Breaking the Rules

  “Noah,” says Isaiah in a low voice that causes my instincts to flare. “We’ve got trouble. Nine o’clock.”

  In slow motion, my head turns to the left. That damned Hunter’s coming in fast. My grip on Echo’s roses tightens, and a thorn slices through my skin.

  “Where’s Echo?” Hunter demands.

  Isaiah rolls his shoulders back and tips his chin up. My brother is willing to take on this fight.

  “Don’t know,” I answer. “Heard she tore out of here like the devil was chasing her so how about you and I cut the shit and you tell me what the fuck you did.”

  Hunter’s eyes swing between me and Isaiah. Possibly wondering if he should notify next of kin about which of us he thinks is going to pull the trigger. “I brought up her mom, and she left.”

  Isaiah pops his neck to the side, and I contain the urge to rip Hunter’s arms out of his sockets. “Left how?”

  “I was testing Echo. To see how’d she react if someone taunted her about her mother.”

  I step into him, and Hunter takes a step back. Isaiah places his hand on my arm. “Let him finish. Then we’ll kill him.”

  Right. Find out the damage then tear out his windpipe. “Continue.”

  “Her mother is going to be at the art show in Denver. I entered Echo two days ago, and the rumors are already building. I’ll admit, my tact isn’t the best, and the news freaked her out. It’s why I’m here. No one who looks that dazed should be alone.”

  Damn him. He fucked her up then came here to be her savior. My cell’s out of my pocket before he finishes talking. In fact, the bastard’s still talking, now only to Isaiah, who’s looking as friendly as a mangy, starved wolf.

  The numbers finish dialing, and I go straight into voice mail. “It’s Echo. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

  “You didn’t power your phone again, did you, Echo,” I growl. “I know we got stuff to work out, but I don’t like how you left. If you can’t call me to let me know you’re fine, then you call Isaiah. Fuck it, you can call Beth. Call your dad. Just someone.”

  I pause. In order to chase her dreams, Echo has to confront the one person that has given her nightmares. The one relationship she doesn’t know how to handle. I glare at Hunter. He starts to say something, but stops when Isaiah pins him with one sharp glance.

  I’ve stayed on Echo’s cell for too long—long enough that if she did power up her phone, she would have ended the call by now, but regardless I say the words, “I love you.”

  And hang up.

  “That’s it,” I say to Isaiah. “That’s all she said? Take a risk?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Take a risk. What the hell is Echo going to do to prove she’s a risk-taker? The last time Echo got bold, she broke into school to stop me from stealing her file. Echo keeps thinking she’s not a risk-taker, but when my girl goes, she goes big and falls hard.

  My eyes slam shut. Goes big. Falls hard. “Fuck me.”

  “What?” Isaiah asks.

  “I need a car. I think I know where she went, and we need to get there before she does.”

  “I bet you the asshole has a car.” Isaiah jacks his thumb toward Hunter.

  We both assess him, and he presses his hands into his pockets. “Tell me where she went, and I’ll take you.”

  “Naw,” says Isaiah. “You give us the keys, I’ll drive, he’ll save the girl and I’ll let you live.” Isaiah looks over at me. “One of us is getting the happy ending.”

  Because there’s never a discussion when Isaiah appears this pissed, Hunter pulls out his keys, and I smirk at Isaiah. “You’re driving?”

  “Out of the two of us, I’m the one who knows how to drive fast.”

  * * *

  We had to walk back to Vail village to get Hunter’s car so Echo got a hell of a head start—even with Isaiah cruising beyond the speed limit. He passed cars like half of them were sitting still. It’ll be a miracle if Isaiah doesn’t burn out the engine.

  I called Echo’s cell again and again. From the backseat of the energy-efficient car, Beth tried from her cell and used Isaiah’s twice. Didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Echo was either ignoring us or her phone was dead.

  Longest two-hour drive in my life, and these last ten miles were going to murder me. With a forest ranger on our ass, Isaiah’s had to follow the fifteen-mile-per-hour speed limit.

