Satisfied there would be no more nonsense surrounding the mysteriously animate shutter or the stubbornly persistent feeling that I wasn’t alone, I peered through the open window into the tower I’d call home.
Only to find a man staring right at me.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Don’t close my window!” he shouted through the glass.
I screamed. Lurching backwards, I landed heavily against the safety railing.
Too heavily.
It shuddered and groaned beneath my weight. My arms spun almost comically, desperately trying to shift back over my feet.
Except I couldn’t.
It happened slowly.I’m falling,I thought.This will kill me.
There was no way I’d survive a forty-foot tumble onto the jagged rocks below—my head would crack open like an egg.
Fuck. I don’t want to die.
The realization shot through my body like a bolt of electricity. I’d spent the last few months on autopilot, resentful that my life had become complicatedwithdoctor appointments and infusions and medications and exercises and worrisome parents, and, and, and…
Hanging over the edge of that goddamn tower, I realized I’d take all of it.
Every single complication.
Please. I don’t want to die.
Hands, firm and cool, circled my biceps just as my weight fully tipped over the railing and yanked me forward, hard. I cried out in pain when my shoulder hit the deck and rolled onto my stomach, angling my body away from the death-drop I’d nearly plunged from.
Even that short fall stole my breath. Coughing, I propped my body up on one forearm and looked around, wide-eyed.
“What the fuck?” I panted, desperate for some sort of explanation.
“Are you okay?” a voice asked from behind me.
I quickly rolled onto my back and scrambled away from the man standing at my feet.
He wasn’t solid. He wasn’t a whole person, like I’d thought he was when he first startled me through the window. Patches of him were missing and see-through, while others appeared corporeal, but fading fast.
His face remained, though.
Thick brows knitted together in concern, and his nose, upturned just-so, had the lightest dusting of freckles. A curl of dark hair fell across his forehead, and his warm brown eyes pleaded with me.
For what, I had no idea.
He looked…handsome.
Maybe I really had fallen, my brain splattered all over the ground below, and this was some sort of death-induced hallucination.
“Who are you?” I asked, voice trembling.
My whole body shook, actually, as the fear from my near-death experience—or my actual death experience, I’m still not certain about that—flooded my veins with adrenaline.
“Are—y—k?” he asked again, ignoring my question. His words were broken up this time, like a radio just out of signal range, not nearly as clear as they’d been a second ago.
In fact, his whole body flickered in and out of my vision now.
