Chapter Thirteen #2
“Phillip?” I called, peering at Jake’s phone. Had something happened to his camera? Or had the call ended? “You there?”
No reply. We had definitely hung up.
I frowned, turning to look at Jake. “What happened?”
Jake shrugged. “Bad connection.”
I studied him with suspicion.
“It happens more often than you think,” he said smoothly, as if I wasn’t staring at him hard enough to burn a hole through his head. “Celebrities aren’t immune to dropped calls. We have a song all about that, you know.”
I hummed a little low, skeptical note, but let it drop. Phillip wasn’t my type anyway. And what mattered was that he agreed to come so we could help the café. That’s what I needed to focus on, not some flirt who was going to be halfway around the world again after he sang.
“Let’s head back down,” I suggested. “Mom said she was going to bed but she’s probably still up waiting for me.”
Together, Jake and I moved across the color-splashed roof toward the door.
“Well, you’ve got yourself three out of four band members,” Jake told me, twisting the doorknob. “You’re so close, I just need to figure out how to get ahold of . . .”
Jake trailed off, and after a moment I understood why.
He’d just tried opening the door.
And it didn’t budge.
“Uh . . .” Apprehensively, Jake tried the handle again, pulling at it, but the door stubbornly stayed shut. He glanced back at me. “Lucy?”
“No.” Absolutely not. “Don’t say it.”
“Okay. I won’t say the door’s locked.”
I crossed my arms. “Jake.”
“I used to come up here a lot. This never happened before,” he protested.
“Is there another lock on this side?” I questioned. “Does it need a code?”
“There’s not even a keypad,” he replied, wrestling with the door. “It’s either stuck or it’s been updated to automatically lock now.”
Groaning, I glanced around, studying the neon-lit area until my eyes landed on something protruding from the rooftop’s edge.
“Hey, Jake, stop for a second,” I said. Without taking my eyes off my target, I absently reached back and hooked my hand around Jake’s arm, pulling his attention away from the door. “I think there’s a fire escape. Let’s go check it out.”
He followed me through the flickering lights over to the far side of the roof. I’d been right—I had spotted a fire escape.
Jake pressed the heel of his boot against it and pushed down with his weight, testing its strength. It looked old and weathered, covered in raindrop stains and red rust, but it held up under him.
“It seems sturdy,” Jake said, climbing onto it. “I’ll go down first, and you can follow me.” He started down the ladder, before pausing. “If we get caught by anyone, we’ll just say I was on the roof trying to rescue a stranded kitten or something.”
“Isn’t that the exact opposite of the image Marie loves so much?”
“Oh, right. Never mind. Tell them I was up on the roof graffitiing lots of obscene art. And saying we should pollute the oceans and not recycle.”
“Wow, you’re really good at this whole edgy thing.”
“So glad you noticed.” Jake took another step, and the hinges of the ladder creaked slightly beneath his boots but remained steady. His eyes dropped down, hidden under his feathery lashes for a moment as he studied the rung below, before his gaze flickered back up at me to joke, “Kiss for luck?”
“I mean, I would, but your single last year was titled ‘I Don’t Need Luck, I Just Need You,’ so I feel it’s redundant.”
Jake made a hmm noise in the back of his throat as he continued down the ladder. “Leon got to help cowrite the chorus on that one.”
“It’s catchy,” I said. Jake had gone far enough down the ladder to leave room for me, so I started down after him. “I hear that song in the café at least twice a week.”
Jake took another step down the ladder, and muttered a comment I couldn’t quite catch since he was a foot below me, but it sounded something like, “Oh, so you like his song, but not mine.”
I frowned, pausing in my descent as I clutched rough metal. “What was that?”
“I said I think these rungs are doing fine,” he replied smoothly.
“Hold on—”
“That’s what I’m trying to do here.” I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the sly, teasing grin in his voice.
“You know that’s not—”
“We have a problem.”
“Yeah, we do. Trying to get a straight answer out of you is like trying to get Rumple to relinquish a turkey slice he’s stolen out of a customer’s sandwich.”