  “Want to tell us what’s going on?” Isaiah asks.

  With her head against the window, Beth opens her eyes, ending what I thought had been a cat nap. One hundred and fifty miles. It’s what we’ve traveled, and every mile between here and Vail I’ve thought how I could be wrong. Maybe this isn’t where she went. Maybe she’s someplace else, hurting, alone...I punch the door...doing something stupid without me.

  “We were here a few nights ago. Some guys were jumping off a cliff into a pool of water. I wanted to. Echo wouldn’t. She’s trying to prove something.”

  Isaiah raises an eyebrow. “Why didn’t she wait for you?”

  “She’s not proving something to me.” I knead my eyes as the images of the hundred things that could have gone wrong torture me in slow motion. “She’s proving something to herself.”

  Echo finally understands it’s not about pleasing Hunter or her dad or me, and when she figures it out, she takes a risk that could kill her.

  “There.” I point to the entrance to the campsite. “Park there.”

  My heart pounds hard when I see Echo’s car. Barely placing it in park, all three of us fall out, and I’m already on the path. “This is on me. Stay here.”

  “Her engine’s still hot, Noah,” yells out Isaiah. “She’s not far ahead.”

  With that, I run. Down the path, through the trees, praying she’s over a bend, past a clearing. Hoping she’ll be there right before my eyes, but she never is. She’s out of reach. Just like my parents were.

  “What do you see when you look down?” I asked.

  “You sound way too much like Mrs. Collins.” That sexy irritation leaked into Echo’s voice. “And that’s not a compliment.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Rocks. Lots of sharp, kill-me-by-impaling rocks.”

  I’m through the woods, and sweat breaks out along my hairline as I spot Echo teetering on the rock wall.

  “You can call it uptight all you want, but I call it not being suicidal. I have a four-inch—thick file in my therapist’s office, and I can guarantee not once does the word suicidal appear. Depressed? Withdrawn? Freak of nature? Sure. But not suicidal.”

  I made love to her. I made love to her, and I made a promise. One that I broke the moment I walked away from her at the party. Echo’s been dealt a tough hand, and she’s always been strong. She has a fighter’s heart, but this week could have been the final push over the edge.

  “S’up, baby.” My body practically quakes with the urge to grab her, but with her toes dangling off the cliff, I’m frightened I’ll spook her, and she’ll accidentally go over.

  As if she’s in a dream, Echo slowly assesses me from over her shoulder. “You found my note?”

  Jesus Christ, the thought of a note sends chills along my spine. “What type of note?”

  “The one in our room? The one telling you I was coming here?”

  “Nope.” Though I wish I would have thought of checking the room before we left. Maybe it would have saved a few years off my life. Or it could have fucked with me harder. “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to jump.” Echo returns her gaze to the pool below. I ease up to the edge but still three feet from her. One slow inch at a time, and I’ll hold on to her and never let go.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me? You know I like a good rush.” Not anymore. I’ve never been so sick at the thought of a
high in my life.

  “I was scared I’d lose my nerve.” Echo inhales deeply, and her fingers close tight then release several times, as if she’s considering jumping then not jumping then considering it again.

  “You don’t need to do this, Echo.”

  “I do,” she says plainly but then sucks in a quivering breath. “My mom is going to be in Denver.”

  “I know.”

  This forces her focus in my direction, and I’ll do anything to keep those gorgeous emerald eyes on me.

  “How?” she asks.

  “Hunter came looking for you. He said you left upset.”

  Her forehead wrinkles, and I lose her to the water again. “He probably thinks I’m nuts.”

  “Doesn’t matter what he thinks.”

  Echo’s shoulders roll forward, and she appears to shrink. “That’s it, Noah. That’s why I’m here. I spent an entire summer searching for someone who’d tell me that I was good. To tell me that I had talent, and do you know where it got me?”

  Me eating out of the palm of her hand? “Where?”

