Praise for Katie McGarry bestselling author of

PUSHING THE LIMITS

‘The love story of the year’ —Teen Now

‘A real page-turner’ —Mizz

‘A romance with a difference’ —Bliss

‘McGarry details the sexy highs, the devastating lows and the real work it takes to build true love.’

—Jennifer Echols

‘A riveting and emotional ride’

—Simone Elkeles

‘Highly recommend to fans of hard-hitting, edgy, contemporary and to anyone who loves a smouldering, sexy, consuming love story to boot!’

—Jess Hearts Books blog

‘McGarry is definitely a YA author to keep an eye out for.’

—ChooseYA blog

Also available PUSHING THE LIMITS CROSSING THE LINE (eBook novella) DARE YOU TO CRASH INTO YOU TAKE ME ON

Find out more about Katie McGarry at www.miraink.co.uk and join the conversation on Twitter @MIRAInk or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MIRAInk

KATIE McGARRY

was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings and reality television and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan. She is also the author of Pushing the Limits, Dare You To, Crash Into You, Take Me On and the novella Crossing the Line.

Katie would love to hear from her readers. Contact her via her website, katielmcgarry.com, follow her on Twitter @KatieMcGarry, or become a fan on Facebook and Goodreads.

www.miraink.co.uk

Acknowledgments

To God: NIV Isaiah 43:18—Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

For Dave: Because real love means walking hand in hand even during the rough times and during the questions that feel impossible to answer. There is no other person on earth I’d rather have by my side in those difficult moments, as you forever bring me hope.

Thank you to…

Kevan Lyon—This journey would be close to impossible without you. Thank you just doesn’t feel like enough.

Margo Lipschultz—I have loved Echo and Noah from the moment they appeared on the page, and I wasn’t sure anyone else could love them as much as I do until I met you. Thank you for all your faith in me and in them.

For everyone at Mira Ink who has helped me with this book and the others in this series. I am honored to have such an amazing team surrounding my books.

Angela Annalaro-Murphy—I am truly blessed to have you as a friend, a best friend…a sister.

To Kristen Simmons and Colette Ballard—One of the best parts of this journey has been meeting the two of you. Thank you for your fantastic friendship. I love you both!

Kelly Creagh, Bethany Griffin, Kurt Hampe, Bill Wolfe and the Louisville Romance Writers: Thank you for your continued love and support!

To my readers: Echo and Noah’s continuing story is possible because of your support. You have no idea how much I appreciate you all!

As always, to my parents, my sister, my Mount Washington family and my entire in-law family—I love you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for Katie McGarry

About the Author

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Noah

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Extract

Playlist for Breaking the Rules

Q & A

Copyright

Noah

Echo shifts, and the cold rush of air against my skin causes my eyes to flash open. The Colorado State Park Ranger for the Great Sand Dunes wasn’t kidding when he said temperatures drop overnight. I stretch the muscles in my back then turn onto my side in order to touch Echo again. My palm melts into the curve of her waist.

She’s curled in with her back to me, and she’s tugged the blanket tight to her neck. Her tank top no longer provides protection against the elements. Last night was hot, in more ways than I can count, and the cover wasn’t required for any of our activities—neither for the sleeping nor the kissing. Without a doubt, this has been the best damned summer of my life.

Outside the tent, birds chirp, and off in the distance an engine sputters to life. Gravel cracks as a car leaves the campground. Echo releases a contented sigh. She’s gorgeous in her sleep. Her red curls flow over her shoulder, and a few strands cover her face.

We’ve got one week before we have to return to Kentucky. College orientation is starting, and my place of employment, the Malt and Burger, will reopen after being closed for renovations. I’ll no longer be a burger-flipper. Instead, I’ve entered management, where I’ll be teaching other assholes how to flip burgers. Who’d have thought I’d be the responsible type?

My hand wades through the mess of clothes near Echo’s head, and I dig out my cell. Seven in the morning.

