Chapter OneJuliaI am going to die, Julia thought, staring at the river far below. From this height, its surface looked as hard and unforgiving as concrete.
The logical part of her brain, the part that had once excelled in law school, reminded her that yes, of course she was going to die: Death was part of being human. She was just more aware of said mortality when standing at the top of a bridge.
Julia had felt this close to death once before, a long time ago.
She drew in a shallow breath, hurrying to push those memories aside. Nothing good came from thinking of that night.
“Come on, Jules,” her boyfriend Harry prompted. “You can do this.”
“Right,” Julia rasped, but didn’t move. She longed to lean back into the safety of Harry’s body, to grab his hand and drag them both off this bungee platform.
“One,” Harry began counting. “Two . . .”
Before he got to three, Julia closed her eyes and leapt into the void.
For a heart-stopping moment, the air howled around her, raking delicate claws over her skin. It almost didn’t feel like falling, but like flying. Up was down and down was up, everything reduced to a chaotic blur of noise and color.
Julia managed to fling her arms up around her ears, elongating into her old diving position from swim team.
Her eyes closed as she sliced through the river’s surface. She’d gone deep, so far that the water closed over her pointed toes. Then the bungee cord yanked her back into the air, dripping wet—and laughing.
When she climbed into the waiting motorboat and unclipped her harness, Julia’s heart was racing. Harry stood on the platform far above her, wearing his yellow kawarau bridge employee shirt. The motorboat driver shouted an all-clear, and Harry took off running.
As he jumped into the air, he curled his body into a somersault and flipped once, twice, a third time, each revolution as perfect as that of an Olympic gymnast.
“Showoff,” Julia muttered once he’d joined her in the motorboat. May in New Zealand was usually the beginning of winter, though it was unseasonably warm today. It felt almost like Harry had conjured up this weather specifically so that they could go bungee jumping. “And why am I the only one who got wet?” she added.
Harry flashed an impish grin. “I loosened the cord so you would have a full dunk. Newbie special. So, how do you feel?”
Electrified, exhilarated, untouchable. “I feel . . . high,” Julia declared. Unlike some of the other students she’d met at Harvard, she had never experimented with drugs. But she imagined this was how it must feel—like you were somehow more alive than everyone else.
“Adrenaline, the most powerful drug on earth,” Harry agreed.
“I thought that was desire. You know, pheromones.” Julia’s tone was flippant, a touch flirtatious, yet a cloud passed over Harry’s expression at her words. It was gone in an instant.
“I love you.” He leaned over to brush a kiss on her temple. “Ready to head home?”
Home, the apartment they had rented together after only a few months of dating. It was small, and always smelled like a deep fryer thanks to the fish-and-chips shop on the ground floor below, but Harry was right. It felt like home.
The two of them had met here in Queenstown, at a bar called Lenore: the sort of place with cheap beer and stickers on the walls, with a boisterous jukebox that played everything from K-pop to Elvis. It was one of the many bars catering to the young people who flooded New Zealand each year, drawn by the natural beauty and promise of adventure.
Julia had been working on the Elysian Cruise Line back then. When she started as a tour guide after college, she’d been staffed on the Mediterranean route, shepherding hungover tourists around the Acropolis or the ruins of Pompeii. Her aunt and uncle had urged her not to take the job, exclaiming that a Harvard graduate could find something more stable, more settled. But after everything that happened her senior year, Julia had wanted to get as far from Boston—and Preston—as possible.
The ad for Elysian Cruise Line had popped up when she was scrolling through job boards one afternoon. Escape and forget, it promised, with an image of pristine blue waters glittering in the sun.
Escape and forget sounded pretty good to Julia. She couldn’t afford to take a cruise, but as it turned out, Elysian Cruise Line was always hiring tour guides. Especially tour guides with an art history background who spoke multiple languages.
After several years in the Mediterranean, Julia had requested a transfer to the Sydney–Auckland–Queenstown route. She wasn’t sure why she felt a sudden itch to see that part of the world, but she figured, why not? She was utterly without strings, as adrift as a loose buoy on the tide.
When Julia wandered into the bar that night, arm in arm with several coworkers, her eyes cut straight to Harry. She simply couldn’t help it. Even among the young, tanned, attractive crowd, he stood out in high relief, like the main figure etched on an ancient urn: as if he’d been drawn in sharp focus and everyone else was just background.
“Oh my god,” one of Julia’s friends had murmured, following her gaze. “Who is that?”
Julia had stared at him for one more moment—and then, though it was almost physically painful to tear her eyes from him, she turned away.
She didn’t have time for men like that anymore. The ones who knew how attractive they were, who thought they could use you and discard you.
Later, she would learn that Harry had been intrigued by her cool dismissal of him, had perhaps even seen it as a challenge. That must have been why he came over to ask if anyone from their group wanted to play darts.
“We’re not interested,” Julia said swiftly.
That elusive something had sparked in his expression again, amusement mixed with curiosity and a new alertness. As if he’d been half-asleep before Julia’s swift rejection jolted him awake.
“Too bad,” he said slowly. “I was ready to put some money on it.”
Julia told herself that was the reason she changed her mind, because she couldn’t resist the chance to fleece this group of frat boys. Little did they know how much time she and her best friend Abby had spent at Cutter’s back in Boston.
“Why not,” she declared, marching toward him. “Twenty bucks?”
He chuckled. “Let’s make it a hundred.”
They settled into the game, watching each other. There were moments when Julia felt certain Harry would win, including an impossible shot where he split her dart straight down the middle. For a moment, the sly look on his face made her wonder if he’d done it on purpose, though she didn’t speak the thought aloud. No one was that good at darts.
When she won, Harry pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it over. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked.
“A bottle of champagne.” Julia was well aware that this bar didn’t stock champagne, but she had a perverse desire to push him, just to see what he would do.
He made a show of looking at the chalkboard menu behind the bar. “I’m afraid I’ll have to owe you a bottle. They don’t have champagne on offer.”
On offer, what a funny phrase. Harry spoke with a slight accent, though Julia couldn’t place it, and she’d gotten rather good at accents after her years working for Elysian. He drew out his vowels the way Europeans did, yet he didn’t use their strong R’s.
“In that case, I’ll take a vodka tonic with lime,” Julia decided.
Moments later, Harry returned with their drinks, then clinked his beer mug to her glass. “Cheers. To your victory.”
“To my victory,” she repeated, liking the sound of it.
Copyright © 2026 by Katharine McGee. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
