“No way,” she tells me stubbornly, while at the same time sidling up to me on the back of my motorcycle.

“What’s that? Can’t hear you,” I say, flipping the visor of her helmet shut in front of her cute little nose and twisting back. “Hold on tight!”

I kick the bike into gear. It’s a matte black Kawasaki Ninja, one of those big, scary street bikes that well-behaved Melissa Malone would never even dream of getting on, unless she was riding an adrenaline high. I took it down to the coffee shop instead of the car on purpose, but the thought of actually getting her on it had been a pipe dream at that point. Now, with her arms circling my waist and her body inching up to me close, my gut is almost as fluttery as I imagine hers to be.

“You’re fucking insane,” she gasps as the motorcycle takes off like the beast it is down the street.

I’m not sure if she’s ever cursed before, but I save it away as another step toward victory. I don’t hold back as I ride through the city, making a beeline out of town and head for the hills that take up the left flank of it. As soon as we’re out of city traffic, I can really push the bike to go and Melissa’s clutching me so tight that were she a stronger woman, I might be out of breath.

An occasional garbled squeak reaches my ears, but I don’t stop to ask what she’s saying. I’m pretty sure if I stop now, she’ll try to hike her way back to the city and all my strides toward fixing her would be made obsolete. Instead, I take the winding path up to Crooked Hill peak, my heart thudding in my chest louder and louder the closer we get. I’m nervous for her, or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Of all the bonehead plans I’ve come up with, this is the first one that has me worrying. It’s the knowledge that if I get it wrong, I might lose her for good.

It’s a good half an hour before we reach the peak, or the two peaks really, and I’m relieved to find the parking lot empty. As a popular tourist spot overlooking the city, it’s rarely abandoned, but I guess at least someone’s smiling on me.

“We’re here,” I say, turning off the engine and kicking the leg out as I take my helmet off.

Melissa is off the bike in an instant, tearing at the helmet, her back to the view.

“Get this thing off of me,” she hisses, clawing at the snap beneath her chin.

“Relax.”

I undo the clasp and pull the helmet off, coming face to face with a wild-eyed, panicky Melissa Malone in the process. She glances over her shoulder at the fantastic view of the city down below us and I can practically hear her heart starting to beat out of her chest and her breath getting ragged.

“Get me down from here. Right. Now.”

The sweet realization that I was right is made bitter by her panic. I hate to see her in pain, and I hate even more that I’m the one causing her distress.

“Shh, it’s okay,” I say, putting the helmets on the bike and stepping up to her again.

She’s paralyzed, standing in place, stuck between my ‘deathtrap’ – her words, whispered to herself in muttered sentences – and the height we’re at. There’s a skinny, flimsy-looking metal bridge connecting the two peaks, a good one hundred feet in length from one peak to the next.

“It’s not fucking okay.”

Like a cornered animal, her green and gray eyes glance around wildly, looking for an escape option and finding none. I reach out a hand for her and she recoils from me, but I grab her and bring her to my chest anyway. She’s shaking like a leaf.

“Why did you bring me here?!” she demands, no authority in her voice, between dry, heaving sobs.

This is not the Melissa I know. The in-control, strictly in charge woman who never strays from her chosen path. This is a panicked girl in my arms, one that I might be breaking in my misguided attempts to put her back together again.

For once, my confidence falters. It’s not something I can afford, not when it could cause harm to her.

“Listen to me,” I say, pinching her chin upward. Her eyes are brimming with tears and I feel like the biggest asshole. “I know about what happened. The trip, the accident, the whole thing. The grand scheme of it, anyway. I want you to tell me about it.”

She opens and closes her mouth like a fish out of water. I muscle through it, taking the shortest path to a possible positive result the way I always do.

“I know you think you can’t and I know you can. I think this is where it all started. Not the sexual side of it, but your need to control yourself, your environment and everything else you can get your hands on. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Sometimes life’s a little messy, sometimes it gets out of hand and we need to go with it. If we don’t…”

I trail off and she tries to look away. I let her, squeezing her tighter in my arms. Propping her forehead against my chest, she stands there, motionless, but at least she isn’t fighting me anymore.

