‘So, do you take all your girlfriends here?’ I teased, trying not to be so conscious of my hand in his. ‘Abseiling?’
‘No.’ Patrick pressed the button to call the lift. My heart twisted before he continued. ‘I haven’t been dating anyone in a while, Jessy,’ he said, his voice almost … was he laughing? ‘Don’t believe everything you read online.’
I mean – sure. Right. Not that I had been able to avoid him online.
The lift doors opened, and we stepped inside. Patrick pressed ‘Roof’.
‘Are you sure about this?’ I glanced up at him, conscious we were … alone.
Which was ridiculous. We’d been alone before – but not since the almost-kiss. And not on a non-sanctioned date.
This was private. This was … intimate.
It was sending all sorts of mixed messages to my brain – which was unhelpfully supplying me with many, many ideas of what we could be doing in this lift right now. I imagined him pushing me up against the mirrored wall and dragging my hands up his chest until I had to wind my legs around hiswaist to hold myself up. The image came in such startling clarity that I was almost breathless with want.
‘Jessy?’
‘Yep!’ I jumped, disorientated. ‘What?’
‘We’re here.’
The doors opened to reveal …
Nothing.
I mean, not nothing. It was a rooftop, just like any other rooftop in the city. There were air-conditioning ducts and fire escapes, and a pretty impressive view. This place wouldn’t have been a bad location for the fireworks at New Year. But there wasn’t anything about it that particularly screamedcome jump off me.
Then I focused my gaze on the two women standing right by the edge of the roof holding equipment that could only be for one thing.
My stomach rolled and I took a step back towards the lift. ‘I’m not sure I can do this, actually.’ In fact, I was entirely sure I couldn’t do this. I had never been afraid of heights before but, suddenly, being this high up was making me shake. Maybe I just hadn’t had the chance to properly feel the fear. ‘Yeah, no. I change my mind. Throw me straight into the lunch, not off a building!’
Patrick’s grin was fucking stunning. My whole body lit up as the strength of his full smile hit me.
‘Come on, you’ve never tried abseiling?’ he said cheerfully, as though he’d suggested a game of minigolf instead of certain death. ‘It’s pretty exhilarating –’
‘Nope, nope, absolutely not.’ Where had this fear come from? Laura wasn’t afraid of heights – had Mum been? I’d promised myself I’d never forget a single detail, but just acouple of years later and the intricacies of her character were slipping through my fingers.
‘Jessy?’
I managed to drag my terrified gaze away from the clips the women were holding – which apparently somehow kept you safe a million miles from the ground – and looked at Patrick.
He looked … disappointed.
The excitement had faded from his eyes, but the smile still lingered.
The smile I was very quickly realizing I was obsessed with.
Fuck.
‘You – you’ve done this before?’ I managed to ask.
Patrick shrugged. ‘Yeah, a bunch of times. We … well. We had to do it for a music video, but it turned out I get a real kick out of it.’
It was coming back to me now – the music video for ‘Adventure’. It had looked fun – and totally bonkers. For someone stood firmly on the ground, obviously.
‘I know it’s a bit sad, trying it for a music video,’ Patrick was saying, as though I got my thrills in a far more exciting manner, and not from trying to avoid Karun finding out that I was using the work printer for Laura’s business. ‘But it really is fun. I’ll be right there with you,’ he reassured me. ‘We’ll be doing it together. I could even hold your hand the whole way.’
His last-ditch attempt to get me on board was adorable, though probably impractical.
