But he wanted to take me here.
When the car clicked to a stop at the top, I followed Reese through the small museum and out to the viewing deck. We passed a couple who was waiting for our car to go back down, and we exchanged pleasantries as we switched places. Once they were gone, it was just the two of us again.
The viewing deck was just a long railing over the edge of the mountain, a few binoculars set up for viewing, though there was the buzz of music and conversation floating on the breeze from the little restaurants that surrounded the museum. I relaxed a little at the realization that even though we were the only two on the deck, there were other people close by.
If I needed to scream for help, someone would hear me.
I cringed at the thought, at the fact that my brain automatically went there now. Before, I would have gone anywhere with just about anyone. I was openly trusting — perhaps too much so. That was probably why it never occurred to me to be worried when my professor wanted me to do my final exam after hours, why I didn’t feel uneasy at it being just the two of us at his piano that night.
I wasn’t aware of the fact that I needed to be afraid, not until it was too late.
Reese slid up to the railing, balancing his elbows on the metal as a long breath left his lips, his gaze on the city. He seemed to be just as lost in his own thoughts as I was in my own.
The air around us shifted, a heavier presence settling in as I took my place a few feet next to him, my stance mirroring his. My eyes drifted to him, and it was like pain radiated off him the way heat comes from a fire. Each time the breeze blew his long hair back, I caught another whiff of it. Every edge of him was hard — his jaw, the line of his nose, the crease between his brow.
And still, somehow, he seemed soft in that moment.
I tore my eyes away from him and let them sweep over the city below us.
The lights twinkled in the distance, and I scanned the points of interest I could make out — the stadium where the Steelers played, the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers met, the Fort Pitt Bridge. Below us, it was easy to see the city was alive, cars and boats weaving in and out of each other, but on top of Mount Washington, it was like we were in a bubble — like we were watching from a completely different planet.
“I used to come here all the time with my family,” Reese said after a moment. He didn’t look at me, his gaze still fixed on the city sweeping out in front of us. “It’s crazy how no matter how old I get, the view still takes my breath away.”
I smiled a little at that. “It’s beautiful.”
Reese nodded, a comfortable silence falling over both of us before he spoke again. “You’re probably wondering why I brought you here.”
“I’m a little curious,” I confessed. “But, if I’m being honest, I’m just glad to be out of the house.”
“Do you have any friends here?”
I shrugged. “I knew a few people when I was younger, kids I used to play with when we’d come visit at holidays. But none of them still live here. They’re all in college.”
I swallowed at that, my stomach twisting uncomfortably. I should have been away at college, too. I should have been graduating, with my sights set on higher education in New York.
I should have been so many things that I wasn’t, and I tried to pretend like that didn’t bother me.
“It must be hard,” Reese said, glancing at me over his right shoulder. “Being away from your family and friends.”
I didn’t return his gaze. “I don’t really have friends to miss back home,” I said, voice low. The unanswered texts and calls from Reneé weighed heavy in the phone I’d tucked in my back pocket, and they all begged to differ. “I miss my mom, though. She’s more like my best friend than my parent.”
I paused, sadness creeping in as a warm breeze blew up from the mountain. I shook it off as quickly as it had come, letting it float away with the wind.
“But, I’m here for a purpose,” I continued. “I want to be here. I have my eyes on the prize, and I know this is just a step on the ladder that will take me there.”
It sounded so cliché, the way I spoke about my dream. I didn’t know how to explain how badly I wanted it, how badly I needed to be in New York City, to play at Carnegie, to do everything I said I’d do before my wolf had changed my entire life. How could I convey that feeling, that physical need to excel despite what had happened to me? It wasn’t just to prove my wolf wrong, or to rise up against the odds… it was to have purpose, to have something that made me feel alive again.
I was so tired of just feeling like a walking corpse, waiting to die.
Reese nodded, like he really understood as he pulled his gaze back to the city again. “Well, that’s part of why I brought you up here.”
It was my turn to look at him, though he kept his eyes cast toward the skyline. He was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again, as if he wasn’t certain what to say now that he had my attention.
“As beautiful as this view is,” he finally said. “This is a painful place for me to be.”
He swallowed, the motion visible in the constriction of his throat.
“If I were a pragmatic, normal human being, I wouldn’t ever come here. Ever. Because every time I do, it hurts. I mean, there is this physical pain in the center of my chest standing up here,” he said, hand splaying over his chest to illustrate. “Like someone has their fist inside my rib cage, fingers wrapped around my heart in a vise grip.”
I frowned. “Why would you come here, then?”
“Because,” he answered, his hand slowly falling back to the railing. I thought that was the only explanation he was going to give, but after a long pause, he continued. “I’m not a normal, pragmatic human being. And neither are you.” He glanced at me briefly before gazing at the city again. “We’re artists. We’re musicians. We’re…” He sighed, shaking his head. “We’re not destined to run from our misery, we’re destined to bathe in it — and to somehow find a way to make it beautiful.”
I leaned a hip on the railing, shifting until my entire body faced him, but I didn’t know what to say. That heavy presence I’d felt when we first made it up to the incline radiated tenfold, and my heart kicked up a notch, as if it were preparing to fight or fly.
But I didn’t know who or what I’d be flying from.
“I brought you here because you need to understand,” he said, and he shifted until he faced me, too.
When his dark eyes locked on mine, my heart stopped altogether before thumping back to life in a quick gallop to catch up on the beats it had missed.
“In order to play the way you want to play,” he said. “In order to make the dreams you speak of a reality, you’re going to have to go to painful places — to the places you never want to go again.” Reese swallowed. “You’re going to have to look in the mirror at the worst parts of yourself, and at your past, and you’re going to have to get comfortable with the scars you see. No, more than that,” he clarified with a shake of his head. “You’re going to have to get to know each scar like it’s a permanent piece of every song you will ever play. Do you understand?”
For the first time since the night I left Bramlock, tears welled in my eyes — but I didn’t know why. It was as if that pain that radiated off Reese had penetrated me, and that vise grip he felt had transferred to my own heart.