Half of My Heart ✔️

33 | cost of freedom

Immediately, I yank my hand from his and stand up, walking back from the ledge. I'm disgusted by what he's implying. I'm transported back to when I was standing outside our film class, crying and yelling at him for saying that I'm wasting my life by dancing.

"You're unbelievable," I spit. "You take me up here just to shove your little speech in my face again? Why are you so fixated on the way that I choose to live my life?"

I head back toward the ladder to climb down, but Levi takes my wrist to stop me. "Scarlett, wait. Will you just listen to me for a second?" He asks. His touch feels like it's burning me, and the anger in my chest is already growing.

"I've already listened to you and your opinion on my life," I point out, removing myself from his grasp again. "Remember? How you humiliated me in front of our entire class? I swear, it's like you try to upset me every time I'm with you. Just back the fuck off."

"I'm not trying to make you upset. I'm trying to get you to really look at what you're doing to yourself," Levi says. I turn back to him with fury written on my features. He puts his hands up, telling me that he won't make any more moves toward me. "I care about you, and I want you to be happy."

"You don't know what the hell makes me happy."

"I know it's not what you're doing with your life right now."

"How? How the hell could you possibly know that? What gives you the right to dictate whether or not I need to change the way I live my life? Hm?" I ask, a cruel sarcasm to my voice. "How would you feel if I kept forcing you to tell me about Zeke? What if I lectured you about how to deal with your own brother?"

His expression falls to something resembling defeat, and I shake my head, exasperated by the fact that we're even having this conversation again. I turn back around and grip the railings of the ladder, prepared to leave without him.

His voice follows me. "Do you really want to know about my past?"

I keep descending the ladder, ignoring his attempts to pull me back into the conversation. He knows the answer to that question.

"Fine. Ask me whatever you want," he says. "But only if you promise to listen—actually listen—to my answers." I stop halfway down the ladder, wondering if he's just saying things to get me to listen to him. "If you promise to not run away from me like you did last time."

"Don't joke with me," I say, climbing up a few rungs and looking over the ledge to look at him.

"I'm not joking. I'm being serious for once in my life," he says. "Test me."

I want to leave, to show him that he can't pull these kinds of things and get away with it. But I also have countless questions that have been eating at me since I've met him. Questions only he can answer.

I step back onto the roof, keeping a significant distance between us. I start off with the most obvious one. "Tennis," I say quickly. "Why the fuck do you get so mad when I bring up tennis?"

"I've already told you. I used to play."

"We both know there's more to it. I'm not going to stay if you're just gonna give me these vague answers."

He turns, looking up toward the sky. "I played tennis from the time I had the strength to pick up a racket until I graduated high school. Fourteen years, five days a week, a couple of hours a day. On my days off, I either had conditioning or tournaments. Next question."