Page 73 of Intrepid

It irritated the hell out of me, the way my mind yearned to figure him out. Each moment I spent with him, I sopped up more and more potential for heartbreak, and yet, I couldn’t stop myself. A part of me ached to be his heartbreak, too. “What makes it so different with me?”

“Just is.”

Much as I wanted to push him, I didn’t want him pushing me away, so I dropped it.

It took about fifteen minutes to reach the end of the block, and we circled back along the opposite side of the street, my eyes feasting on the sculptures placed inside a fenced-in garden. As I stood reading the signs that described each of the projects, Ty lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the back of my palm.

“Thank you for this,” I said. The reverence in his expression as he lowered my hand brought a smile to my face. “I enjoyed it. You really have taken me to places I’ve never been before.”

With my arm caught in his grasp, he tugged me closer, staring down at me, the unknowns of the universe swirling in those blue irises.

“I like how I feel around you.”

Studying his chest, I traced the bit of skin peeking out of his shirt. “And how is that?”

“Good. You make me feel good, Sera.” He pushed the hair behind my ears and tucked his finger beneath my chin, tipping my head back.

“You make me feel good, too, Ty.”

Thumb tracing my bottom lip, his eyes locked onto mine. “I’ve got one more place you’ve never been.”

“Oh, yeah? Where’s that?” I dared to ask.

“Mine.”

* * *

Sure you don’t want to sit next to me?” Ty asked, his naturally-predatory eyes crinkled with amusement.

Holding my breath, I dared to look down the five stories below me. And to the left, where Ty sat with his feet dangling over the ledge, seeming completely unaffected by the nearly fifty feet to the concrete that’d surely crush his bones on impact.

“Yeah, I’ll pass.” I slid back from the edge and plopped down on the gravely bed of the building’s rooftop. Through a narrow opening, wedged between a bar and a hardware store, we’d climbed the staircase all the way to the top. “When you said your place, I think I had something less treacherous in mind.”

“It is my place. There’s an apartment above the bar.”

“You live above a bar? Must keep things lively, huh?”

He shrugged and glanced out toward the seemingly endless Detroit skyline. “I prefer to be up here. It’s quiet. Nobody bothers me. I can just … think.”

I’d begun to see how my co-worker Neveah was right about Ty, how he kept to himself sometimes, and only revealed what he wanted you to see. And yet, he continued to pursue me, in spite of the many times I’d chosen to back off, keeping my distance from the inevitable pain of falling in love with someone like him.

He seemed to be keeping his distance, too, perhaps for the same reasons.

“What do you think about?” I asked.

A quick glance to the side, and he spun so his feet straddled the ledge.

“You, mostly.”

Pulled again. Don’t fall for the bait, Sera.

“What, how much you want to throw me over the edge?” I chuckled and looked up to find he didn’t so much as smile at that. Picking at the gravel, I shook my head. “Sorry. I read a creepy story last weekend that’s just kind of stuck with me since.”

“What was the story?” Resting his foot on the ledge, he brushed off the crumbled bits of concrete that fell to the rooftop with a quiet tapping sound.

“It was on the news. I guess some guy had a pretty gruesome accident with a wood chipper. But they’re suspecting foul play. As in … somebody threw him into that wood chipper.” The visuals wound around my spine, and I shivered again, unable to shake the horrific nature of it. “Some people are beyond help.”

“You’re assuming the victim was innocent.”