rid my head of the thought, my brother's assumption that Jacob was as crazy as his father started to weasel its ugly little head into my psyche as I watched the boy before me trying to comprehend what was happening.

"Should I call the police?"

He finally came to his senses and whispered, "No. No, don't do that."

"What are you doing here?" I repeated, the cold starting to get to me. I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned into my car door. "It's like five in the morning."

"What are you doing out here?" was his quiet response.

I shrugged a shoulder, rubbing it to try and stay warm. I suppose climbing into my car in pajama pants and a loose shirt hadn't been the brightest idea, but I'd figured I'd be able to get a hotel room in Flagstaff and would be able to change there. I hadn't anticipated conversating with a very intoxicated Jacob Carter at five in the morning on a bridge with nobody else around.

"I'm headed to New York." is all I said, eying him cautiously. One wrong move and I could easily slip back into my car and lock the doors, call the police, and forget this ever happened. But that distraught look in his eyes had me contemplating closing the distance between us and giving him a hug. The thought caught me off guard, as the only semi-intimate interaction we'd ever shared was Homecoming, and he'd managed to keep a large enough gap between us then that I could duck under his arm and run at any second.

"New York?" he echoed now. "Why?"

"Doesn't matter." I mumbled, taking in his sweatshirt and basketball shorts. An extremely strange fashion choice, but I guess Jacob hadn't ever quite been normal. "Do you need me to call someone?"

He was quiet for so long, I thought he'd disassociated from reality, but when I lifted my head from my side mirror, I found his blue eyes on me. "You need to leave. Get back in your car and keep driving. Don't turn back. No matter what you hear or see, you keep going."

I wasn't sure what caused the cold knot to form in my stomach, the words or the iciness in his tone as he said them.

"What?" I shook my head. "What do you mean?"

"Leave."

I seriously considered it, and even thought about going back home to Ian.

"Jacob." I tried again, finally stepping forward. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" an incredibly sadistic look crossed his face then and I retreated into myself. "Do you really want an answer to that?"

When I just stood and stared rather than hopping in my car, he took that as his answer and started to close the distance between us.

"I came out here tonight to throw myself off the side of the bridge." he said it nonchalantly, as if he were talking about the weather and not killing himself. "I have no desire to spend all morning here talking to you. You can get your happy ass in your car and forget you ever saw me."

I straightened, trying hard to swallow the knot in my throat. "I'm going to call 9-1-1."

"It'll be too late by the time they get here." he answered with a shrug. "Just like they were too late for my mother. Just like they were too late for you."

I flinched under the venomous words. It'd been twelve years since anyone had uttered a word about that night, and hearing it aloud, out of someone else's mouth made me feel like it was more than the fantastical nightmare my brother had tried to convince me it'd been. He had never invalidated my feelings or told me I'd made it up, he'd let me know it was real, but he promised me that I'd be better off blocking it all out. Pretending as though it was just a really fucked up night terror that occasionally made a reappearance.

"I'm here." I managed to force out. "I'm alive."

"Because of your brother, not the police. Not paramedics."

I stared at him, hoping he'd break under my pleading look, but he only averted his gaze to the wall of the bridge. "Leave."

"No." I breathed despite starting to position myself to get back in my car.

Did I really want to involve myself in this? Did I want to argue with a boy that was intoxicated out of his mind? If his plan had been to end his life, that meant he had nothing to live for, and I wasn't going to change that.

"Isabelle." the way he said my name had my breath hitching in my throat. His words had nothing on the desperation in his eyes as he stared down at me.

He didn't want to do this, that much was apparent in the fact that he was still walking and talking and had said he'd come here last night to kill himself. The pleading in his eyes as he said my name was also enough for my brain to fully register what was happening. Against my better judgement, I stepped forward and touched my hand to his shoulder. "Jacob. Get in the car."

It was a crazy idea, I knew that, possibly even a dangerous one. But I was also positive that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I drove away right now and came back home to his funeral.

"I'll turn around and take you ba—"

"No!" he growled, then louder snapped, "I'm not going back there! I can't."

My eyes moved from his own to his trembling hands as they started to curl into tight fists. "Jacob, I can't just leave you to. . . if you really mean what you're saying, we need to get you help."

"I'm not going back."

"Well, I'm not leaving you out here."

I watched a conflicted look start to enter his eyes and he touched his palm flat against my hood. "Let me come with you."

"Huh?"

"To New York?"

The idea of him tagging along made my stomach tighten. Not because his company, but because taking a suicidal man to a state full of skyscrapers just didn't seem like the brightest idea.

"Jacob." I breathed. "Let me call my brother and we can try and figure out—"

"No." he started to back away, as if the idea of me calling for help was more terrifying than catapulting himself off the side of a highway.

I threw a quick glance at my empty backseat, then back at the man staggering backwards in front of me. "Okay. You can crash in my car, sleep whatever this off, and we'll figure it out in the morning, alright?"

My intuition was leaning toward this being a good idea, but my brain was kicking my fight or flight into overdrive.

"Okay."

I waited until I was sure he wasn't going to take the opportunity of me slipping into the driver's seat to rush and throw himself over the wall of the bridge to climb in. He hesitated in front of the car before he walked around and opened the door behind the passenger seat and sat himself down, shutting my door a little too rough for my liking. I caught his eyes-half open and hooded with exhaustion now- through the rearview and nodded curtly before starting the car.

"Don't throw up in my car." I warned.

A ghost of a smile touched at his lips. "Okay."

Truth be told, I wasn't sure this was a good idea, or even a potentially dangerous one, but I had to hold on to the hope that Ian was wrong. Jacob wasn't and never would be like his father, and what I was doing was an act of kindness and humanity. I had just prevented Jacob for ending his life, even if only temporarily, but I knew deep down the second I caught him dozing in the rearview a few minutes later, that I was going to have to make it so he didn't have the desire to again.