Picture Perfect

04

"Don't look so worried. Nothing's going to happen to you. I'm here, aren't I?"

"That's not really helping," I mumbled, my mind already conjuring images of me bungee jumping and the string breaking halfway through because Liam cut it.

He laughed again. "It's going to be fun. Trust me."

-

He took me rock climbing. Rock. Climbing.

"No," I said immediately when he shoved the gear in my hands. "I am not wearing that, and I am not going up there."

"Brooklyn."

"Liam."

"Come on. Humour me."

"Fine."

And that was the word that brought me to my death.

Ten minutes later, I was floating six feet off the ground with nothing but a string as a safety precaution.

Okay, I may not be floating, exactly, and I was more like two feet off the ground, but it felt no different from floating six feet off the ground.

The damn harness was on too tight and Liam refused to adjust it for me. I was going to kill that guy the moment I got my hands on a knife.

"Grab onto the red one," Liam said.

I looked up and saw a red rock on my diagonal right.

"I am going to skin you alive," I panted as I tried to reach for the rock.

Another chuckle.

I'd never heard him laugh so many times before, and it's because I was suffering. Figures.

My right hand missed the red rock and a scream tore through my throat when I felt myself going off balance and falling backwards.

"Woah! Hey, hey, hey." A hand pressed my thigh against the wall to steady me. "Calm down."

"I hate this," I mumbled out, embarrassed by how close to tears I was. There were very few things I feared more than height.

"You're okay," Liam murmured, climbing up to my side. He'd been below me the whole time, guiding me and telling me which rock to grab.

I sniffled, trying to slow my pounding heart.

"Let's go for the green one."

Resigned to the fact that I wasn't getting down from here till I reached the top of the wall, I tried to grab hold of the green rock Liam was referring to.

"That's it," he praised when I gripped onto it.

His hand pressed against my thigh once more. "Hey."

"What?" I didn't dare look down at him, fearing that my hands would start to sweat when I saw just how far off the ground we were, and then I would lose my grip on the rock and fall.

"What did you like about Dean?"

"What?" Did he not realise the situation I was in? I was definitely not in the mood for twenty-one questions.

"What did you like about Dean?"

"Umm, I like that he didn't take me rock climbing."

"Very funny, Brooklyn."

I wasn't trying to be funny. I was too scared to be funny. My palms started to sweat as I imagined just how high up I was.

I had been climbing for thirty minutes, there was no way I wouldn't get hurt if I fell from this height.