“That makes no sense. If I fall, I will die. But I think you know that.”
“Vero.”
“She said she would never want me to leave,” I tell them, which is the whole fucking point. I don’t know why they keep asking me to come down—it changes nothing. “She said not for any reason. Those were her words. I was there—I heard her say it. I have good hearing.”
“She also told you to get out of her life,” Ares says.
“That’s different,” I retort.
“Is it?”
“You know it is,” I fire back.
“Why don’t you come down and we can talk about it?” Ares offers in that diplomatic tone of his.
Brawley rubs his hands over his face, and Clay says something to him, but Brawley shakes his head.
My feet dangle over the edge, and underneath me the island is going about its business. I catch movement from the cornfield and spot Cave, who stares up at me, and I stare back. Maybe I should have paid him a visit; he could have stopped all the noise in my head.
My brain is very loud at the moment. It’s not the worst it has been, like when I was at the bar. Then my vision blurs and every thought races so fast I can’t catch them. I close my eyes and I see her, with that look on her face and blood on her hands. Yet all I can hear are her words.
Not for any reason.
I don’t hear the footsteps approaching until it’s too late. Vesper appears on my left and sits down. I don’t know how she found her way up here, which is annoying.
She looks out over the island and doesn’t say anything at first. It’s no secret we don’t like each other, but I put up with her because of Brawley and vice versa.
“Nice view,” she says, but doesn’t look at me.
“I know. I was thinking I should have come up here before now.”
“Mmhm,” she agrees.
Vesper isn’t one to fill the silence;she just sits and is okay with existing in the quiet. She finally stands and looks down at Brawley, Clay, and Ares. “Stop babying him!” she yells, then looks at me. “Get down.”
“No,” I say, “you can’t make me.”
“Yes, I can,” she states with a smirk. “I’ll push you.”
She pins me with one of her glares, and I laugh. Vesper isn’t threatening me to get a reaction; she means it. She will push me if she needs to.
“You wouldn’t hurt Brawley like that,” I say when she doesn’t stop looking at me like she wants to murder me.
“He would mourn you and get over it.”
“Fuck you,” I snap, and she laughs as she sits back down.
The gray paint on her face has a crack in it at the corner of her eye, and she looks scary as fuck.
“Never in this lifetime, I don’t want your cooties. But you need to get your ass down. You fucked up and need to own that and take accountability for your actions. You shouldn’t have gone to the bar.”
“I was worried about her.”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter—you still did what you did.”
“He was looking at her.”
She laughs this time. “It’s a fucking bar, Vero. Men look at women.”