He can never know how close I came to being another Freedom Bridge casualty.

“I come up here,” I say, measuring my words slowly as I turn back around, “because it gives me perspective.”

He searches my face, and I wonder what he sees. If he can spot the darkness that clings to me like a tightly-pressed shadow. The ugly thing inside me that hovers in the back of my throat, snapping its teeth at the ready for when my heart inevitably becomes too greedy, too reckless, too...much.

That thing that never fails to hurt those I love.

I must remember who I am. Where I come from. What I’ve done.

I must remember.

Remember.

Remember—

Will’s stormy blue eyes drill into mine and I forget about the sun heating my back. I forget about everything but the gap of space between our bodies that has somehow shrunken in the past however many seconds, minutes, hours I spent lost in my thoughts, thinking about whatever it was I was just thinking about.

Because there is a bead of sweat trickling down his temple, and the bumps of his collarbone are rising and falling with his heaving breaths, and he is shirtless and tan and so, so—

Air punches out of me as I stagger back.

Will reaches out instinctively, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward him just before I can go tumbling off the edge.

And it hits me then.

Completely fucking obliterates me.

I’m on the bridge where I nearly ended it all three years ago, and I’m once again staring into those same ocean blue eyes I saw that horrible night.

Only this time, it’s not some flimsy unwanted image tattooed to the back of my lids.

This time, I don’t have a trigger resting beneath my thumb.

Will is here. He’s really fucking here and he’s only inches away and he’s looking back at me like I’m already lost.

His fingers are a brand around my bicep, softer than my calloused ones from years spent drumming, but just barely. There’s no tricking myself into thinking they belong to someone other than him.

Will.

A boy.

A man.

He’s a strong, steady presence, and I suddenly want nothing more than to know what his touch feels like everywhere.

I suck in a sharp breath and those damned blue eyes drop to my parted lips. His brow furrows, and then as if pulled by some unseen force, his eyes drift down my neck. Lingering on the rapid-fire fluttering of my pulse as it tries to beat its way out of my skin, before moving to my chest.

My muscles tense and my next breath gets trapped somewhere in my throat.

Forget seconds, minutes, hours. In this moment, pinned under his perusing gaze, I swear what feels like lifetimes pass as the world around me slips away.