“I know.” His arms tighten as the air swirls around us. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Mia, I had to—I needed to know if?—”
“If I would tell you the truth? I told you the truth! And you dropped me anyway!”
I realize that we’re suspended in the air a hundred feet above the ground and he could drop me again if he wanted to, but anger is pushing past all the fear, finding a home in my chest now that the adrenaline of my near death is starting to fade.
He pulls back just enough to look at my face, and what I see there isn’t remorse. It’s rage. Barely contained, jaw tight, eyes blazing with something that looks a lot like betrayal.
Good. Because I have bloody rage too.
“Three days you gave me nothing,” he grinds out. “Three days of silence while I was falling apart, while that voice kept getting louder, and I needed, I needed to know there was something worth saving. Something real.”
“I told you something real!” I cry out. “Right before you let go. I told you I…” I swallow hard, the emotion so hard to understand, making me second guess ever feeling it at all. “I told you I loved you.”
For a second his expression wavers, then becomes steel again.
“You don’t get to use that,” he says quietly. “Not after weeks of lies. Not when you’d sayanythingto save yourself.”
“I wasn’t trying to save myself.” I shove at his chest, which is pointless because it’s like pushing a wall. “I was trying to saveyou, you absolute fucking dunce. From whatever’s in your head.From yourself. And you—” My voice cracks and I hate it. “You let me fall.”
“I caught you.”
“Youdroppedme first.”
“And I knew I’d catch you.”
We stare at each other, breathing hard, suspended in nothing. His eyes are wild and I’m sure mine are the same. I have never wanted to hit someone so badly in my life. Never wanted to scream at someone, claw at them, make themhurtthe way I’m hurting.
Never wanted someone this much while wanting to destroy them.
“I hate you,” I whisper, wondering how I can love and hate someone at the same time.
“I know,” he says. “I hate me too.”
Then I kiss him.
Because I’m a bloody idiot and all this adrenaline has no place else to go.
The kiss is desperate and graceless and tastes like tears and terror, and I bite his lip hard enough to hurt because I want him to feel something. I want him tobleedfor me.
He kisses me right back like he’s trying to punish me in the same way.
The kiss turns vicious, tasting of his blood. All that familiar heat, but sharper now—edged with fury and epinephrine and the sick relief of still being alive when I shouldn’t be. His hands are rough, fisting my hair, dragging down my back, gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
Good. I want the bruises.
“I hate you,” I gasp against his mouth.
“You keep saying that.” He bites my jaw, my throat, and I arch into it like the traitor I apparently am. “Maybe I hate you too.”
“Then put me down.”
“No.”
“Thenfuck me.”
Something snaps behind his eyes. He flies us sideways, fast, toward the nearest building, our reflection in the glass getting closer and closer, me in my knickers and singlet and him in his superhero suit. At the last minute he spins me around and slams my back against the glass, enough that I hear a faint crack splintering.
“Someone could see—” I start.
