For Seven Nights Only - Sarah Ballance Page 0,27
climbing to the top without a harness or a belayer or whatever the guy with the rope is called.”
His façade didn’t break. “Not. Walking. On. The. Bridge.”
She persisted. “We crossed the bridge into Manhattan when we went dancing.”
“In a taxi,” he said through gritted teeth. “Not on foot.”
He had to be kidding. But no, he wasn’t smiling. Not at all. He looked as if she’d asked him to jump off the bridge, not walk across it. Or maybe jump out of a plane. Or, like, commit to a relationship. “Are you serious? You won’t walk across the bridge?”
Realizing they were clogging the sidewalk, she took a step to one side. He let her go, waiting for a large group of sightseers, their cameras firmly gripped in their hands, to pass before joining her. You sure could tell who the tourists were. New Yorkers looked down when they walked. Everyone else looked up, their gazes usually trained through the lens of a camera.
“You won’t walk on it? Not for anything?” When he only stared, she tried again. “What if your brother and his girlfriend want to get married on the bridge?”
Sawyer scowled. “Then they do it without me. He’s the reason I won’t go on the damned thing to begin with.”
She stared. “Your brother made you afraid of bridges?”
He shook his head. “I’m not afraid. I just don’t. And it’s not bridges. It’s large bodies of water. Bridges just have a proximity problem.”
She cast a dubious glance in the direction of the East River. Large bodies of water were oceans, or at least Great Lakes. Places where you couldn’t see the other side. Not distances over which you could throw a baseball. “This is a large body of water?”
“Large enough,” he said stubbornly. “And I need to be able to see the bottom.”
“I don’t think you’d want to see the bottom of the East River.”
He almost smiled. “Also my point.”
She crossed her arms and took a deep breath. Big mistake. The day had warmed, and the smell of the water left a lot to be desired. “What happened?”
“Not important.”
“Um, no. If I can face the eternal humiliation of admitting to you that I can’t get a date and subject myself to becoming your charity case on seven separate occasions, then you can tell me why you’re afraid of large bodies of water.”
“Say it a little louder next time,” he muttered.
She folded her arms across her chest. “I will. And don’t think I won’t.”
After a long, sun-drenched showdown steeped in the faint odor of river water, he relented. “Fine. When I was around ten years old, my parents and brothers and I went on a fishing charter in the harbor. Crosby waited until everything was packed up at the end and the engines were running to push me off the back of the boat. While I’m floating there in the goddamn river in my life jacket, my entire family is riding off into the sunset.”
She covered her mouth to hide a smile. Not because his story was the least bit amusing, but because of the way he told it. “What happened? I mean, clearly at some point you were reunited.”
“My mom is a serial head counter. Apparently she figured out she was down a kid, and they circled back.”
She relaxed a notch. With his aversion to the water, she’d expected to hear something about the Atlantic Ocean and a helicopter rescue. “And that’s it?”
“What do you mean that’s it?” He glared. “Do you know how many bodies they find in that water?”
“Did you?” she countered. “At ten years old?”
He sighed. “I can’t drag you back to that place with me to feel what I felt, but suffice to say even a few minutes bobbing in that dirty water, watching my family leave, realizing either they didn’t notice or didn’t care I was gone, was enough to give me nightmares. And frankly, it was a little insulting. I was the practical joker. The life of the party, even then. How could they not miss me? That screws with you as a kid.”
“I understand why that traumatized you, but it was, what, almost twenty years ago? How hard can it be to step foot on a bridge?”
He leveled a ruthless look at her. “I guess it’s about as hard for me as it would be for you to go to a wedding by yourself.”
Ouch.
“I guess boats are out of the question?” she asked. “Have you even tried?”
“There is no goddamn way I will ever