Breaking the Rules

  My eyes shoot open, and my body jolts. There’s a pounding through my bloodstream, and my heart’s a damn freight train. I’m not a nightmare type of guy. Never have been, but sometimes, my mind replays my past.

  It’s a nightmare that reminds me that I failed, and as I inhale, I remember the promise that I swore to Echo the night she recovered her memory...I won’t fail her...never again.

  I glance over at the clock. It’s still early. Echo’s locked in my arms, and I’m surprised she didn’t wake when I squeezed the life out of her. She let me hold her as she slept, and it was my sole comfort in a long, torturous night. Our last words hanging over me like a guillotine.

  Echo shifts, and her bottom presses into me. I take advantage and draw her closer. Her tank rides up, and I rest my palm against the heat of her stomach. I lived too long in cold isolation before Echo stumbled into my life, bringing her warmth and love. When we drove out of Louisville, we seemed indestructible.

  I need us to be indestructible. I can’t return to cold and alone. Things are complicated. No doubt. But we’ll battle through this. We have to. Giving up is not an option.

  “Me and you,” I whisper, hoping my words will sink into her subconscious, beyond where she overthinks. “It’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  Echo’s hand glides over mine, and she links our fingers together. “You like disturbing my sleep, don’t you?”

  I kiss her shoulder, permitting my lips to linger on her soft skin. Guess I did wake her. “Just keeping things straight between us.”

  “In my sleep?” Damn, I love that groggy voice.

  “You argue less that way.”

  Her body shakes with silent giggles. “I don’t argue.”

  “That sounded like an argument.”

  “You’re impossible.” Echo eases to her back. Her smile fades, and I hate that last night still weighs on her. “It all seems overwhelming. Like everything is stacked against us.”

  “It’s not so bad other than your dad would prefer for you to get over your juvenile delinquent phase and our friends hate each other.”

  The smile doesn’t reappear like I’d hoped. Guess telling the truth as a joke didn’t work.

  “Being together, Noah, it’s hard and you know it. We keep each other honest. It would be so much easier to slink back into our old lives.”

  Very easy. Return to living day to day, not giving a shit one way or another about anything or anyone. Not killing myself over a future in college and a damn degree. But if I chose simple, I wouldn’t have Echo.

  She forces me to question myself—why I do whatever I do. Before her, I couldn’t have cared less about college or a job that went somewhere or a future. But Echo deserves a man she’d be proud of, and the Malt and Burger isn’t good enough.

  That same pride she has in her eyes when she walks down the street with me now, I want her to have walking down the street with me in ten years. If I stay as I am, she won’t remain proud.

  I brush a finger slowly along Echo’s arm, tracing the smooth skin between her scars. She covered her arms in public again, and my shoulders stiffen. Am I busting my ass to move forward while Echo is falling back into her old life? Before I can ask, Echo opens her mouth. “Will we be okay when we go home?”

  “We’ve been through too much for something like this to get us down.”

  The knots coiled in my gut relax when that siren smile appears on her face. “So we have to stay together because we’ve walked hand in hand through hell?”

  “Don’t overanalyze the rules, baby. Just follow them.”

  Echo laughs out loud. “Since when have you followed any rules?”

  “Since always. They happen to be mine.”

  “The ones you make up don’t count.”

  “They do.” I slip my hand along her side. “Like the one that says that I have to kiss you if we’re in bed together.”

  Echo raises a brow. “That’s a rule?”

  “Fuck it, Echo. I’d kiss you if you were sunbathing on nails. A bed’s a hell of a lot more comfortable.”

  She stares up at me from beneath dark eyelashes. “You are so bad.”

  “Damn straight.” Right as I go to kiss Echo, someone knocks on the door. Damn it all to hell. “Go away!”

  “Be nice! It’s probably housekeeping.” Echo shoves at my chest and while she doesn’t have enough strength to push me away, I drop back like a domino, and she hops out of bed.

  “Be right there,” she calls out, then she lowers her voice to address me. “We’re lucky we didn’t get kicked out last night over the clothes.”

  “We?” I repeat. “I’m not the one clogging hotel filters with boxer shorts.”

  She pins me with a glare. I turn onto my side and prop my head up on my hand, deciding to enjoy the show of Echo hot as hell and strutting across the room. Spaghetti-strapped tank top and boy shorts that show a hint of her ass. On second thought... “You may want a robe if you’re going to open that door.”

  Hell, a shirt would help.

  “I’m going to crack it open to tell them that we’re still sleeping.”

  “We’re eighteen and in a hotel. Did you want them to laugh?”

  Her face turns red, and she shushes me.

  Damn, she’s going to answer the door like that. I roll off the bed and grab a pair of jeans. “Let me. My luck it’ll be the maintenance guy, then he’ll be stalking you for the rest of the trip.”

  Echo sticks her tongue out at me, but steps back to let me by. “Be nice.”

  My lips tilt up as I rub my thumb against her cheek. “I’m always nice.”

  “At least button your pants.”

  With a chuckle, I open the door wide enough to see who it is, but not enough that wandering eyes can drink in Echo’s gorgeous legs and ass. My muscles grow rigid when I spot a guy my height, a smaller build and a few years older slouching in front of my room.

