Page 101 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

I stared straight ahead. Someone’s washing hung on the fire escape of the building behind ours. If I were Phillipe Petit I could tightrope walk between the buildings and think nothing of it. If we were two birds, we could soar into the sky and land safely. But we weren’t birds or tightrope walkers.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gabriel asked.

“If you jump, I jump.” I didn’t want someone’s laundry to be the last thing I saw so I lifted my gaze to the blue sky. “You want to die? Then you’ll just have to take me with you.”

“Get off the fucking ledge,” he gritted out.

Instead of climbing down, I shuffled closer to him and stood right on a crack in the concrete. The fault line.

Cold sweat coated my skin and I shivered.

“Just hold my hand and never let go.” I held out a shaky hand and he grabbed it.

When I looked over at him, my foot slipped. A loose piece of concrete broke off from the ledge and a scream tore from my throat.

I was falling.

“Cleo!” Gabriel’s voice sounded like it was coming from a long tunnel and my arm felt like it was being wrenched from the socket.

My back slammed against a hard surface and everything went quiet. So eerily quiet.

I couldn’t move my arms or legs. A heavy weight pressed down on my chest. After a few panicked seconds, I opened my eyes and wheezed, trying to get air into my lungs.

The weight of Gabriel’s body pinned me to the ground.

His dark eyes met mine. I could barely see him through the blur of tears.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath.

I didn’t know if it was because I’d thwarted his plans or something else.

With a groan, he rolled off me and we lay side by side on the roof. I stared at the cotton candy clouds and listened to Chopin with tears rolling down my cheeks.

What was I doing on that ledge? How did we get here?

We could have died today.

A shot of adrenaline surged through my veins and I started shaking uncontrollably. When had I become the kind of person who would willingly risk their life by climbing on a fucking ledge?

That’s not love, it’s suicide.

Red-hot rage replaced my tears and it rose up, and up, and up until it consumed me.

I rolled onto my knees, ignoring the twinges of pain in my hip and shoulder, and crouched over him, glaring.

“Did you want to die?” I asked, my voice shaking. I shoved his shoulder. “Is that what you wanted?” I pummeled his chest with the heel of my closed fists. “Did you want to jump off the fucking roof and kill yourself?” He sat up and I lunged at him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. “Answer me, Gabriel. Did you want to die?” I screamed.

He captured my hands and pulled me to my feet. “No. I just don’t want to be here,” he yelled back.

I stared at him, my chest heaving. “They’re the same thing!” I cried. “Kurt Cobain didn’t want to be here and now he’s not. My dad didn’t want to be here and guess what?” I flattened my palms on his chest and shoved him. “Now he’s not.”

Gritting my teeth, I brushed past him and yanked the door open.

“And what about you, Cleo? Did you want to die? You could have gotten yourself killed with that little stunt of yours.”

I spun around to face him. “I was only up there because of you, asshole. I was trying to save your life.”

He advanced on me. “By telling me that you’d jump with me? Do you have any idea how fucking insane that sounds?”