Taking Chances (Rewritten Version)

Chapter Twenty-Six

"No Mistakes"

Brielle

The sun had set over the horizon, making everything around me darker. The city lights turned on, igniting every alleyway and dark corner. The city became more alive with each passing second, which was odd to me. The dark meant night, and night to me meant sleep. How could the city become more alive and excited when it was supposed to be sleeping?

I guess that's how cities worked, though. They were the opposite of your normal perspective on life.

By then the anger had subsided, and my tears had dried to only feel like tiny twigs on my skin. I didn't try to wipe them away, though. I left them there. What was the point anymore? What was the point of fighting when there was hardly anything left to fight for? I was losing battles left and right, and it had never occurred to me more that I needed to end it all before there was truly nothing left.

The door to the roof burst open, even if I knew that it wasn't meant that way. The door was just too heavy and old to keep quiet and undetected. To seem new. Although I didn't know who it was, so it was possible it wasn't the door that had been slammed unintentionally; it might've been Claire, come to rage at me for my behavior, for being out of my mind. Or Harry, yelling at me to get my crap together before I didn't something a little more reckless than nearly hitting him in the face.

"I never quite thought you could lose your temper like that."

I felt a little relieved to know it wasn't Claire, despite the knowledge that she was probably too angry at me for grabbing Harry to come talk to me herself; I didn't blame her at all. I'd lost my mind and everything went black. It was so bad that I'd wondered whether that was the process Nate went through when he went completely ballistic. What if I'd gotten to that point? What would've happened to them?

"Me neither," I mumbled.

There was no doubt in my mind that I regretted losing control of myself back in that room, but fawning over it never helped anything. I needed to fix things.

"Claire's not angry at you, Bri," he told me, as if reading my thoughts from when he first walked out. "She's just shaken up."

I chuckled humorlessly, knowing exactly why. "Yeah, because her best friend almost hit her boyfriend and practically watched her lose control of her temper." I paused, my voice dropping just above a whisper as the sadness of that reality sank in. "I didn't know she'd even still be here."

"Because she cares," he said, and I saw that he jumped up on the ledge and took a seat next to me in a similar position. "And she knows the feeling of being in love. She knows how much you care about Nate, and she doesn't blame you for feeling out of your mind."

"You've been in danger before," I shrugged. "There's people who want to jump you and humiliate you all the time. And not once has she gone ballistic like I just did."

Harry shook his head and looked at me intently. "I wasn't kidnapped and told that I'd be beaten until I promised to keep my love for her to myself, Brielle. She doesn't know what it's like to deal with that kind of danger."

"Which makes me feel so much worse..."

He sighed, and moved to look at the city lights again. His eyes roamed the way mine did when I first got up there, taking in the beauty and the buzz of life that people were living. I ached, yearned for the normalcy that those people lived. I missed feeling normal. I missed family, and calm. And something told me Claire and Harry did, too.

"We'll find him, Bri. You know we will."

"He's smart. If we do, it won't be easy. And even if we turn your plan in, he won't let him go. He'll just stop beating him."