  “What do you want?” I growl.

  His eyes morph into two ovals. “Sorry, I thought this room belonged to a red-headed girl. Is this her room?”

  He checks out the room number beside the door, and I broaden my stance. “What makes you think she’s here?”

  The guy winces. “I followed her.”

  A tremor runs through my body, and I have to keep from grabbing his throat and shoving him into the wall. Keep talking, asshole. I won’t have Echo pissed at me when I take a swing at this guy. I’ll allow him to bury himself first. “What do you want with her?”

  “Noah,” Echo whispers behind me and touches my bare back. “Did he say he followed me?”

  The guy pulls his hands out of his sagging jeans. “I know this is strange, but I want to talk to her.”

  “Noah?” Echo inches as if she’s going to peek out, and I slide in front of the door, holding the handle to keep her safely inside. This guy’s going to need a hell of a right hook to get to her.

  “You need to go,” I say.

  He rams both fists into his hair, and he’s got dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept. “Look, I know this is insane—”

  “You’re right—you’re fucking crazy. Guys knocking on hotel rooms of girls without being asked is sick.” I jerk my thumb for him to leave. “Serial killers belong at the next exit.”

  “You don’t understand.” He steps in my direction and in response I step into the hallway, letting the door hit me. The asshole retreats. “I need to talk to her.”

  “You got two seconds to go before I rip your fucking heart out and shove it down your throat.”

  He throws his hands in the air. “Tell her that she was right on the painting, and that I didn’t know that the star was supposed to be there. I wasn’t trying to stalk her. I was trying to catch up, but she entered the hotel before I could. I saw the room
she went in, and it didn’t feel right at the time to knock so I went home, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the painting so I came back and—”

  “I said go!”

  “Noah!”

  My fingers curl into fists. Damn it, why couldn’t Echo stay in the room? Behind me, Echo edges around the corner of the door. I should crush the damn guy for the way he ogles my girl’s chest like he’s a starved cartoon character who’s seeing meat for the first time in weeks. “What?”

  “That’s him,” she says in a soft voice. “That’s the gallery owner.”

  This means she’ll want to talk to him. Fucking great. My eyes bore into his. “You hurt her and you’ll deal with me. Period.”

  Echo

  His name is Hunter, and he’s the owner of not one but three galleries. While that’s amazingly cool, Noah is amazingly hot, and not in the sexy way. As Noah stalks back through the door and Hunter walks down the hallway to the exit, I desperately search for the right words to explain why I did what I just did—why I agreed to meet with Hunter.

  Noah pulls a shirt over his head and pushes his arms through the holes with so much force it could rip the material. I lean against the door, and it clicks shut behind me. “What he said made sense.”

  He shoots me a glare that could freeze lava. “Sense? He fucking followed you, Echo, then turned up on your doorstep at nine in the morning. He thought you were alone.”

  True. He obviously wasn’t prepared to find Noah fuming at the door, but I understood that look in Hunter’s eye. The feeling that something you’ve worked on for so long isn’t right, and that if you don’t fix it you’ll go insane.

  That painting means something to him, and art means something to me.

  “You heard what he said. He tried to catch up with me after we talked, but when he saw me enter the room he thought he should wait until this morning. He just wants to discuss the painting. I get that.”

  “I get that he was staring at your tits.”

  A shockwave of anger bounces throughout my cells. Don’t kill the boy you love. “I had my arms crossed over my chest. I was wearing a sweater yesterday so he was probably staring at my scars. Exactly like you did when you first saw them. It’s what people do!”

  Noah clasps his fingers to the back of his neck as if that will keep him from throttling me. “Tits. Not your goddamned scars. You’re the one that obsesses over them, not the rest of the world. Trust me, he wants to talk to you because he liked what he saw, and I don’t care for it.”

  My mouth pops open, and all the air rushes out, leaving me speechless. Shocked, hurt, pissed, just freaking frustrated. “You...that was...”

  “What? It was what, Echo?”

  “Sometimes people like to discuss things. Sometimes people might see me as a person with talent! He didn’t see the scars yesterday so it was a shock today. He showed not because of my—” and I wildly gesture at my top area “—stuff. He and I had an actual conversation, and he showed here because he wanted to have another conversation involving art! Not everyone is interested in sex!”

  A muscle in Noah’s jaw ticks, and a small part of me immediately regrets the words, but there’s no way I’m taking them back. Not until he apologizes to me.

  “Tell me that you didn’t mean what you said to him,” says Noah. “Tell me that you were trying to get him to leave without me having to intervene and that you have no intention of meeting with a guy that stalked you.”

  There’s a pleading expression on Noah’s face—his forehead wrinkled, his dark eyes a bit shadowed. I’ve only seen that type of desperation when Noah used to mention his need to be with his brothers, and it slightly kills a part of my soul that he’s wearing it for me.

  Even worse? That he’s wearing it for me, and I can’t grant him what he craves. Not without compromising my dreams. “He owns three galleries, and I’ve heard of him before from multiple people. He can open doors for me. I believe him when he says he wants to talk. I’m going to meet with him.”

