While the waves crashed against the rocks beneath him, Grant Stuard readied himself for the fall. He was closer now, inches from the edge. He yanked the headphones from his ears and stared into the darkness.
More than anything, he didn’t want it to hurt.
Everything he’d lived through — everything he’d tried to block out and bury for years — was finally catching up to him, smothering him, suffocating him, pushing him here, to the end of this pier past 2 a.m. one night in Galveston, Texas, gazing at the jagged rocks below, convinced if he jumped all his pain would vanish in an instant.