“Well, thank you for that hilarious mental image, but no, really, we have a problem.” I heard the sound of his boot heel stomping against stubborn metal below me. “The ladder’s stuck. It won’t go all the way down.”
“What?” Adjusting my grip, I craned my neck over my shoulder. “How far from the ground are you?”
Jake leaned back, taking a look. “Not far. You know that small, grassy area by the right of the entrance? We’re above that. I’m just going to drop. I’m not very high from this last rung, so it shouldn’t be dangerous.”
“Wait, shouldn’t you—” I got cut off by the sound of a thud. “Think this through,” I finished, too late. “You okay?”
“Great,” Jake called up. “Nothing to it.”
“All right then,” I said, continuing down. “I’m next.”
“What?” he questioned in a raised tone. “Are you sure you don’t want to climb back to the roof? I can go back in and unlock the door for you.”
“I thought there was nothing to it?” I teased, undeterred. “Come on, Jake, when have you ever known me to back down from a challenge?”
I reached the last rung, then looked down, somewhat surprised. The drop looked farther than I thought it’d be.
Jake noticed my slight hesitation, but instead of trying to change my mind, or tell me I should’ve listened to him, he just came closer. “It’s okay,” he reassured me. “You’ve got this. Jump, I’ll catch you.”
Trusting him—and myself—I leapt into the cool night air, jumping through a beam of bright blue light, and for a second it felt like I was flying.
Before I could hit the ground, two strong hands caught me around my waist. Jake and I fell back together in a single swoop, him first, cushioning my fall, and then me over him.
Our limbs intertwined as we landed, my legs ending up between his, and Jake’s arms still wrapped around me. Though we were already on the ground, he didn’t let go.
I swallowed hard, my heartbeat dancing behind my ribs. Lying on top of him like his, I could feel his chest pushing up against mine as he took a deep breath in. Heat flooded me from every point of body contact, and a blush rushed to my cheeks.
Jake reached up to slowly brush a strand of hair out of my face, his thumb gently ghosting over my cheekbone, and I repressed a shiver that threatened to make its way down my spine.
Don’t—you’re so close, he’ll feel it, I told myself firmly, and curled in my fingers on instinct, only to realize I accidentally grabbed Jake’s shirt in my hand.
But any thought of letting go vanished from my mind as he tucked the stray lock of hair behind my ear, before letting his fingers trickle down to linger right above my pulse point.
Another finger-span down and he’d feel the throb of my heartbeat and how fast it was racing. If I told him it was adrenaline from jumping, would he believe me?
Would I believe myself?
It felt like playing with fire, and watching the flame dance between a wick and a match.
We were face-to-face, our lips nearly brushing. All it’d take was too deep of a breath, or a slight tilt of my head, and his mouth would be on mine.
This is a bad idea, my inner voice sang, like the repeating refrain of a song. Bad idea. Bad idea.
“You okay?” Jake asked softly.
I hadn’t been so close to Jake in a long time, and never before like this. Instead of replying, I found myself mesmerized by his eyes. I knew they were hazel, but lying there, I could count all the different shades of brown that blended together with hints of honeycomb gold.
“Lucy?” Jake asked, concerned I hadn’t answered his question.
Close the distance, the devil on my shoulder told me. All I had to do was take the tiniest shift forward and let the heat of his mouth meet mine. What would it be like? Would I feel bursts of fireworks like I had before?
Before. The word tripped me up.
When Jake kissed me four years ago, had it just been a whim?
He’d been my first crush, but had I been his?
Up until that moment, he never showed any indication of realizing my feelings toward him, or liking me back.
What had he thought, after he left and we fell out of contact? Did he regret our kiss?
Would I regret it if I kissed him now?
Does it matter? the devil asked. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
Except, that was the thing. This was Jake. It would aways mean something.
“Lucy?”
I shook myself out of my daze, pushing those thoughts away. Right. Jake asked me if I was okay after the fall. “Nothing to it.”
He snorted. “Yeah?”
“That’s what you said, isn’t it? Besides, it’s just falling. Falling is easy.”
“Yeah,” he said, voice soft, quiet. “Easy.”