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She frowned at me, confused. “It’s fine.” Holding her shoes in her hand, she climbed up onto the balcony’s stone handrail. Then, before I could stop her, she bent her knees and jumped.
My heart nearly stopped and my stomach plunged down to the ground below. Tanya landed lightly on the handrail of the other balcony, swayed a few times, then got her balance and jumped down onto the balcony itself. She turned and beamed at me.
I leaned against the handrail, my heart slamming against my ribs. I could feel sweat beading my forehead and running down between my shoulder blades, and it wasn’t over: the sight of her jumping was running on loop in my mind, like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Fuck.
“Colton?” asked Tanya.
I didn’t answer, determined not to let her see. “I’m coming!” I snapped, and tried to lift a foot to step up onto the handrail. But I could see the drop through the cutouts in the stonework and my legs and groin went cold and floaty, like I was plummeting through the air. This wasn’t like racing around on the roof of her apartment building, or jumping from the plane. Back then, I hadn’t had a chance to think about it. This time, I’d been thinking about it the whole time we were breaking into the neighbor’s house and climbing upstairs, and the dread had built until it was huge and I was tiny.
“We need to go! Someone’s going to see us up here!” Tanya told me.
“I know! Just—” Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Colton?” she asked, her voice worried, now.
The humiliation burned up through me like lava and sent my face crimson. “I have a problem with heights,” I spat, scowling at the floor.
I waited for her to start laughing. But there was just silence and, after a few seconds, I risked looking at her. Her eyes were big with shock and concern. “I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
I scowled at her suspiciously, then gradually relaxed. The humiliation faded a little.
“You can do this,” she told me firmly. “You can easily make that jump. Come on, I’ll talk you through it. Climb up onto the handrail.”
Her words cut through the fear in a way my own internal pleading couldn’t. I let the smooth, beautiful ice of her accent sink into my mind and the cold logic numb me. All I had to do was listen. I took two more panting breaths, then cursed and lifted one foot onto the weathered stone and then the other. I wobbled sickeningly and the fancy dress shoes had no grip at all, but I was up.
“Good. Now look at the other handrail. You’re going to push with your legs and jump, okay?” Her voice was awkward but heartfelt. “Come on, I’ll count you down. Ah-Deen!”
I took a deep breath.
“Dvah!”
I tensed my legs.
“Tree!”
I sprang, with all my terror powering me. I landed hard on the other balcony, skated in my dress shoes and fell flat on my ass. But I was across.
Tanya ran over to me, put her arms around me and hoisted me to my feet.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
She smiled at me. Then, as if on impulse, she darted forward and kissed my cheek. I put my hand on the spot. “What was that for?” I asked.
“Being brave,” she told me.
Someone had left a window open so we didn’t even have to break in. We climbed through into a bedroom, then crept out into the hallway. From downstairs, we could hear laughter and the clink of glasses. We were in, but we still had to stay stealthy until we got downstairs: guests probably weren’t meant to be up here and we didn’t want some security guy asking to see our invite. We skulked along the hallway, looking for the stairs.
“Rats,” muttered Tanya.
“What?”
“For me, it’s rats.” We found the stairs and started to creep down them. “I’m on an op in Armenia...I’m in a cellar and I hear a sound, like chewing, right by my ear. I look around and there is a rat, here—” She put a hand an inch from her nose. “I screamed. Blew the entire op. A month of surveillance, wasted.”
I felt a little better. And that tug in my chest grew even stronger.
We reached the second floor. But just as we were about to start down the next flight of stairs, a security guy came out of a door behind us. “Hey!”
Tanya pushed me up against the wall and pressed her lips to my ear. “Kiss me and put your hand up my dress,” she whispered.
All of the million reasons why that was a terrible idea, given how we felt about each other, filled my mind. But I could hear the security guy marching toward us and then she closed her eyes, tilted her head back and pushed her breasts against me and oh fuck it.