  “Nowhere. I’m in the same exact place as I was before. Aires is still dead. The scars are still on my arms, and this big fat gaping wound in my chest is still there. I’ve tried everything to fill the void. I’ve tried art, and I’ve tried regaining the memories. I’ve tried pretending that I’m okay and that going forward is better.

  “But nothing can replace Aires. Not you. Not the memories I fought so hard to recover. Not a relationship with my mother or father. Nothing. And to realize that he’s gone and that there’s nothing I can do about it...”

  Echo’s voice breaks, and my soul cracks along with it. “It hurts, Noah. It hurts, and it’s here, and it’s becoming overwhelming, and Mrs. Collins is wrong because this whole talking-about-it crap hurts like hell!”

  The word hell vibrates off the rock walls and repeats in the wind. We both jerk our heads to the sound.

  “It’s an echo,” I tell her. Echo manically giggles, and I grab hold of that one thread. “Remember when you told me what your name meant?”

  “I beat you at pool, and you stared at my chest.”

  And her ass. “I let you win.”

  “I handed your manhood to you on a platter.”

  Yes, she did. “Echo was the girl who lost her voice, right?”

  She nods.

  “Then tell me who Aires was.”

  Her forehead crumples. “Did you not hear me? This hurts. This whole Aires thing hurts. It doesn’t feel better to remember him. It doesn’t feel better to talk about him. It feels like someone is torturing me.”

  “I know.” I press a hand over my chest, over my heart, understanding the exact location of the ache she’s referring to. “I get it. It’s like a pain you can’t stop suffering through. You think it has to stop at some point, but it doesn’t. I get it, Echo, and I’m telling you to tell me about Aires. Tell me the story.”

  Echo’s lower lip trembles, and I don’t dare advance in her direction again because she keeps edging away the closer I try to get. I swear she wavers with the breeze. “Aires...”

  “Come on, Echo. You can do it.”

  “Aires...Aires was a ram.” She sadly smiles. “Which is fitting because he was so stubborn.”

  “Just like you?” I ask, with a slight tease, and Echo blushes. I’m getting to her. I’m slowly sliding past the hurt to her heart. One step at a time. “Keep going.”

  “A king took on a second wife.” The statement strangled with sarcasm. “And she hated the daughter and son that he had conceived from a previous marriage.”

  I kick at a stone, and it bounces off the wall before it lands next to a protruding rock at the bottom. That’s a long way down. “Is that how you feel about Ashley?”

  I expect a fast yes, but Echo winces. “No. It used to be, but no...I used to believe she hated me, but...anyhow...the stepmother devised this plan where the son was going to be sacrificed, and the son’s mother prayed to Zeus for him to stop it and Zeus sent Aires, the golden ram, to save them.”

  “So this is one of the good stories.” Not like Echo’s name where the girl loses her voice then fades away into nothing.

  “No...” Echo pauses. “It’s not. Aires saves the brother and the sister, but the girl still falls to her death, while the boy lived.” She trails off, and the wind whips through the trees, through Echo’s hair, and I hate that it pushes in the direction of over.

  “Do you know what I used to think?” she asks.

  I think I want her away from the edge. “What?”

  “That the brother had to be mad at Aires.”

  “Why?”

  Echo’s eyes harden into stone. “Aires’s one job was to save both of them, and he only saved one.”

  “I’m mad at my mom.” Damn me to hell, I said the words. I admitted it, and the guilt of feeling this way about someone I loved and who is dead destroys me. “I’m mad my mom didn’t tell me about her family. I’m mad at both of my parents for not having a will. For not figuring out their shit enough to secure a future for me and my brothers in case they died. I’m fucking pissed that they didn’t change the batteries in the fire detectors, and I’m even more fucking pissed that they died.”

  My chest pumps rapidly, and I can’t control the intake of air. Echo seems to mimic the same ability to not breathe, and her hand goes to the nape of her neck as if she can wrench free the invisible noose. “I can’t be mad.”

  “Why not?” I shout. “Because I am. And here’s the thing. It doesn’t change that I loved them.”

  I dig deep, thinking of what my uncle said. It’s not my fault my parents died. My mother would be proud of me...even if I’m pissed. Especially that I’m pissed. “Being mad doesn’t change that they died. Not being mad, acting like they were perfect...it doesn’t bring them back.”

  A sob racks Echo’s body, and she slams her hand over her mouth to prevent it, but it doesn’t stop. Her entire body shudders, and she wipes at the tears as if that one act will wipe away the pain she’s been harboring since her brother died.

  “Then what will bring them back?” Echo begs. “Because I’m terrified to go forward thinking that this is what it feels like to lose, and going forward means that I’ll always lose something. I can’t lose like this again. I can’t.”

  “You can!” I force myself to soften my voice. “You can.”

  I reach out, the need to touch her overwhelming me, and this time when I move forward, she doesn’t step back. My fingers caress her sweet face. As Echo always does, she fits perfectly.

  “You can,” I repeat. “Remember what I told you. We’ve been through too much for something like this to get us down. For anything to get us down.”

  She rocks her head in a no, as if she doesn’t believe me.

  “We’re going to lose again,” I tell her. “It doesn’t matter if we walk away from each other now or in seventy years after we’ve had ten kids and fifty grandkids. Someday, one of us is going to go. Either by choice or death. Everyone we love meets the same fate. You and I, we know this. We can either run from it and let it decide our future for us, or we can say fuck it and live for this moment now. I’m done permitting anything other than me to control my life.

  “You told me that I wouldn’t be happy if I was changing for you. You’re right. But the changes you’ve seen, the changes that will be coming, they’re happening because I want them. I want to be an architect because I want to build you that house. I want to build a lot of houses. I want a lot of things out of life, Echo, and I want you with me when I do them. The question is...can you put up with me when I fuck up and go asshole?”

  With tears cascading down her face, Echo laughs. “You are the only person who is capable of apologizing while using profanity and it still sounds sweet.”
br />   Using my thumbs, I dry the tears from her face. “Damn straight, baby.”

  The fleeting smile falls. “I miss Aires, and I’m mad at him. I feel so awful that I’m mad at him.”

  “Me, too. Maybe Mrs. Collins will be into that group therapy crap with the two of us.”

  She giggles and leans into my chest. My arms wrap around Echo, and I’ve never felt so relieved in my life. Her soft body holding on to mine, her scent filling each intake of air. I kiss the top of her head. I’ve never belonged with anyone like I belong with Echo.

  “I love you,” she whispers. “I love you, and I’d prefer to do the whole kid and grandkid thing, but I love you enough that I’ll stay with you even if we last for six more months.”

  “We’re the long haul,” I tell her.

  “Even if we aren’t. I’m going to stop questioning when it ends because you’re right. It does all end. The question I should ask is what I’m going to do with the time in between.”

  Which brings me to what’s going to kill my pride...possibly kill me. “You’re wrong. You did get something from this summer.”

  “What’s that?” she mumbles into my chest.

  I comb my fingers through her silky hair. It’s an automatic gesture. One I’ve done a million times. With this statement, the act will no longer be one I get to take for granted. “You get to study for a full year under one of the best artists in the country. It got you into one of the biggest art shows of the year.”

  Echo pulls back to look at me, and a hint of happiness lights her face. “You do listen.”

  “Baby,” I say, exasperated. “I listen to every damn thing that falls out of your mouth. Your every sigh. Every small, sexy sound when we kiss and every hitch of your breath when you sleep. Echo...”

  Say it, asshole. “I want you to stay here for the year. When you told me...” It ripped my damn heart out and it shredded my soul. “This means something to you, and you mean everything to me. We’ll make it work. Skype. Phone calls. I’ll visit you. You’ll visit home. I’m behind you. Every step of the way.”

  She does it. She fucking does it. Echo steps back from the edge, and her eyes are wider than I’ve seen. “You’re serious?”