Page 68 of Swept Away

“Only at me. Not all the way down. I’m right below you. Look, here, I’m going to touch your leg.”

“Oh my God, don’t.”

He already has, just a gentle, firm hand on the back of my left calf, where my boot meets my jeans. I shudder with sobs, but that hand, it helps.

“You should…You need to put both your hands on the ladder!”

“Apparently not, actually,” Zeke says, as he rubs soft, reassuring circles on my calf with his thumb.

I focus on the place where our skin touches. My sobs are ebbing a little. Maybe I’m just running out of tears.

“What can I do?” he says.

“Just stay,” I whisper. “For a moment. Just don’t…don’t leave.”

He keeps touching me. He stays. I’m calming slightly with each assured swipe of his thumb.

“We can head down now,” Zeke says after a while, as my breath slowly steadies. “There’s a pretty sensational view from where we are, and I don’t know about you, but I’m just seeing a lot of sea.”

With a deep breath, I move my gaze away from that patch of sky. My eyes are aching, dry from the wind and sore from the tears, and it takes a second to focus on the horizon. My view is bisected by a cable, thick as a tree branch and edged with the silver of the ladder. Zeke’s right. It’s just endless, breathtaking ocean.

Zeke’s thumb is still resting on the skin of my calf, beneath my jeans. I feel an acute, almost painful desire to be held, and I make a vow that if I get off this tower alive, I am going to kiss the man who climbed up here to tell me I’m amazing, rules be damned.

“Lexi?” he says. “What do you want to do?”

I grip the ladder tightly. Zeke’s right: I have doneso muchtoday, and all things that I never thought were possible for someone like me. I’m a tiny speck in a giant ocean right now, but I don’t feel small.

“Let’s keep going,” I find myself saying. “We’ll see more from the top.”

Zeke

I can’t believeshe convinced me she wanted to do this. I can’t believe Ilether. But by the time I figured out she was scared of heights, she was already on the second ladder.

It was torture watching her climb from the platform. It’s better now that I’m here, too, close enough to reach up and touch her. Whenever she pauses, or when I hear her breath start to speed up, I talk.

“Ask me a question,” I say, when I run out of things to ramble on about. “Any question.”

Lexi hesitates slightly, then keeps climbing. One steady step after another. My wound throbs nonstop, and my head feels tight, but I bet she’s suffering worse.

“How many women have you slept with?”

…Oh, God. Not that question.

“Hello? Zeke?”

I’m going to have to give her a ballpark. I start doing some rough math, gripping another rung, taking another step, trying to figure out how badly this’ll change her mind about me.

“Hang on. You don’tknowthe answer, do you?” Her disbeliefcuts through the fear that’s laced her voice since she left the platform.

“Just give me a second,” I say. Wondering where the line is between rounding down and lying.

“You’re twenty-three. How much sex can you have fitted in?” she asks, breathing hard as she climbs.

“Quite…a lot?” I say, biting my lip.

She glances at me. It’s the first time she’s looked down.

“I’m not going to judge you, Zeke.”

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