“More dangerous,” he says as if correcting me.
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure what I can say. All I know is that already I hate it; I feel like I’m about to carry the burden of having to choose between two things I love most, that to have both is not only impossible, but forbidden. My heart feels lodged in my throat, and I can’t swallow it down.
Luke raises my head from his neck and I turn around to see him. The look in his eyes is dark and concerned. It’s making me anxious.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” he says. “It’s one of the most dangerous extreme sports in the world. A lot of people die doing it. My brother is proof of that.”
I think of Landon.
Then I think only of Luke and I start to feel a tiny spell of panic in the far recesses of my mind. But it expands so fast, quickening my pulse and stealing my breath. A lot of people die doing it? Die? Then why do it? I want to shake him, I want to tell him how crazy it all sounds to me already, but instead I choose to be rational and listen first, try to understand; maybe it’s not as bad as that unsettling feeling moving down the back of my neck is making it out to be.
“And you do this all the time?” I ask hesitantly.
He shakes his head. “Not as much as I used to when Landon was around,” he says. “But from time to time I go out with everybody and we do a few jumps.”
“All of you do it?” I ask. “Kendra and Seth, too?”
He nods. “Yeah. Kendra, Seth, and Braedon are pretty hard-core. Alicia not as much. I used to be on their level. Before Landon died. Before the money. I might’ve even been more into it than Seth at one time.” He sighs and his gaze strays. “But I don’t do it so much anymore.”
I want to say, Because your brother died? but I don’t, because I already feel like that might be the reason. Is it because he’s afraid that it could happen to him, too, or is it because the void in his heart that his brother once filled has taken away his passion to do it anymore?
I don’t want to seem presumptuous or accusatory. I don’t want to open that can of worms if I’m right.
“Do you still love it?” I ask instead.
Luke pauses, and as the silence wears on, I begin to wonder if he even knows the answer at all.
“Yeah, I do …” he says, and it surprises me because I think deep down a part of him—the larger part—doesn’t believe that.
“It’s the most freeing experience,” he goes on distantly, and I get the feeling that maybe the things he’s saying are coming from his brother. “Euphoria. Drink the sky, Landon always said. And I did. I drank it until I was so drunk I couldn’t see straight. I was blind and deaf to everything except the experience. Nothing else matters in the world when you step off that edge. Nothing else matters. The feeling is so powerful that you’re willing to die for it …”
Luke
Sienna’s face blurs back into focus. I realize I was so lost in thought for a moment that I had forgotten where I was.
But I know where I was … I was in my brother’s head.
I shake it off fast and focus on Sienna, the only topic that matters to me right now.
Damn … I’m so crazy about her, everything about her. And what just happened between us … I … There’s no going back now. I feel so protective of her, even more than I did before, as though her giving herself to me closed the door of my conscience and opened the one to my heart. I want to scoop her up into my arms and hold her forever, beg her to stay here with me, to forget about San Diego and her life there.
In the back of my mind, though, all I can think about is how much of this is going to be OK with Sienna. Because I’ve yet to meet a girl like her, who doesn’t BASE jump, but who can handle me doing it.
I hope she can. More than anything, I hope she can.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask her.
She snaps out of her thoughts and smiles at me.