Page 42 of Rebel
“Are you afraid of heights?” I didn’t hear him standing up. He’s right behind me, so close his breath brushes against the skin of my neck as he speaks. I break out in goosebumps, unable to control the reaction—half fear, half something far more worrying.
Matt. You’re in love with Matt. This man is a self-professed dangerous criminal. You arenotattracted to him. You’re justnot. “I’m all right with heights. Why do you ask?” Just like my hands, my voice shakes.
“Do you trust me enough to climb out of this window with me?”
I spin around, giving him a look I hope expresses how mad I think he is for even asking that. “Why are we climbing out of the window?”
He’s standing so close, looming over me. I’m not used to being around someone so tall. The Romera women are tall themselves, it’s in our genes; I’ve frequently found myself standing a clear few inches above most men. This is an unusual feeling. Anxious, but weirdly—and this is the strangest part—safe.
“We’re climbing out of the window because I want to show you something. What do you think?” Rebel’s eyes are crystal clear, so sharp and assertive. He stares at me, studying each aspect of my face individually—forehead, nose, cheekbones, jaw, mouth—before he looks up intomyeyes. “You trust me not to let you fall to your death?” he asks, that odd, deep line forming in his cheek as he fights a smile.
“I suppose I’m no use to you if I’m dead,” I reply.
“Exactly.” He seems pleased that I’ve risen to this challenge. Returning to the window he was standing at a moment ago, he unlatches it and opens out the two panes, sticking his head out and looking up. Smirking, he glances back at me and nods. “All right, you have to follow me up. I’ll grab you and lift you.” With that, he pulls himself out of the window using the lintel to hold his body weight and then he’s gone.
“Oh, boy.” I stand by the window, flinching when I see how far the drop to the ground is.
“Just climb up onto the ledge. I’ll pull you up the rest of the way.”
I look up and Rebel’s already on the roof, half his body visible as he leans out into space, reaching down for me. “Is this going to be worth it?” I ask, wondering if I can back the hell out now without looking weak.
Rebel waggles his eyebrows at me, laughing. “I canmakeit worth your while.”
“Shut up.” I clamber up onto the windowsill, the soles of my Chucks not feeling all that grippy all of a sudden. I look for the handhold he must have used to pull himself up and I see it, a small length of iron piping protruding out of the house. Probably designed to drain excess water if it rains. I lean up, my heart in my throat, reaching for it. Adrenalin spears through me as I grab hold of it, and then my body is twisting, moving, leaning out into space.
I’d wanted to do it myself, to pull myself up without his help, but that’s not what happens. Instead, I’m left dangling out in the void, one hand holding onto the length of iron pipe, the other scrambling, reaching, grabbing upward for…nothing. There’s nothing there.
“Jesus Christ, Soph! What the fuck are you doing?” There’s grunting above me, and then hands, big and strong, locking around the wrist above my head. My shoulder sings out in pain as I’m wrenched up, knees, hips, ribcage scraping against the edge of the roof as I’m pulled over it. And then I’m safe. The whole thing takes place in the space of five or six seconds, but it feels as though it took a hell of a lot longer. I lie on my back, chest rising and falling at speed, barely able to think coherently through the roaring sound of my own blood in my ears.
“Well, that was fucking stupid.” Rebel slumps back next to me, lying on his back, too. Both our feet are hanging over the edge of the roof, our chests hitching up and down like crazy. “When I say I’m gonna lift you up, you’re supposed to fucking let me,” he pants.
“I’m sorry. I just…”
“Don’t trust me.”
I let my head loll to the side so I’m looking at his profile. His lips are parted. There’s an angry crease to his forehead, his eyes narrowed up at the sky. “I’m sorry,” I say. And I mean it. He wouldn’t have let me fall, and I was being my usual stubborn self. I could have fallen and died. Rebel sits up, the back of his suit jacket wrinkled now. He lets out a deep breath, shaking his head.
“This…this is all fucking ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you. My uncle getting murdered. My entire club moments away from being fucking arrested for a crime they actually didn’t commit. Nowthat’sfucking irony, right there.” He gets to his feet, carefully standing on the slightly pitched roof, and then he turns to me and holds out his hand.
“I’m sorry, too, Soph. I should never have put you in this position.” I somehow don’t think he’s referring to the fact that we’re now trapped up on a rooftop and I have no clue how I’m going to get down. I take his hand, allowing him to help me to my feet. “My uncle would wanna kick my fucking ass right now,” he says. “This would not impress him at all.” He points between us, scowling. “Come on. Be careful where you’re putting your feet. I was eighteen the last time I came up here, and I weighed a hell of a lot less.”
I gingerly follow after him, watching where he steps so I can place my feet exactly where he places his. The roof is pitched on either side as we climb upward, but once we reach the ridge, the apex where the two sides meet, I see that there’s a flattened section to the right, a cutout of the roof panel. About twelve feet long and eight feet deep, the platform has been leveled for no apparent reason that I can tell. No air conditioning unit. No access back in through the roof. It’s justthere. Rebel drops down onto the platform, reaching up and turning to face me. By the look on his face, it hits him at the same time as it hits me that what he’s doing—lifting me down beside him, like a lover would—is weird.
I tuck my hair behind my ears, clearing my throat. “What is this place? What is it for?”
Rebel places his hands on my shoulders and physically pivots me, pointing me in the direction of the sunset. I feel like I can’t breathe; the sight is the most formidable, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It looks like the sky is on fire. “I’m guessing it’s for this,” he says, removing his hands from my shoulders. He sinks down, sitting Indian style on the platform. I do the same, not daring to take my eyes off the horizon, not wanting to miss a single second of it.
“But how did people get out here? They can’t have been climbing out of windows. I think we’ve just proven that that’s not safe.”
Rebel snorts, clearly not over the fact that I didn’t just do as I was told and let him lift me. “There used to be a small doorway.” He jerks his head back, motioning behind him.
“But not anymore?” The wall behind us is smooth brick and render, no sign of a door in sight.
“Louis had it bricked up the day I was born. My mother apparently liked to come up here.”