Good and damn.

Good—Echo slept through the night again without a nightmare and damn, she needs to wake up. I’ve got a promise to keep to a nine-year-old.

I lean down and press my lips to Echo’s shoulder while my finger teases the strap of her tank. A disgruntled groan slips from her throat, and I chuckle as she halfheartedly swats at my hand. “Go away. I’m sleeping.”

My nose brushes the hair away from her ear. Her sweet scent overwhelms my senses, and my mouth waters. I’m about to trash my intention of seducing her awake and replace it with plain seducing, but there’s one lesson I learned quickly at the start of our road trip: Echo’s not a morning person.

I gently nip her earlobe. While mornings aren’t her thing, she’s definitely a night girl. “I promised Jacob I’d video chat with him today. You wanted to shop for a new dress, and we have one more stop before we hit Denver.”

Jacob—my younger brother.

I spent the past three years of my life plotting and scheming to gain custody of him and our youngest brother, Tyler. This spring, after experiencing one of those life-altering moments you see in the movies, I walked away from the custody battle and gave my brothers the life I could never provide. I shattered the fucked-up remains of my heart in the process. But Echo, being a damned magical siren, gathered the pieces and has slowly sewn them together.

“I take it back,” Echo mumbles into the pillow. She fails at pulling the cover over her head when I pinch the blanket with my fingers to keep it in place. “I don’t want a new dress for Denver. You take the keys and go chat with Jacob.”

Echo’s been invited to an art showing, and this one has her on edge. If I had to guess why, I’d say she’s tired of the same pretentious jerks acting like they know everything. I’ve been over this nonsense since our second week, but Echo’s into it, and I’m into Echo. “We need to map out the rest of our trip so I can call ahead and get shifts. I need cash if you want to stay in a hotel again.”

I worked at the Malt and Burger for two years in Louisville, and thanks to their employee travel program, I can take swing shifts at sister stores throughout the nation. Gas and food on this trip hasn’t been cheap, and then I sent a chunk of money to my best friend, Isaiah, for a deposit on an apartment.

“I’ve got money.” Echo nestles in like it’s three in the morning instead of seven, and damn if she doesn’t look sexy doing it.

Even with the slump she’s hit this past month, Echo did well earlier this summer by selling her paintings at galleries. I agree she could finance us, but the only thing I have left is my pride, and I’ll eat shit before anyone rips that from me.

“I’m earning my way,” I say. “If you don’t come with me today, we’ll end up going through Kansas again.”

She wrinkles her nose but has yet to open her eyes. “It’s a large country, Noah. We can live without seeing Kansas again.”

“If you wake up and come with me, we’ll have plenty of time to plan a new route.”

“Know what I haven’t had plenty of in two years? Sleep. Now—shhhh. I’m nightmare-less, and you’re ruining my streak.”

Echo’s been nightmare-less for seven days. It’s a big milestone, for both of us. “Echo...”

“Please,” she whispers in this sensual Southern drawl full of the cracked grogginess that drives me crazy. “Pretty please?”

Everything inside me softens. Hands down, this girl owns me. I gave up caring this past spring how fucked I am because of it. “Five minutes.”

“An hour.”

“Ten minutes, and we’ll stay in a hotel tonight.” We’re visiting Colorado Springs for the next two days before we drive to Denver. It’s our last sightseeing trip before going home. Until this point, I’ve been adamant we camp.

Accepting her silence as consent to the deal, I hook an arm around her and draw her into my body. Echo flips, resting her head on my bare chest, and I don’t miss the unrepentant smirk. Her breath tickles my skin, and the thought of seducing her creeps back into my brain. I shove the impulse away. I made a deal and I’m a man of my word.

With the soft sound of her even breaths and her body molded to mine, my eyelids grow heavy. I battle the urge to sleep along with her. This summer has brought a sense of peace I haven’t experienced since I was fourteen, since the night before my parents died.