We stay here for a long time, I stop counting the minutes after the first ten. I don’t want to push her, because I think I’ve already pushed her too much, so I’m willing to stand here however long it takes until she’s ready. Jolting out of my thoughts as she looks up at me, I draw a ghost of a smile out of her.

“Did I scare you?” she asks, rubbing at her eyes with her palm.

“A big, strong man like me? Never,” I scoff, finding a pack of tissues in my pocket and offering her one. I feel sheepish as she dabs at her eyes but when she looks at me again, I loop my arm around her shoulder and squeeze her tightly to me.

“Am I wrong?” I ask, referring to my earlier words.

She shakes her head. It’s a tentative motion, unsure, but it feels like winning to me so I’ll take it. I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

She looks at the bridge connecting the two peaks, a tall lookout platform built on the other hilltop, and I can feel the shiver going through her. Nudging her forward, we take a few steps there and I keep expecting her to bolt, but she doesn’t. We walk silently, her hand going around my waist and her nails digging into my side at the first step onto the bridge.

It’s a rickety contraption, but not half as bad as what it used to be, or so I’ve been told. I’ve never been up here before. We get to the middle of the bridge before Melissa urges me to stop, one hand tight around the railing. She looks down and I tighten my grip on her, as if expecting the wind to blow and take her away. She’s looking down. It’s a hell of a long way down.

“I think I was ten,” she starts, getting that faraway look in her eyes. “We had a class field trip. The bridge didn’t used to be metal, back then it was just a rope bridge. There had to be more than twenty of us and one teacher, and we were running wild, obviously.

“I don’t remember what I was doing but I was one of the last people over the bridge when the teacher called for us. We liked jumping on it, making it weave up and down. I was riding the wave right in the middle when the wooden slip that I was standing on broke and I fell.”

She pauses and we both take a breath. It’s more than I heard from the school nurse, but the story is much the same. I’m not sure whether to feel victorious for figuring this shit out or like a bastard for bringing her up here like this, tricking her into dealing with stuff.

I’m no psychologist. This is beyond my paygrade. And yet… well, she’s not just a patient anymore, is she?

“If I’d been smaller, I would have fallen right through,” she continues, looking down again. It’s a couple hundred feet straight down into a tree-filled crevasse. “I got stuck and I felt like I was slipping. I held onto the ropes and I remember my hands hurt from my grip slipping. And then I was suddenly out and my teacher was holding me and everyone asked me if I was okay. I thought I was, but I guess I wasn’t.

“I never thought about it, you know? I was never afraid of something and as much as I don’t want to admit it… I think you’re right. I think I am afraid now.”

There’s a humorless smile on her lips as I press a kiss to her forehead. The bridge wobbles a little when the breeze hits us and she clings to me, roping both arms around me and letting go of the railing. I like feeling as if I’m her anchor, making her safe.

It’s weird.

“Trauma isn’t something we can control, Melissa,” I tell her, inhaling her scent and relaxing right along with her. “We don’t always know what dictates our lives and there’s rarely any rhyme or reason to it. The best we can do is try and deal with it and that’s what you’ve been doing.

“You have more tools at your disposal now, though. You can look at this in a different way, you can try and move past it. I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds, but I said I would help you and…”

“And you did,” she says with a sigh, nuzzling her face back into my chest before looking at the view in earnest. “I didn’t remember that it was so beautiful up here.”

The sun’s setting, casting a faint pinkish glow around her. She’s beautiful.

I run my hand through her windswept hair and I can almost see a future. One where it isn’t just about me. It looks as scary as the drop down from here.

“Take me back,” she says softly, letting go of me with one hand to grip the handrail tight again.

“I’ll take you home.”

“No. I mean… take me to your place. Please.”

It’s not something she needs to tell me twice.