My pulse pounds in my ears. “What do you want?”
Her lower lip trembles, and I swear to God she’s tearing out my heart.
“Just tell me.” Though I already know the answer.
“I want...I want more.”
More.
She wants more.
More than the punk. More than the kid with the messed-up past. More as in the guy that doesn’t spend nights behind bars.
I fall back to my ass and knead my eyes in an attempt to recover from the sensation of being pulled under by a wave. Six months. I had six glorious months with her, and it wasn’t enough time. For us. For me. I didn’t find a way to change fast enough to be the man she craves to walk down the street with. “I’ll give you more. I’ll give you everything. I’m changing. Just give me more time.”
Echo wipes at her eyes. “You should change because you want more for yourself, not because I asked for it. And more doesn’t mean material things. I don’t want what happened last night to happen again. I can’t take that. I can’t live that way, but you need to live your life for you, not me.”
The pressure that had been building while rotting in that holding cell erupts. “You’re what I want!”
With exhaustion working against her, Echo struggles to sit up against the back of the bed. “Don’t you see—that’s it. You’re changing to make me happy, and that’s going to make you miserable. It’s the same thing you accuse me of. You say I make decisions based on my need for approval. You want my approval so you change. That’s not healthy.”
She’s not getting it. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m changing because being with you makes me happy. You’re what I think about every second of the day! You’re the reason I have goals. You’re why I find a reason to take a breath when I open my eyes in the morning. I wanted nothing for my life and then I found you. You showed me I could be more, and I want more.”
Echo covers her face with her hands, and her shoulders roll forward. She blows air in and out. Long and deliberate. Each shaky inhale audible. Feeling the burn in my eyes, I suck in a breath like her. “I love you, Echo.”
Dead silence. The hollow abyss kind. The type that convinces me I’ve either gone deaf or died.
“What you said—you’re that for me, too.” She lowers her hands. “When all the cuts on the inside have bled for too long and I’m close to death, you’re the one that pulls me back. I don’t like hurting over you, but I won’t shove you or myself into a box we can’t fit in, either.”
“Tonight...that wasn’t me.”
Echo flattens her lips. “It was.”
Fuck this. “It isn’t who I want to be. Give me another chance. Let me prove to you that I’m the man you’re going to be proud of. The man you want to walk down the street with.”
Echo slowly smoothes her curls behind her ears, staring at me like I’ve grown horns. “I’ve always been proud of you.”
Now she lies. “Bullshit. If that was the case then why the fuck are we having this conversation?”
“Noah...” She slips to the side of the bed, and her leg almost touches mine. “We’re having this conversation because I want you to be happy.”
“Naw, we’re having it because you said you wanted more.” More than me.
Her knee bounces to that silent, screaming rhythm locked inside her. “I don’t mind parties. I don’t mind hanging out. But I don’t want to wonder if I’m going to have to bail my boyfriend out of jail. That wasn’t fun for me.”
“I told you, that was a mistake. This entire night was a mistake. If I could take it back, I would. I’m going to become what you want.”
Echo throws out her arms. “I want you to become who you want! Just like you keep saying that you want me to be happy, even if it’s here in Colorado.”
“I am happy!”
“You went after her,” she shouts. “When push came to shove, you walked away from me and you went after her! That tells me she had something more to give than me. I don’t like feeling this way. I don’t want to force you to be something you’re not!”
My intestines cramp, and I clamp my trap shut. I went after Mia to figure out how to keep Echo, but there’s no way to say that without it sounding crazy. After several hours to think on it, it all seems like madness. “You’re what I want.”
“Noah...why are you becoming an architect?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“You keep accusing me of making decisions based on my need to please, but look at yourself. Why are we even here in Vail? You’re supposed to be searching for some long-lost bloodline of your mother’s and instead we go to a party? You are all over the place and I don’t know how to keep up. No offense, but you’re searching for someone’s approval, and I don’t want to be on the wrong end when you figure out that my approval isn’t what you’re looking for.”
A rush of anger tackles me hard. “Like you aren’t searching for your parents’ approval? You aren’t trying to prove yourself in the art world without your mom’s help so you can score some sort of badge to show off to both your mom and dad?”
“At least I know why I’m pursuing art and who I’m trying to prove myself to. Can you say the same?”
The air from my body releases in a slow hiss, and I can’t draw it back in.
“I’m tired,” she says in a strained voice, and when I look up she’s massaging her temples. “I’m tired, and we’re talking in circles.”
It’s like watching the last remnants of sand run through the hourglass, and I’m chained to the wall unable to flip it back over. A flash of panic strikes. Echo could send me away. “Will you let me hold you?”
“No,” she bites out.
I flinch and it’s like she’s impaled me with a sword. “Can I stay?”
A pause. A long one. Please, Echo.
“On the other bed.” She turns off the light and plunges us into darkness. Her mattress creaks and a few seconds later, there’s only the sound of her breathing.
