Ryder and I watched in horror as Ryan kickstarted the bike from where he was near his car, revving it a few times, before heading for the edge of the cliff. I immediately threw my hands over my eyes like a scared child, fearful he wouldn't reach the cliff on the other side. The thought was drowned out almost instantly by the sound of Ryan screaming from the other cliff. He was yelling but I couldn't make out what he was saying, but was sure it was all adrenaline fueled. After a few minutes of sitting over there alone, he revved the bike up again and drove it back over to where we stood.

"That was incredible!" He said, gasping for air as he pulled his helmet off. "I've never felt so alive in my life."

Those words were enough to motivate Ryder. He put his own helmet on, but I grasped his arm before he could start up the bike again.

"You don't have to do this, Ryder." I whispered.

A few different emotions flashed through his eyes, but finally settled on a look of fear. "I do. I will hate myself if I don't try. And Ryan won't ever let me live it down."

"And if you don't make it across?" I snapped. I could see Ryan shooting me a warning look out of my peripheral. "Then what, Ryder?"

"I die." He met my eyes, the fear in his own blue orbs increasing by the second. "But come on, this would be a pretty bad ass way to die. I died driving a motorcycle off a cliff, Zoey. Can you imagine how people would talk?"

I opened my mouth to speak again, but Ryan stepped between us, completely blocking my view of Ryder.

"Be careful and stop talking like that. You got this. We've done it hundreds of times with smaller gaps." And with that, Ryan helped his brother start the bike up and backed away, grasping my wrist and yanking me back with him.

"What the hell was that?" He growled.

I glared up at him. "What was what? Trying to talk sense into him?"

"Zoey, why the hell would you put that shit in his head right before he's about to do it? Now he's going to over think it."

I fought the urge to flip Ryan off and walk away then and there, but took a deep breath instead and tried to keep my composure. This wasn't about Ryan, this was about Ryder. Even if they were both annoying idiots that had weird indirect ways of getting under my skin, I didn't break my promises.

"You're getting attached." Ryan said when I didn't respond. "And for your sake, I think you should try to stop it as soon as you can."

Without looking at him, I let out a quiet "why" and turned my attention to Ryder. He had started and was seconds from jumping the cliff. A wave of relief crashed into me so hard I almost fell over. It was when he tried to get the bike back over that I actually did fall back. He made it across, but in doing so, he hit the ground on our cliff hard and the bike swung out from beneath him and flew in our direction. Ryan, acting on instinct, grabbed me and threw both of us on the ground a few feet away. The bike slid under his truck and stuck, the motor dying a few moments later. My eyes retrained themselves on Ryder, limp on the ground near the edge of the cliff.

"Ryder!" I cried, squirming out from under Ryan. When I reached Ryder, he was staring up at the over cast sky with a grin, eyes still glistening with excitement.

"That was awesome!" He said, sitting upright. I slapped his shoulder hard as soon s he did.

"I thought you were hurt!" I rose to my feet. "I can't. I can't do this anymore, Ryder."

The grin faded. "What? Zoey, why? I'm fine, see!"

"Maybe you are now." I replied. "Bur at some point one of these stupid stunts on your list is going to get you killed, and I don't want to stand witness to it."

He looked genuinely upset I was leaving. "You promised."

I headed for Ryan's truck, not looking back as I responded. "Yeah, well hate to break it to you, Blake. But sometimes people break promises."

**

Sitting outside on the swing set in the rain trying to get a hold of Max definitely only added to the hell of a day this had been. As if God was testing how much more I could take, he sent Ryan my way a little after eight, obviously headed to work. He somehow managed to catch a glimpse of me swinging and decided coming over to me would by some miracle turn my night around.

"Why do you like to sit out in the rain?" He asked, eyebrows raised.

I shrugged. "Helps me think, I guess? I don't know."

"Ryder's pretty upset about earlier. Won't even come out of his room now." He mentioned, as if it was supposed to make me suddenly revoke my decision.

"Sucks." I muttered. "But I can just stand by and watch him kill himself. Maybe you can, maybe y—"

"I said the same thing a couple days ago." Ryan reminded me. "And you told me that I need to suck it up and push my feelings aside. That this was about my brother, so I tried to. Now you need to."