A herd of footsteps race past the tent, and seconds later a small kid’s voice yells, “Hey, wait up.”

I force my eyes open. “Come on, baby. It’s time.”

“You’re mean, Noah.”

The blanket falls off her arm as I slide a finger down her shoulder. Goose bumps form along her skin at my touch. She may be cranky, but she’s responding.

“A deal’s a deal,” I remind her.

“I changed my mind. I’d rather sleep.” With her eyes still shut, she hunts for the cover, but I kick it off. She presses her lips together. “I’m serious. You’re the meanest person I know.”

I kiss her neck then blow on the skin, pleased with the smile she’s fighting.

“Does that feel mean?” I ask.

“Horribly.” She giggles. “It’s torture.”

Echo rolls onto her back, tossing her arms over her head, and flutters her emerald eyes open. Her red hair sprawls over the array of pillows, clothes and blankets. My heart warms when I spot the spark in her eye.

I love her. More than I thought I was capable of, and I would sacrifice my life for her happiness.

She sucks in a breath when I caress her face. It’s a slow movement, one that memorizes her skin. We’ve been traveling since graduation in June, visiting art galleries, exploring the country and each other. But there are some places that we haven’t been, and while I’m fine with waiting until Echo’s ready, there’s that span of time when she looks at me and I kiss her lips where I wonder: Will this be our first time?

Echo’s phone rings. She blinks repeatedly then bolts upright. “Crap.”

It’s a miracle her cell has power. She’s had a bad habit this summer of not plugging it in.

Echo tosses my shirt at me before grabbing her cell. “I forgot to call Dad last night, and he’s going to be ticked.” She drops her voice so she can mimic his pissed-off tone. “‘I thought you were going to be responsible, Echo. You said you’d call every other day by seven.’” She returns to her normal voice. “Just crap. Will you please put your shirt on?”

“Your dad can’t see I’m shirtless.” Because she’ll go red-faced and stutter if I’m not fully clothed while they talk, I slip the shirt on and unzip the tent. “Don’t forget to tell him I’ve been respectful.”

I glance over my shoulder to see her answering smile freeze. The cell continues to ring, and Echo holds it in her hand, staring at the screen. Her face is void of color, and her body begins to tremble.

“Baby?”

Nothing.

I edge closer and run my hand through her hair. “Echo.”

The cell stops ringing, and Echo turns her head in a movement so slow that it’s painful to watch. The eyes that were full of life moments before are now wide and terrified. “It was my mom.”

Echo

Alexander, my baby brother, cries in the background.

“Is he all right?” I ask.

“Yes,” my father says on the other end of the line. “Just hungry. Can you hold on? Ashley needs his blanket.”

“Sure.” I listen as Dad thumps up the stairs of our house.

Alamosa is a small town in southern Colorado and the closest thing to civilization near the Great Sand Dunes. With that said, it was still a tortuous, caffeine-free, thirty-minute ride to coffee. Noah, being, well...awesome, waits in the winding line for my latte while I sit at the sidewalk table and chairs.

He glances over his shoulder at me again. His shaggy hair covers his eyes so I have a hard time deciphering his emotions. Noah was quiet, unusually pensive, during the drive in, and that bothers me.

Two girls in line admire Noah, and I don’t blame them. He’s undeniably hot: tall, dark brown hair, chocolate-brown eyes and cut in all the right places. The jeans and black T-shirt he wears definitely amplify that. Plus, he has swagger.

As one of the girls drops her purse, he’s got a little more swagger than I’d like as he helps her collect her items.

“I’m back,” says Dad.

“Okay.”

It’s like watching a horror film in slow motion. She tucks her hair behind her ears, gives him a hesitant smile and speaks. The girl is pretty—very pretty. I run my hand over the scars on my left arm. Sometimes I don’t understand why Noah’s with me. Especially when I’m so...

