I sprinted through the night until I came upon a couple from the party.

“What happened?” I gasped through rushed breaths. “Why is everyone standing around?”

The girl looked at me, annoyed. “Because there’s a guy on the roof?”

“What?” I looked past them and saw Noa and Clara. I ran to them.

“What the hell is going on? And why is some asshat on your roof?”

Clara looked at me. “Where have you been?”

I tried to smooth down my hair. “Doesn’t matter. What is going on?”

Noa began, “Well, see…”

“Lila!” I heard my name and spun around to see who it was. My eyes flew to the roof. I shut them in frustration.

“Tell me I don’t see Eli on the roof. Tell me I don’t.”

Noa set her lips into a thin line. “You do.”

“What in the absolute hell is he doing up there?”

Noa rolled her eyes. “We don’t know and he’s refusing to come down. He says he’ll only talk to you.”

I heard him scream for me again.

I looked at Noa and then behind me. “I can’t do this Noa, not with Levi around. I’m sorry, you guys are on your own.”

Noa shook her head, “I’ve tried mama, but he won’t. And we need to talk about Levi, there’s something you should know.”

Levi came up behind us.

I shook my head, “Not now.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed at Eli. “Eli get the hell of the roof you idiot.” He then turned to me, “Please tell me this is not why you just left like that.”

I was at a loss for words. “I didn’t know what was going on Levi, I swear.”

He looked away from me, but I could see the anger pulsing through his veins. “He can’t let me have anything. Especially you.”

Eli started yelling at me again.

I sighed. “Eli, what the hell are you doing up there? Get down here!”

“Not until everyone knows the truth.”

I turned back to Noa and Levi. “He’s drunk.”

Noa nodded. “He’s three drinks past drunk.”

I tossed my head back. “Fuck.”

Eli started yelling again. “Lila, Lila we need to tell them the truth.”

I spun around. “Eli, shut up.” People stared at me wide eyed. They looked uncomfortable. I hated being embarrassed. I hated Eli for making me feel this way.

He yelled again. “Lila, come on.”

“Eli, shut the fuck up.” I couldn’t think, all those eyes looking at me. Judging me.

Levi shook his head. “I’m out of here.”

“What?”

“You’re here, you can handle him on your own. You’re the only one he wants to talk to anyway.”

He turned away. “Levi,” I pleaded but he ignored me.

“Rules, Lila, there was only one rule,” he said in a defeated tone.

Eli started yelling again. “Lila! Lila, I need you.” It almost sounded like he was pleading with me. Like he needed the truth to come out because it was bursting out of his body. Traveling like poison through his veins. But I didn't have anything to say to him. If he wanted everyone to know that I slept with him, then this was certainly one way to do it.

Noa looked back and forth at us, seeming to assess the situation. “Eli! You need to stop. You need to get the hell off the roof and knock this ‘I’m a victim’ shit off.” I wanted to say her ability to size up and deescalate a situation was just a unique skill of hers, but I knew it was something that she learned from the Army.

The party started to return to normal after somebody had turned music way up so that you could hardly hear Eli’s yells anymore. I walked up to the edge of the house so that I could get a better look at him. He had a mark on his face and was still holding a beer bottle. It almost looked like he had been in a fight. “Eli, you have to come down.”

He moved over to the edge of the roof and sat down with his legs dangling over the edge. I could almost touch his boots. “I saw you watching us. I know that you saw me and Adriana.” Well shit. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks and was glad the night masked my embarrassment. He continued, “But there is something you don't know.”

I tried to talk calmly to him almost like he was an injured animal. I hoped it would bring him down. “What do I not know? Tell me, I'm listening.”

He looked away for a moment and I thought that he would slump over at any second. That would be really bad for two reasons. One, because he would fall off the roof and break his neck and two, he would fall off the roof on to me and I would also be dead. But instead he just shrugged his shoulders like he still had some ownership over his faculties. “The whole time I was fucking her I wanted it to be you. I even said your name.” He shook his head back and forth, clearly disgusted with himself. I didn't react, hoping that it would continue to calm him down, but he kept going. “I said your fucking name, Lila. I could have any girl in the world and yet I want you! Why the hell is that? Why do you still have this hold on me after all this time?”

