Stay Away | Eric Coulter [1]

four

    I thought knowing what was at the bottom would make me feel better...It didn't. It couldn't, considering how all I could see is a huge hole of impending darkness waiting to swallow me whole and nothing more beyond it.

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm my racing heart, I glance over at Eric who watches me with an expression that could only be described as the epitome of stoicism.

"I...Could I maybe...jump later?" Perhaps when there's no one else around to witness me shit myself?

Eric doesn't reply, simply raising a brow at me as if to ask 'what do you think?'.

"Yeah, I didn't think so," I mumble under my breath.

I peer over the ledge again, my heart racing so fast it almost feels as if I'm about to have a heart attack...Hell, maybe I am.

Straightening up, I was close to jumping out of my skin when I bumped right into a hard wall of muscle standing behind me.

Eric leans in, "Stop looking down and just get it over with." He mutters just loud enough for me to hear.

I gulped, "I will. Just give me a minute."

A flush starts to work its way up the back of my neck as I feel the heat emitting from his body against my back as he moves closer. "Am I going to have to throw you over that ledge, initiate? Or are you going to jump on your own terms?"

"I said, I would." I'm not normally like this. Maybe the nerves were getting to me, but this time, I snapped and turned my head to glare at him.

Instead of the glare I was planning on serving up, a gasp leaves my lips as I'm met with piercing blue eyes that I wasn't expecting to be this close to me.

I'm sure to everybody else, it looks as if I was getting severely criticised for wasting his time. But as I watch the corner of his lips kick up into a smirk, I'm starting to think he just enjoys getting a rise out of me.

"Get on the damn ledge," He orders.

Taking another deep breath, I push myself onto the ledge with shaky hands, setting my gaze dead ahead and refusing to give in to the temptation of taking another look down.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I start to do a silent countdown in my head and braced myself for the jump I'm about to make.

One minute, I was hyping myself up for the big jump and the next thing I know, there was an elbow in my back that was nudging me forward and sending me into a downward fall. That jerk.

Between cursing Eric out in my head and panicking over what was coming next, the fall was over pretty quickly and before I knew it, pain was shooting up my back as my body collided into a net waiting beneath me.

Too caught up in the moment to care about the pain, I chuckled to myself.

My laughs were turning borderline hysterical when a pair of strong hands tilted the net to the side, the momentum rolling me to the edge.

I winced as the hand settled on my bruised sides to help me down.

My laughter ceased immediately and the air surrounding me felt so thick with tension that it made it feel like I was struggling to breathe.

"Toby?"

Familiar chocolate eyes stared back at me, wide with shock.

For a minute, neither one of us spoke or even moved. My brother seems to regain himself much quicker than I do, though.

With one slow blink, Tobias's eyes turn cold, looking at me as if I was merely just a stranger and not his sister who he hasn't seen in years. I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was not this.