  Noah throws out his arms. “He’s psychotic!”

  “I’m meeting him at a coffee shop! It’ll be a little obvious to the staff if he tries to chop me into pieces!”

  “We’ll find another gallery. Someone else!”

  “No!” I scream.

  “Why?” he yells back.

  “Because!” My voice breaks. “Because I understand what it’s like when someone sees something in your work. Not just the beauty, but the message. I saw something in his painting, and he knows it. He wants to improve it, and I want to help. I need this. I need to belong to something bigger than me. Something...” My eyes flash to my arms. “Something more than me.”

  Noah pivots away, and nausea hits my stomach. This is all we’ve done for days now—fight. We’re at odds with each other, and I hate it. I want us to go back to one week ago, two weeks ago, any time after graduation and before this—free from the world, free from arguing. “I don’t like fighting with you.”

  “Neither do I,” he says so quietly that I’m not sure if he said it.

  Someone knocks on the door, and I lower my head. How can we repair us when we keep pressing Rewind on the same parts of the same tired movie?

  The knock becomes persistent, and when Noah says nothing, I open the door. I blink with the first glimpse and blink again because there is no way this is happening. Black T-shirt, ripped jeans, a backpack hanging on one shoulder, and her long black hair tumbles over the strap of the pack as she looks over my outfit. It’s Noah’s sister by choice, Beth, and my every nightmare come true.

  A wide grin spreads across her face that spells eight layers of trouble for me. “I’m assuming your outfit means that Isaiah and I are interrupting this morning’s extracurricular activities. If so, hurry it up. I need to use the bathroom.”

  Noah

  Dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, Echo shoves her feet into her sneakers and yanks at the shoelaces as she ties them. I told Beth and Isaiah that we needed a few minutes then slammed the door on any comment from Beth. Anything I do or say at this point doesn’t matter because I’m fucked. “I meant to tell you.”

  “Yet you didn’t.”

  As I said, fucked.

  “How long have you known they were coming?” she asks as she strangles the laces of her right shoe.

  I pick up the last of the clothes that I had laid out to dry, hoping to buy myself time. The truth isn’t going to help. “Since the morning we left the sand dunes.”

  Echo tosses her hands into the air. “Oh, so you’ve only known a few days. Then my bad, why should I be angry? Tell me, is Rico coming? Maybe Antonio? Did we need to reserve adjoining rooms for your foster parents?”

  Echo grabs her keys, and my heart pounds hard once, threatening to tear out of my chest. “Where are you going?”

  She turns her head so quickly that her curls bounce. “To meet with Hunter.”

  “Echo—”

  “Coffee shop, Noah, not the Bates Motel, and I highly suggest keeping your opinions to yourself. If you’re lucky, I’ll come back.”

  She jerks open the door, bangs it shut and leaves me alone in the room. I’m so deep in this damn hole that it feels like walls of dirt have collapsed and are smothering me. I reopen the door and a quick scan of the hallway informs me that Echo’s long gone.

  Relaxing on the floor with their legs stretched out, Isaiah and Beth stare at me. Beth pops open her mouth, and I hold up my hand. “Not in the mood.”

  Beth shrugs and returns to folding a brochure on mountain climbing into a paper airplane, but my best friend continues to study me. When a guy a year younger with more tattoos on his arms than he has skin gives the pity look, it’s bad.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he says. “Look, we can go.”

  “Fuck that.” Beth sends t
he badly constructed plane into the air. “You dragged my ass here, and you can’t make me get on another shit-ton bus if your life depended on it.”

  “The phrase is if my life depended on it,” says Isaiah.

  “Your life’s worth more. In fact,” she says, winking, “we should consider getting an insurance policy on you. Isn’t that what fancy, rich people do?”

  “We ain’t rich,” he answers.

  “I decided that since we’re here in Colorado, we are rich. Noah—” she snaps her fingers “—fill my room with bottled water.”

  Isaiah smiles. “Gone dry?”

  “Please, Isaiah. Have some class. We can’t drink before noon. That isn’t what fancy, rich people do. They wait until twelve-oh-five.”

  The two of them never stop. “In or out, but I’m done listening.”

  They stand, and Isaiah pats my back as he enters the room. “Seriously, we’ll go.”

  I close the door behind me and sag onto the bed where I held Echo less than an hour ago. “We were fighting before you showed. I’ll talk to her. Straighten it out.”

  Beth and Isaiah share one of those glances that say they see an oncoming train on the track I’m tied to, and they aren’t sure whether or not to tell me I’m on the verge of being creamed. “Me and Echo are fine.”

  “Whatever.” Beth collapses onto the other bed and kicks off her shoes. Against the white pillowcases, she’s too pale. “How about you guys shut the fuck up and let me sleep.”

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Trash can in puking distance may not be a bad idea and before you ask, jackass, I’m sober, thanks to Isaiah. I swear, Echo has totally destroyed the two of you with her squeaky-clean attitude. My goal in life is to get that girl—” Beth covers her face with both her hands then moans like she’s in pain “—stoned. If I was stoned right now, I wouldn’t feel like this.”