Echo’s laughter, her sighs, the tingle of her silky hair against my bare skin, each sweet and hot kiss...each one of them I’ve taken for granted. Not anymore. I can’t live life thinking there will be a tomorrow for the two of us. “I love you, Echo.”
It’s like I’ve said it into a black hole. The silence stretches then finally she whispers, “I’ve never doubted the love. It’s the going forward part that’s blurry.”
“Maybe it won’t seem complicated after we rest.”
“I’m taking the internship with Hunter,” she says into the darkness. “Regardless of what happens between us, I’m taking it. Just so you know when we try to figure out what’s ahead—that is if we have a future.”
Her words knock the wind out of me and leave me grappling to speak.
“We have one.” Damn it, we do. “But good. I’m glad.”
Good. It’s what she wants. It’s what she deserves, and there’s the possibility she might not have taken it in order to please me. “You deserve it, Echo. You deserve happy.”
“So do you,” she whispers.
Echo asked for simple. She asked for us not to change. I thought we could slip by with both, but the truth is, we can’t. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how to make us right. She could have forced me to leave, but Echo decided to fight for us...at least for tonight.
That doesn’t give me as much hope as it should. Sometimes you hold tighter right before you let go, and I’ll be damned if I allow that to happen.
Echo
I stretch, and the pull on my muscles feels good—like a soak in a hot tub. The large intake of new air filling my lungs brings a smile to my face and I shift, snuggling closer to Noah.
His arms lock around me, and I nuzzle my face into his chest. I love his spicy scent. I love the
se stolen moments in the morning. I love...
A flash of pain and my eyes snap open. My entire body jolts, and Noah runs a hand along my spine in comfort, in apology. I don’t love the memories of last night crashing back into my brain. I lift my head, and I’m met by Noah’s dark eyes. Dear Lord, he resembles something Lila’s cat would hack up.
My head whips. I’m not in my bed, but in Noah’s. My eyes scrunch together. How did I...
“You crawled in bed with me.” Noah answers the question before I verbalized it. “After you went to the bathroom.”
The vague memory catches up. “Oh.”
In my half-asleep state I had forgotten what happened between us. I had a nightmare, not a full-blown terror, but a nightmare, and I woke up, went to the bathroom and forgot why Noah wasn’t in my bed.
“Go back to sleep, baby. It’s still early,” Noah says. “You’ve barely slept an hour.”
I groan and scratch my fingernails into my skull. I haven’t felt this heavy since the morning I had a hangover after Michael Blair’s party in January.
Noah’s fingers creep up and tunnel in my hair, shooing away my own fingers, and assumes the task of eradicating the discomfort.
Part of me knows I should push Noah away. That I should yell and scream and cry, but there’s this sense that I’m already losing him and that these are our final moments. Moments that I don’t want to miss.
I settle back onto his chest and stare at the light shining through the cracks in the curtain. There’s this strange thin barrier between Noah and me that has never existed before.
“Are you mad?” Noah asks.
Mad? Should be, but... “No.”
“Hurt?”
Hurt? Painfully so. “Yes.” And terrified. As if I’m in a real-life horror movie. “I don’t know where we go from here.”
“Let’s take it one step at a time.”
“At some point we have to start thinking beyond the moment.”
“But not now.” Noah’s fingers slide through my hair, down my cheek, then put the slightest pressure on my chin until I lift my head to look straight into his eyes. “I love you. I’ll be strong enough for us, Echo. I wasn’t before, but I am now.”
I love him. So much that it aches. “The question is if staying with me can keep you happy. I’m not convinced that’s possible.”
“It’s possible.” Noah swipes a thumb across my bottom lip. Electricity zaps down to my toes. “Very possible.”
I sigh, and Noah narrows his eyes. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Doubt me.”
I quirk up a halfhearted grin while everything twists on the inside. “I’m not.”
Blink. Blink. Blink.
“You are. I’m going to prove I mean what I say.”
Noah doesn’t understand. “It’s not me you need to prove anything to—it’s yourself.”
“You’re too many steps ahead. Take a deep breath and stop trying to jump into the deep end.” Noah inches his head near mine and while I know that I should ease away, I can’t. When it involves Noah, I’ve always been the moth willing to be burned.
“One of us has to jump,” I whisper against his mouth.
There’s a desperation inside me that screams to hold Noah as close as I can. That this boy who causes me to melt under his touch, who makes me laugh like a child, lights up my world in so many ways, will leave me soon. The need is to cling. To hold. To become one.
But the thought of kissing Noah, the thought of loving him then losing him causes tears to form. I shut my eyes, and the images of Noah walking away into the night, merging into the shadows, plague my mind.
Aires walked away. Aires couldn’t fit into the mold at home. The more he tried, the more miserable he became, and he left. Not just left. He died.
My hands find Noah’s chest and with all the strength I possess, I shove. “I can’t.”
Noah sits up. “Echo?”
I’m trembling, and the air can’t enter my lungs fast enough. The room’s too small, and I’ve got to leave. I’ve got to leave before Noah does. I blink to understand the thought, but everything is distorted. “Aires left.”