I avoided his eyes. "I can't get attached and lose him too, Ryan."

"That's unfortunate." He responded. "Because you're already getting pretty damn attached. He needs you, Zoey. Not me, you."

"Why me?" I threw my hands up in exasperation. "Why can't he find literally any other girl to help him with this shit?"

Ryan ran a hand through his dark hair, brushing his bangs out of his eyes in the process. "I don't know, Zoey. If I could answer that, I would. But right now you're the only person he wants around, and I'm going to do everything in my power to try and get you to bring him back out again. So please, Summers. If not for him, then for our mom, for our dad, for me. You may be the only chance we have at actually convincing him to go to the hospital and get help."

I wanted with everything in me to say no, to get up and walk back into the my house. But I couldn't bring myself to even stand. This wasn't just some dumb little task I didn't want to do. The reality of it, the fact that Ryder was actually dying, still felt like some sick joke to me too. It was real though, and I did need to take my own advice and not be a hypocrite.

"I know you're scared, Zoey." Ryan wrapped his hand around the chain of my swing. "I am too. But he. . . even if he doesn't get through this, I don't want to have regrets, you know? I want to know I tried everything, I spent every second I could with him. And I know, deep down under all the fear and toughness that you try and show everyone, you do too. It's okay to let yourself get attached."

"The one man I was supposed to be okay with getting attached to and loving beat my mother and me. Convinced me emotions were weaknesses." I wiped at the rain rolling down my cheeks. "I'm sorry if that makes me hesitant on ever allowing myself to get attached or loving someone, let alone a guy."

Ryan looked ready to speak, but I went on before he could.

"And the only other person in my life, the person I had trusted with everything in me, won't even talk to me now. He begged for my forgiveness just to cast me aside because there wasn't any chance of anything beyond friendship. Everyone I've loved has just proved to me that emotions are weaknesses."

Ryan crouched down, dropping his backpack on the ground at his side and touched my knee, head shaking from side to side. "I understand, Zoey. More than you can even imagine. Everyone I've ever loved has left or died, or is dying for that matter. That's why I keep my distance from people. Why I sleep with one girl and move on to the next. I don't want them falling victim to whatever sick curse I have. But what your father said, that isn't true. Our mom taught us the opposite. Emotions are our only ways of connecting, of expressing how we're feeling. That if we keep them bottled up for too long, at some point we'll explode and won't be able to control them."

"Your friend, the jock, he's distancing himself for a reason. Us guys are idiots for it, but we do it when we're confused about something or going through crap at home. It may not even be about you. If it is, it's his loss for not keeping someone like you in his life." Ryan's eyes were glistening with such a genuineness that I stayed quiet. There wasn't really much I could respond with, and by the way he started to stand back up and grab his bag, I was sure he probably wasn't expecting me to say anything.

I glanced down instead of watching after him, doing my best to stop myself from crying. Once he had hopped into his truck and sped off, I felt my eyes starting to sting with tears, but my emotional moment was short lived. Because with the departure of one Blake boy came the appearance of the other. Ryder was heading toward me, hoodie on and hands in his jacket pockets, expression unreadable. Once he finally reached me, he sat on the wet sing beside me and laughed.

"How the hell do you do it?" He questioned.

"Sit in the rain? I've just gotten used to it, I guess."

He nodded, glancing toward my sisters Nissan in the driveway beside my step-father's. "You're sister, would she let you borrow her car for a couple hours?"

Now would have been my chance to stand firm on what I'd said earlier today, but somehow Ryan's words had wormed their way under my skin and I was actually contemplating helping Ryder with whatever it was he wanted to do right now, in the middle of a monsoon.

"Why?"

"Because I want to take you somewhere." He said quietly. "It may help cross a couple things off my list too, but that isn't why I want you to go. Can you give me one more chance?"

I looked away and toward the wet street I'd just watched Ryan speed off down, his words on a replaying on repeat in my head. Finally, I dropped my head and started to nod slowly.

"Yeah, okay."