He’s looking at a three-hundred-foot fall.
Three. Hundred. Feet.
But he doesn’t back away.
He doesn’t even flinch.
I’m alone with this stranger in the woods, with no cell reception and absolutely no way to call for help if the need arises, but I can’t just leave this guy here.
I have to do something.
“Hm, excuse me?” I call.
It feels like the air has been sucked out of my lungs when the stranger flicks his head in my direction, and I realize that the boy on the bridge isn’t a stranger at all.
“F-Finn?” My voice cracks.
I’ve seen many emotions on Finn Richards’s face since the day I moved into his house—anger, hatred, desire—but this one? This one I’ve never seen before.
I’ve never seen him hurt.
It’s in his eyes.
In the way his mouth falls open for a short moment. He looks shocked, a little bit drunk, but mostly, he looks sad.
Broken.
I don’t know squat when it comes to reading this guy, but I know he didn’t expect to see me here. And he sure didn’t expect me to follow him to the deadliest spot in town.
Finn slaps on an impenetrable poker face, sips on the beer he was holding when he took off earlier, and diverts his attention back to the shimmering lights ahead of him.
This moment.
This scene.
It brings me back to that night in the library. Back to begging Finn to get off the window, wondering why in the hell he would put himself in danger like this.
That’s the missing piece to my puzzle.
It all starts to make sense from there.
My brother’s overprotectiveness. The things he said to me in the car all those weeks ago. He said Finn was a fucked-up masochist. That he was dangerous but not to others.
To himself.
That’s what he meant, isn’t it?
This isn’t the first time Finn’s played with fire like this. I heard the stories but never believed them. Finn was quite the topic sophomore year. Word on the street was Finn had been arrested for car theft, underage drinking, vandalism—all before the age of seventeen. It’s also been said that he’d end up in the hospital weekly…
If the rumors are true, this boy has been digging his own grave his entire life.
“What the hell are you doing?” I was aiming for a firm voice, but it comes out as a plea. He doesn’t answer, keeping his eyes glued to the skyline.
I’m worried he’s giving me the silent treatment until he downs what’s left of his beer and shocks me with a simple question.
“Do you like the ocean?”
I try to convince myself that I became hearing-impaired in the last two minutes. That would make a lot more sense than my housemate asking me if I like the goddamn ocean right now.