Chapter 4 Will You Marry Me?

No.

I didn’t want to die. There were lots of things I could live without. Dignity wasn’t one of them. Until it was.

I dropped to my knees.

My forehead hit the rooftop once, twice, again, harder each time. I tasted blood, heard myself begging, voice embarrassingly high and raw.

“Please. If you let me go, I’ll do anything. I don’t want to die. I really don’t want to die.”

My hands clutched at his trouser leg. I couldn’t stop shaking.

“When I killed the family upstairs,” he said, “they begged like that too.”

The words settled slowly, like dust after an explosion.

The family upstairs. The kid who used to run across their floor, every step echoing into my ceiling. I used to lie awake listening to the thumps and thinking mildly uncharitable thoughts.

One day, the noise stopped.

I assumed they’d moved.

They hadn’t.

The thought sank through me, dragging hope with it.

He’d murdered them. Parents and child. And now he was here.

“Humans give up their dignity so easily to stay alive,” he said, looking down at me. “It’s pathetic. Almost predictable.”

Tears blurred my vision. My body shook harder.

“I had a neighbor,” he went on, voice almost conversational. “She lived just on the other side of my wall. She was patient with noisy neighbors. She cried over strangers on TV. She hand-fed her boyfriend sandwiches.” His eyes softened in a way that made my skin crawl. “I wondered if she’d show a monster a little kindness.”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“She didn’t,” he said simply. “So she’ll die at the happiest moment of her life.”

He bent, brushed a thumb over my cheek, smearing one of my tears.

Then he straightened, put a hand on my shoulder, and pushed.

The force wasn’t dramatic. Just firm. Final.

The edge vanished under my heels. Gravity grabbed me.

Air roared past my ears. The world shrank upward, the rooftop and the man and the sky all sliding away.

As I fell, his voice drifted down after me. “By the way, my name is Zane.”

Zane.

The veil whipped above me. The dress ballooned around my body. For an absurd, distant second, I thought it might slow the fall.

It didn’t.

The impact wasn’t a sensation so much as an end.

Then noise. People shouting. Phones ringing. Someone screaming. It all came from very far away.

I lay twisted on the ground in my ruined dress, staring at a sky that had already forgotten me.

People gathered, forming a ring.

Phones lifted. Screens lit my face. Somewhere, someone was already composing the caption.

My grandparents collapsed to their knees nearby, wailing.

Aron stood frozen at the edge of the circle, his face drained, his parents pulling him back like they could shield him from contamination.

Only one person moved toward me.

Leo.

He pushed through the crowd and dropped to his knees beside my body.

He didn’t flinch at the blood. He didn’t hesitate to touch what was left of me. He slid his arms under me and pulled me hard against his chest, as if he could hold me together through force alone.

Tears fell from his chin to my face, warm and useless.

What? Does my uncle secretly have a crush on me?

Even then, some part of me preferred a joke over the raw, simple fact of being dead.

He bent down, shoulders shaking, and kissed me.

His mouth tasted like salt and grief and stubbornness, pressed against my blood-smeared lips like he believed he could drag me back by sheer refusal to accept what had happened.

It was the kind of kiss storybooks promise can break curses.

But this wasn’t a fairy tale. It was just a parking lot, a body, and a man who had promised once, as a boy, to take care of me forever.

Death didn’t care about promises.

It reached out, closed white hands around me, and pulled.

⸻

When the darkness finally loosened its grip, music took its place.

Colored lights. Laughter. The thud of bass through cheap speakers.

I blinked and found myself back on a worn leather sofa in a private karaoke room.

Aron knelt in front of me, holding up a ring. His eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed. “Baby, marry me.”

Friends cheered. Someone whistled. The lyrics on the TV kept scrolling by, ignored.

I knew this scene.

I knew the exact angle of Aron’s shoulders, the way his hands shook just a little, the brand of beer lined up on the table. I knew the song playing in the background. I knew who was about to shout what.

This was the night he first proposed.

I reached out and pinched his cheek, hard enough to make him flinch.

“Ow—Estelle?” he said. “What are you doing?”

Testing reality.

It held.

“Estelle Jones,” he tried again, smiling, “will you marry me?”

I threw my arms around him. For a moment, all the fight drained out of me. I just clung to him and listened to the frantic beat of his heart against my own.

“I love you,” he murmured into my shoulder.

Tears stung my eyes. Hearing the same words from the same mouth, knowing what I knew now, hurt more than the fall.

Only someone who has actually died understands what it means to be given a second try.

I slid the ring back where it belonged, felt the familiar weight on my finger. “I love you too,” I said. “But I need to run home. There’s something I have to do. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay? Wait for me.”

His confusion was instant. “Now? In the middle of—”

I kissed him once, quickly, and stepped back. “Tomorrow,” I repeated.

Then I left.

The air outside was cold and sharp and perfect. Every breath felt like proof. My heart beat. My legs carried me. Streetlights glowed. Cars passed. I watched it all like someone touring her own life.

At the apartment building, I pressed the elevator button and waited.