Page 5 of Intrepid

Winds whipped across my face, blowing my long locks into a tangled mess that I gathered to the side and tucked behind my ear. A tumultuous gathering of clouds moved across the moon, like dust kicked up from a stampede. It gave the night sky a sort of dark, turbulent backdrop against the city’s soft lights—very Gothamesque. My new home.

I dared myself to rest my elbows against the ledge, and stared out over the cars tooling along Jefferson, like the miniature villages I once saw at Bronner’s as a kid. Heights had always been a problem for me, coming in at a close second to my fear of confined spaces. Luckily, the edge of the building sat a little further back from the actual edge. Still, one wrong move would have me tumbling to my death—I’d just hit the second ledge along the way.

“You’re putting a lot of trust in that ledge.”

The deep foreign voice had me swinging around to find a figure standing in the doorway, his face hidden by the shadows. His hands disappeared into the pockets of his hoodie, which also covered his head. The same mysterious figure Dax had walked off toward earlier. Only, being up close somehow added on another foot to his height. Sort of like those selfies of distant mountains you could pinch with your fingers until you ended up smack in front of the monstrosities, realizing how insignificant you were in the world.

My fingers curled around the edge of the stone, my heart kicking up at his unexpected intrusion.

“These old buildings … they just crumble without warning sometimes.”

I glanced back at the stories below and stepped forward. “I’m sure this building’s survived more than me.” Jutting my chin toward the garbage lying around the ground, I barely took my gaze from him. “I’m obviously not the first.”

“You could be the last.”

It occurred to me how sequestered from the rest of the group I suddenly felt, when I heard the distant bass still thumping from the courtyard below. No one would ever hear me scream, if he happened to throw me over the edge, or rape me up here.

He stepped into the light, and the first thing I noticed were his eyes. Piercing blue and razor cut against the black hood that framed his pale face. Small tufts of his hair stuck out over his forehead, and the dark lines of his chiseled concave cheeks beckoned my eyes toward the sharp angles of his face, a strong, square jaw, and his classic Grecian nose. Magnificently beautiful. He belonged on a billboard, not hidden behind a hoodie with his ripped-up jeans, looking like some kind of street thug.

My jaw damn near creaked as I stared up at him in awe.

Tipping my head to hide what little he might see of my scar, I stepped backward again and tucked my hands into the loose pockets of my shorts. Flipped the safety of my pepper spray. Set my finger to the button. “Am I making you nervous, or something?”

Those eyes scanned down and back up, softening with amusement. “Am I making you nervous?” Standing well over six feet tall, he could’ve easily hoisted me over the edge of the building. So, yes, I supposed he was.

“Is that why you came up here? To try to scare me?”

“I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of announcing my presence, if that were the case.” He lurched toward me, and I squeezed the canister in my hand, ready to douse his eyeballs with a horrific burn, but he just jumped up onto the scaffolding beside me.

I watched in both terror and wonderment, as he climbed higher and higher, his tall, but agile, body scaling the rusted metal like a panther against the gloomy gothic sky, until he nearly reached the top. A small pack clung to his back, as if hanging on to him for dear life. I knew how it felt. The mere sight of him teetering along the narrow steel coiled my stomach.

“You, um …. It really wouldn’t take much to slip, you know. I think it’s, like, one in three people stupid enough to climb those things end up falling to their deaths.” I prattled on with some nonexistent statistic I’d pulled out of my ass, but it really didn’t seem to have much effect on him. He still pulled himself one rung higher than the last.

“You think?” Feet skidding across the bar, he fell, catching himself on the lower rung, while the acids of the vending burrito I’d scarfed down earlier burned in my chest. His chuckle grated my spine, as he pulled himself back to a stand. “That would’ve spattered the brains, for sure.”

I clamped my eyes shut at the disgusting visual that planted in my head. “If you came up here for some crazy act of suicide, you could’ve at least had the courtesy to wait until I’d left,” I shouted up to him.

His elbows rested on the bar above his head, and he leaned forward, staring down at me. “I think most people vain enough to commit suicide like the idea of an audience.”

Asshole.

“That’s a misconception. Some people just want to disappear.” I peered over the edge of the building, once again struck with the image of him lying in a pool of brains. “Can you just come down? I really don’t need your blood on my hands. This night’s been shitty enough for me.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“A series of unfortunate, stupid decisions.”

“Is that why you’re up here?”

“Touché,” I muttered. It probably was stupid of me to come to the roof of an abandoned building without telling anyone.

He scaled back down the scaffolding as if he’d done it a million times, and jumped from the last rung to land beside me. Not even breathless from the act. “You would know?”

“Know what?”

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he backed away and shrugged. “About wanting to disappear.”

“I’m sure every teenager’s had a phase.” Mine’d come right after my mother had died and I was forced to live with my father.