“What?”
I run my hands over my face, and my shaking fingers stop at my lips. Aires left me. He walked off into the shadows, and I never saw him again, and Noah chose to walk in the same direction—away from me.
“You walked away, and Aires walked away, and he didn’t come back.”
“I didn’t walk away, baby. I’m right here.”
“But you will!” I yell, and bolt off the bed. “It’s what happens and then...and then...” Aires died.
“Echo...” Noah says slowly, sort of like he’s talking to a hurt animal. “Take a deep breath. You’re breathing too fast, and you’re shaking. Just sit down.”
“No, you walked away last night.” But he said he was sorry. Noah’s saying he’s chosen to stay.
“I know it sounds fucked up, but I went after Mia to talk to her. She said she knew why you and I were fighting. She said she had a relationship like ours once. I thought she could tell me how to keep you when I’ve got nothing to offer.”
Noah’s saying words. Words I should listen to, but the emotions running through me are too strong. “Did you know that Aires felt trapped at home?”
Just like Noah must feel like I’m trapping him. Noah was a different person when we met. He changed, and I liked how he changed, and I liked how he dreams of college and how he wants to build me a house and to buy me a small fluffy dog, but what if all of that is to please me and he’ll feel trapped and then he’ll disappear just like...
“Aires said that joining the Marines was his dream, but was it his dream? I mean, did he join because he felt like there was no other way out? And what happens when you feel trapped? What happens to you? To us? I can’t lose someone like that again. I can’t...”
“You aren’t.” Noah cuts me off. “I’m not trapped. Going to college. Being with you. Those are my choices. Not choices to prove something to you. If it was, I’d be on my knees begging you to take me back, and I’d be telling you that I’ll stay with you in Colorado, but I can’t. I need Kentucky, just like you need here, but, baby, I still want us together. Hear me, Echo. Hear what I’m saying. I’m not trapped. I’m exactly who I want to be...who I want to become. I wasn’t chasing her last night, I was chasing you.”
“Aires also said he’d never leave!” The air leaves my body faster than I’m taking it in. “He lied to me! The one person who never lied to me, lied to me! And I know you never lie so what does that mean? I’ll tell you. It means that this is all going to hell.”
Noah’s face contorts as if I’m gutting him open. “I get it.”
“You don’t.”
He slams his palm over his chest, over his heart. “They left me, too!”
Tears prick my eyes. “What if we’ll always be broken? What if we can never be fixed? What if this is it, for the rest of our lives? Regardless of whether we’re together or not? What if our past will always haunt us and makes us miserable? What if we’ll never shed our baggage and weights, and we’ll never be set free?”
The truth of my words is too heavy to wait for a response because I’ll drown from the answer. Noah and I are trapped in a black hole. A terrible, consuming black hole.
A black hole.
I suck in a breath like I’m waking up. I slip my shoes on my feet and snatch my key card off the dresser.
“Echo...” Noah rapidly moves for me, his hand outstretched.
“It’s a black hole,” I tell him. “The constellation, the one I’m painting...it contains a black hole. The answers I’ve been searching for...the painting...I know what I need to do.”
“Okay. That’s good, but you need to sit?
??”
“No!” I desperately attempt to rein in my emotions. “No. I need to do this now. I’m going to the gallery and you stay here, and then I’ll be back.”
“I’ll take you there.”
“I’ll be fine—”
“If it’s not me, then I’ll wake Isaiah, but I’ve only seen you like this once before, and I’ll be damned if I let you walk out that door without someone keeping an eye on you. Kick me in the damned nuts. Break up with me a hundred times, but I’m walking you to that fucking gallery. Got it?”
Because there’s no arguing with him when his eyes turn solid with determination, I grab the canvas and walk out the door with Noah.
* * *
I try the back door, and I have to fight the urge to punch it when, like the front door, it’s locked. Hunter gave me a key, and I forgot it. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me. I know what I need to do for this painting, and I’ll go mad if I don’t finish it. I step back from the door and assess the second story. Is there a freaking way to scale the wall?
“You’ve got paint in the room,” says Noah. “Can you finish it there?”
“I don’t have what I need there,” I answer. There’s a tree near the corner, but it would be a heck of a jump, and who knows if the windows are unlocked.
A sharp pain on my scalp. “Hey!” Did Noah yank out my hair?
Noah flattens out a bobby pin and leans into the door. His head swivels like an owl’s up and down the back alley. “Are you sure you’re allowed in here?”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you in. I see the look on your face. You need this. So, I’m asking again. Do you have permission to be here?”
Calmer than I was in the hotel, I glance at Noah. “Do you think I’m the breaking-and-entering sort?”
With his shoulder against the door, Noah sticks the pin into the lock and begins this weird jiggling movement. “Yes.”
“I can’t believe you’d think that.”
“If you think about it...” Noah halfheartedly offers his wicked grin. It doesn’t quite touch his eyes, but the small attempt at playfulness does cause me to smile...a little. “You’re the one who broke into a therapist’s office.”