Now it was my turn to look away. “I don't know.” I looked back up at him and his eyes met mine, “It was only one night, Eli. I don't know why you keep thinking about it as more than that. I never loved you, and I never will. I loved Levi, and it killed me to hurt him. And what you and I did, it can't be erased. So we're stuck with the consequences of our actions.” It was like suddenly a switch had gone off my brain. I had to live with the consequences of my actions. If that meant that Levi wouldn't help me out with his brother standing on the roof, then I had to deal with that. It was time to accept it and move on. “We have to move on, Eli. Both of us. It's not right to keep reliving it, it just hurts Levi even more.”

I had broken the rule. Ruined my second chance with Levi. How the hell was I going to fix this mess?

He laughed and took a swig out of his bottle, which looked nearly empty in the moonlight. “It's always you, Lila, always thinking about Levi. Do you ever think about yourself? Do you not love me because of him? Or do you not love me because you don't care about me?”

I knew the answer in my heart. “I don't love you because I just don't. I care about you, but I don't have feelings for you in that way. Sometimes people just have sex, Eli—you should know that better than anyone.”

He laughed again. “Of course I should know that better than anyone. I've slept with almost every girl at this party.” Then he started yelling again, “Including you!” He attempted to stand up, but when he reached for the shingles to pull himself back onto his feet, the bottle slipped from his grasp. He turned to grab it as it fell off the roof, landing only inches from my feet. As he twisted his body to maintain his grasp on the shingles, he lost his footing and my eyes became wide with fear as I backed up, knowing I couldn’t catch him. I heard a girl scream behind me as I looked at the crumpled figure that was Eli Jackson on the stone patio. My hand covered my mouth in horror. He wasn’t moving. I moved closer and I could hear him crying. I reached out to him and just as my finger brushed against his jacket he shook me off though I knew he was hurt. “Noa! Noa where are you?”

I heard the girl behind me again, “He jumped! I saw him jump!”

I shook my head and yelled back, “He didn't jump, you idiot, he fell. Has anybody seen Noa?”

Just as I turned around to call for Clara to look for her, Noa rushed my side.

“Is he okay?”

I turned looked at her. “I don't know.”

She tried to talk to him and stroked his bicep as he cried in a crumpled heap. “Eli, are you okay? Is anything broken?”

He looked up at her and wiped his face. “No, I'm fine. I just need to go home.”

Noa looked over her shoulder and nodded to two of the guys Eli had been talking to earlier in the evening. “Pick him up and take him home. Make sure he's okay before you leave.”

One of the guys grabbed him from under the armpit and practically lifted him up by himself. “You got it.” He gave me a nasty glare as he pulled Eli away.

I was still kneeling on the ground as they dragged his body away, completely unsure of what to do with myself. He hadn't jumped, he had slipped, but it was still my fault. I looked at Noa shaking her head. “Girl, you have got to get these guys off of you. They go crazy when you're around.”

I closed my eyes. “You and I both know that Eli was crazy the whole time.”

She chewed on her lower lip and sat back cross-legged on the ground. “You know he's been like this ever since the accident.”

My head snapped up the word accident. I hadn’t heard anything about that. “What accident?”

Noa started to pick some dirt from underneath her nails. “It was maybe two years ago? He'd been dating this girl named Megan. She was pretty and a real badass. Totally Eli’s type, nothing like you.” Wow, that was a relief. “She liked to ride motorcycles with him, but then one night… I don't know, the story was that she got hit by a drunk driver and she wasn't wearing a helmet. She didn't even make it to the hospital. Eli saw the whole thing. He's never really gotten over it.”

I was shocked. No one had ever said anything to me about this. Why had another secret been kept hidden from me?

“Oh my God, that's awful. Why didn't anybody tell me?”

Noa shrugged, still not making eye contact with me. “You weren’t around. And I was leaving on a tour, it just didn't seem like the right time. But after tonight—I don't know, Lila. I think he might need some help.”

I didn't really have anything to say. “Yeah maybe.” It was all I could come up with. Eli did need help, but was I the right person to give it to him? I didn't think so.