Page 60 of Cruel Lies

She reached for me with panic-stricken eyes. "Angel, help?—"

My hand locked around her wrist, and my whole arm nearly ripped out of the socket as I struggled to hold us both on the fucking roof. I had the foresight to wrap an arm around the lip of the exhaust vent, and now I was being pulled in both directions.

Painfully.

"Fuck, Harper, you’re heavy. I can’t pull you up—you’ll have to climb."

I hadn’t meant to use me as a rope, but that’s precisely what she did—and when she got purchase on the semi-flat portion of the roof, she laid on her stomach and offered me a hand up.

I climbed up and landed on my back, gasping for air like a fish on the docks.

"That was scary," she muttered, arms wrapped around her knees, full-body shivers rattling her perfect teeth. "I thought I was gonna die."

"I told you it was slick." My breath whooshed in and out, and after a minute, I was able to sit back up again. "I never wanna do that again. I feel like my arms are dislocated."

As I spoke, I slipped out of my coat, pleased the fur was still dry. Dry cleaning was a bitch, and Father would probably beat me over needing a fur coat cleaned in the summertime. The beating I could deal with. But seeing her cold, shivering, and wet, I couldn’t.

And I knew she wouldn’t go in until she was ready.

"You okay?"

She didn’t answer; she just stared off into the distance, here but . . . not.

When she registered the weight of my coat on her shoulders, though, she snapped out of it and turned to me with a blush. "Angel, I can’t take this. You’ll get cold!"

"I’m fine. Worked up a sweat saving your life." I had, but the adrenaline drop had left me with a heavy dose of the chills. I wasn’t about to tell her that, though. I’d tough through it.

If she got sick on my watch, I’d never forgive myself.

We sat on that roof for another three hours until the house was silent again. And when she went to stand on that slick roof, I instinctively grabbed her hand and pulled her toward me?—

—right into my fucking lap.

Neither of us moved, breathed, even blinked. It was the closest I’d been to a girl—to her—in my life. And the way she looked up at me, that faint blush creeping slowly up her pale cheeks?—

"Be careful, Harper," I chided, throwing a fake smile on my lips for her benefit, playing that whole universe-pivoting moment. "Only one life-saving rescue per person per day."

"Right," she muttered, her eyes plastered to her feet. "Sorry."

I had to fight the urge to watch her ass as she slipped back through the window.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

I woke in a cold sweat,the last moments of the memory playing behind my eyes as I struggled to separate dream from reality, past from present. I saw it all vividly, the look in her eyes when she thought she was about to fall off that roof. When our gazes locked and I grabbed her at the last minute.

It was all so real, so vivid, for all that it was over ten years ago that it’d happened.

Wiping the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my pajamas,I gave up on sleep for now and found myself in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge for a cold bottle of artisan water to slake the dryness of my throat. It was like I had plastered a carpet to my tongue.

Ew.

"Where did that asshole hide my bottled water, dammit?—"

A door behind me slammed shut, and I jumped so fast I forgot I still had my head in the fridge. Headbutting those glass shelves really hurt like a bitch when you weren’t expecting it.

Especiallywhen you weren’t expecting it.

"Fuck," I swore, shutting the fridge to start in on whoever was slamming fucking doors at whatever ungodly hour of the night it was?—

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