Page 70 of The Monster and the Last Blood Match

He pressed the button for the top floor, and the doors shut behind him. A dim light illuminated Beckham’s face and cast eerie shadows throughout the elevator. But her eyes were locked on Beckham, who hadn’t taken his gaze off of her since they entered the elevator. The room crackled. She wanted to clear the distance that he always kept between them. It would be so easy to do. But the sharp sting of rejection still bit into her. It had only been a few days since he had kissed her at the ball and then turned her aside.

“Becks,” she murmured.

“Don’t, Reyna,” he said, but it sounded more like he was pleading with her.

Her heart thumped in her chest. That was the last thing she wanted to hear, and he hardly sounded like he meant it. But she would stay still. Being in his presence was intoxicating enough. She wouldn’t throw herself at him in desperation.

Slow, agonizing seconds ticked by before the elevator opened again. He exited, and she followed him down a hallway and to a stairwell.

“Where are we going?”

“Up.”

“But isn’t this the top floor?”

He smiled a heart-stopping smile. “The sky is the limit.”

They traveled up two long flights of stairs and reached the apex. Another door stood in their way. When Beckham pushed it open, she walked out onto the roof. The wind was whistling at this dizzying height, and the temperature had dropped a considerable amount. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms to ward off the chill as she moved to the edge of the building and stood paralyzed and awestruck at the beautiful rooftop garden view.

“Wow,” she breathed into the wind, with Beckham at her side.

The entire city was laid out before them. Where she had thought it was dark and silent, it was so clear now that it was bright and bustling. The buildings and streets were lit up to show the crisscrossed blueprint of the city.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” he agreed. She felt his gaze sweep her face and wondered if they were talking about the same thing. “Yes, you are.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

His words were like a dream. She wanted to respond, but she was worried she would wake up and the dream would dissolve into reality.

She couldn’t help herself. She turned her head and looked at Beckham. Their eyes locked, and everything crystallized. Whatever had been going on between them was real. He might deny it. She might try to deny it. But she saw even in that brief moment that he felt something. A thread connected them, and all she wanted to do was tug on it and bring him closer.

“This is one of my favorite places in the city,” he told her.

“Why?”

She felt as if she could hardly breathe in his presence. No more than a foot was between them, but it was suddenly as if all the air had been sucked out of the sky.

“The city almost looks whole from up here.”

“And not from the streets?”

He circled the dew on the railing with his finger. “You know it doesn’t look whole from down there. You’re the one with the camera.”

At the mention of the camera, she suddenly remembered that was the whole purpose of the trip. The thread grew longer, pushing distance between them again. It was a bit of a tug-of-war, keeping up with the rawness of his shifting emotions.

To keep her face neutral, she dug into her bag and retrieved the camera. Putting a physical barrier between them should keep her steady. At least she hoped so.

She took the cap off of the lens and shifted the camera up to her face. She snapped a few pictures of the city skyline. The familiar click of the camera calmed her nerves, and she let the rhythm of the pictures take over.

“Much easier to see the big picture from a bird’s eyes, but the aggregate doesn’t equal the individual. From up here you would assume everyone was happy and successfully living out a fairy tale. From down there you see the reality, the lie,” she told him.

Beckham was silent, and she wondered what he was thinking. Was he judging her answer? Weighing it against his Visage rose-colored glasses? Her words weren’t a popular opinion among the wealthy, but she couldn’t forget the things she had seen and experienced.

“Are you not living the fairy tale, then?” he asked.

She looked at him over the lens of her camera and made a face. Hardly.

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