A real one.

Ten stories below me, cement death called my name. I gazed down at it like an old friend. I’d been up here, balanced on this exact railing, countless times in the last six years.

This was my favorite destination when the pain in my life became too much.

After speeding up and down the Five freeway at 175mph had failed to produce any novel results this evening, I’d come here.

The dormitory building was called Nyyhmy Hall. Its sister dormitory, Paiute Hall, stood next to it. Both were named after indigenous tribes that inhabited the area surrounding Mono Lake, located just east of Yosemite Valley.

These dormitories were the main housing for undergraduates who attended Ansel Adams College, one of the sub-colleges that comprised San Diego University. Adams, as the students called it, was named after the pioneering environmentalist photographer Ansel Adams.

Each of SDU’s sub-colleges had their own particular architecture, educational requirements, and student culture. Samantha’s cute little friend Kamiko attended Adams. When I was an undergraduate, I’d attended Adams too, because I’d liked its hippie, naturalist vibe.

That’s when I’d discovered the tenth-floor balcony in Nyyhmy.

I knew for a fact that a small number of SDU students had jumped to their deaths from this very balcony. The pressure of college and the metamorphosis into an adult was an intense process for lots of kids at SDU.

I understood where they were coming from.

I was surprised that after all these years, you could still open the tenth-floor sliding glass doors that let out onto the balcony. There was no safety cage, like on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Sure, this balcony wasn’t an 86-story drop, but ten stories would still kill you, and both buildings had their own brooding history of human melancholy.

I took a deep breath and looked at the twinkling lights far below.

I was standing here to remind myself I wasn’t dead, that life hadn’t killed me yet.

It was a control thing.

I’d come up here to remind myself who was in control of my life. Not the courts, not the jurors, not my clients, not Brandon.

Me.

Whenever I stood on this railing, I always took my boots off and did it barefoot. Boots made your feet blind, and you had way more control with your toes free. Most people didn’t realize that toes and fingers had a lot in common. But when your toes spent a lifetime locked up in cumbersome footwear, you forget how to use them.

My toes were quite adept at gripping the 4-inch cold steel-tube railing mounted in the waist-high cement wall that was the dividing line between a glorious view of the Pacific Ocean and a three-second trip to oblivion.

The only reason guys like me became daredevils was because they were running away from something. Usually that something lived inside them. I knew of what I spoke.

Ever since my mom had left, it had been like this.

Pain was a powerful motivator.

A body wanted to run away from pain. If a flame was burning you, you pulled away. But you couldn’t pull away when the pain was inside you.

That’s why I needed to come up here and remind myself that I was still in control.

I could make the pain go away in an instant, if I wanted to.

Or, as long as my balance was good enough to keep my ass from slipping to my death, I held the keys to my future.

I did.

No one else. I was in control of my life.

The only problem with my logic was that not killing myself, while it seemed like the ultimate control, was not the same as controlling my pain.

I could ride my bike at 175mph all night long or stand on this railing until the sun came up.

But it didn’t change the simple fact that a jury of twelve was going to decide whether or not to fuck my life up. Then Samantha and her parents would know I was a piece of shit.

If she was going to lose me, maybe it was best if she thought I was a fuck-up. Then it would be easier for her to let go.

Pain hit me again, like every cell in my stomach had exploded simultaneously with black cancer, and I was consuming myself in a dark demise of self-destruction.

My smart phone jangled in my pocket. Before Your Love by Kelly Clarkson played from it. Samantha’s ringtone.

I started to slip.

Hello, cement.

I adjusted my hips and spine while my arms made small, erratic circles, until I recovered my balance. I loved that feeling when my stomach climbed up to my throat.

It meant I was still alive.

I stood motionless until my phone went to voicemail.

Telling Samantha everything earlier had been a mistake. It was too much to ask of her with all the shit her parents were heaping on her. It may have helped me release some of the wildfire tormenting me from the inside out, but now I felt selfish, like all I had done was burn her life into ashes, just like mine. What did it matter if I felt better? Her future was what mattered.

Mine was in the toilet.

I didn’t want her worrying about me. I was a waste of time. I wanted Samantha to be free from my agony so she could build her own life.

No reason to drag her down with my shit.

I lifted one foot off the railing and raised my leg to the side, shifting my hips over my knee to counter-balance my weight.

Nobody was going to control my fate except me.

A cool breeze rustled the tops of the Eucalyptus trees far below. My standing calf buzzed with tension as I levered myself up onto the ball of my foot.

I was in control.

No one else.

When I closed my eyes, it felt like flying.

I’ll always love you…

…Agápi mou…

Want to get an email when the sequel is released?

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Find out how what happens next in:

Painless

the sequel to RECKLESS

coming early 2014

Personal thanks from Devon Hartford:

Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to live with Samantha, Christos and the gang for awhile! If you enjoyed Reckless, please leave some positive feedback on Amazon, Goodreads, or any book blogs you frequent. Be sure to tell your friends about it!

If you want to drop me a line, you can find me at any of the links below. I love to hear what you have to say, and I love to talk books!

-Devon

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR