Breaking the Rules
Page 72

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 these 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.”