Avery sat on the chipped bench outside Melba's Café, her chin resting in one hand, a soggy sandwich in the other, and exactly three receipts of disappointment in her pocket.
It was warm out. Not sunny—Greyhaven didn't do sunny—but humid and restless. Like the whole city was holding its breath.
She eyed the café window. Inside, a waitress dropped a tray. A manager shouted. Someone was crying. Someone was flirting. A fork got thrown. It was chaos.
Her chaos. Her new job.
"Thanks a lot, Dad," she muttered under her breath, biting into the sandwich.
James had helped her get the job. Said she needed to be "more grounded" if she was going to live alone. And like the very young, very confused, very accidental father that he technically was, he'd even slipped her enough money for the deposit on her apartment.
Avery had almost teared up.
Then she realized he was basically paying to get rid of her.
"Terrific parenting," she mumbled, licking mustard off her thumb. "Dumping your emotionally unstable teenage daughter in a roach motel and sending her off to waitress hell. Real Father of the Year vibes."
She laughed to herself. Not bitterly, this time. Just... tired.
Because she couldn't even be mad at him.
He didn't know.
To James, she was just a weird girl who fell into his life and kept showing up in places she didn't belong. A girl with too many secrets and too many bruises on her heart.
But she knew him.
She knew that James Kane liked his sandwiches with too much chili sauce, that he hated injustice more than violence, and that—when the world let him—he was kind.
He was also terrible at fighting, lied about being good at it, and had the emotional range of a broken toaster.
Her dad.
Just not yet.
She leaned back and stared at the cloudy sky above Greyhaven. "How many years did I fall?" she wondered aloud. "Ten? Fifteen? Twenty?"
The past felt sticky here. Heavy. It wanted to keep her.
And then, just like always, her mind drifted back to him.
Ethan Carrington.
The boy who would one day become the man who murdered her father. The man whose name made the criminal underworld bow and bleed.
She still hadn't figured it out.
How she would kill him.
How she'd even get close enough without being torn apart by his gang—or her own guilt.
But she knew one thing.
This future—the one that ended in blood—had to change.
And if it meant rewriting the entire story, she'd do it.
...
It started raining in the late afternoon. Soft at first. Then louder. Then angry.
Avery shoved her tips into her pocket, tugged her oversized hoodie tighter around her, and started the walk home. Her boots slapped against the wet pavement, the sound keeping rhythm with her thoughts.
James hadn't been home much lately.
She'd stopped by twice that week, but his building was always dark. His neighbor—an old man who smelled like wine and raccoon musk—said James had been "out with trouble."
It worried her.
She wasn't supposed to care this much.
She wasn't supposed to miss her own father—especially not when he didn't even know who she was yet.
But she did.
She missed the way he used to read to her with voices, the way he tucked notes into her schoolbag, the way he'd rub his forehead when she was being "too dramatic"—aka, existing.
Now, she was living in the same time as him. And couldn't even knock on his door without inventing a reason.
"Time travel is a bitch," she muttered, crossing the street.
That's when she heard it.
Shouting.
Lots of it.
The sound carried over the rain—yells, grunts, the sick thud of fists on flesh.
Avery's steps slowed.
Just ahead, down an alley near the abandoned church, two groups were fighting. At least ten boys on each side. Chaos. It was brutal, raw, street war in its messiest form.
But her breath caught.
Because in the middle of it all, James was on his knees, soaked and shaking, holding someone in his arms.
Avery didn't hesitate. She sprinted toward them, dodging the fights still going, shoving past the cluster of boys with knives and batons.
The man in James's arms was bleeding heavily—unconscious or dead, it was hard to tell.
James looked younger than she'd ever seen him. Helpless. Wild-eyed. His hands were covered in blood as he tried to press down on a wound in the man's stomach.
"Come on," he muttered, over and over. "Come on, man, stay with me—don't do this."
Avery stopped just a few feet away.
She hadn't meant to interrupt.
But then she heard him whisper something.
Something that froze her soul.
"Why did I save you... What the hell am I supposed to do if you die?"
"How the hell will I fix the future?"
She didn't breathe.
She couldn't.
"What...?"
The words barely escaped her lips.
James still hadn't noticed her. His voice was a broken rasp, low and frantic.
"You said this would work," he whispered to the unconscious man. "You said saving you would change everything. What now, huh? What now?"
"The future—dammit, the future—"
Avery stepped back.
Her heart was slamming against her ribs.
He knows.
Or at least... he knows something.
The boy in front of her—the boy who would one day become her father—was trying to save the future.
And she wasn't the only one out of place in time.