“You’re quiet today,” Dad says. “Are you okay?”

Noah answers the girl then motions at me with his chin. Both girls turn, and their faces fall. Noah waves. I wave back. Butterflies tumble in my stomach when he flashes his wicked grin.

“Echo?” Dad prods.

“I’m fine.” I blink three times, and Noah raises an eyebrow.

“Lying?” he mouths.

I throw a mock glare at Noah, and his shoulders move with a chuckle as he refocuses on the counter.

I haven’t told Dad that Mom called because I don’t know how I feel about it, so I’m hardly ready to listen to his opinion. There’s no absolving Mom in Dad’s mind, and I’m not sure that’s fair. I forgave him for his part of the night that changed my life, so shouldn’t I at least try to forgive Mom? Nausea rolls through me, and I fight a dry heave. Okay—shouldn’t I at least consider trying to forgive Mom?

“How’s Ashley?” My stepmom, and an excellent change of subject.

A year ago she was my wicked stepmother from Oz. Now she’s my stepmom who means well, but doesn’t know when to stop. Like when I ask her thoughts on an outfit, and I’m not really searching for complete and utter honesty, and she drones on for twenty minutes about how I should wear something that flatters my figure because, let’s be honest, God blessed me in the top area, but fell short on the hip portion...yeah, that’s how Ashley talks.

“She’s good. Alexander still wakes up at night so she’s having a rough time functioning during the day. I’m worried that she’s sleep deprived.”

“Uh-huh.” Try two years of insomnia, then we can discuss tired.

“Where are you heading next?” he asks.

“We’re going to stay in Colorado Springs for the next two nights, then we’ll head to Denver. Noah and I are visiting a gallery there. This one is huge. I hear people have been trying to get an invite into this show for weeks.”

“That’s good.”

That’s good. I roll my eyes. The men in my life don’t understand the biggest part of me. Sometimes Noah shows the same disappointing amount of enthusiasm.

“I assume Noah’s treating you well,” Dad says, like he’s one hundred percent on board with me being on this road trip with—how did he refer to Noah before I left Louisville? Oh, yeah, as a guy I barely knew, that is if I really paused and thought this through. Which, according to him, he doesn’t believe I did, but hey, I’m here and Dad’s in Louisville. I won this round.

“He’s treating me great.” My dad and Noah have an unsteady relationship. Dad respects Noah for seeing beyond my scars and for being there for me during an awful period this past spring, but he’s still wary.

On the outside, Noah can still come across as the rough foster-care kid, and what parent would be thrilled with his daughter taking off for an entire summer with a guy half her school is terrified of? The day before Noah and I left, Dad sat me down and talked to me for a long time about how “this is a phase in your life” and not to do anything I would “regret” and that if I ever needed him, to call.

“Echo...”

Warning flags. The use of my name along with any dramatic pause by my father means bad, bad—very bad—news. I accidentally forgot your favorite stuffed animal at the hotel...your mother is bipolar...your brother, Aires, is being deployed to Afghanistan. Bad news.

“I’m considering selling the house.”

“Oh.” I slump back in my seat, half relieved to discover that the plague hasn’t been intentionally released into the world, but then a sickening sensation strikes. “Oh.”

“I’ve considered it for years,” he continues. “But it was your home, and I didn’t want to take something else away from you after you’d lost so much.”

Like how I’d lost Aires when he died in Afghanistan, or how I’d lost my mind after a visit with my mother went horribly wrong at the end of my sophomore year of high school.

That type of lost.

“But now that you’ve graduated and are moving on, I thought Ashley and I could start somewhere...” He cuts himself off.

“New,” I finish for him.

There’s a crackling silence on the line, and Dad releases a heavy sigh. “Yes.”

He’s not replacing me. He’s not shoving me away. Yes, Dad has a new wife and a new baby, but I’m not being thrown out of this family. I’m part of it. I’ve talked this over with my therapist, Mrs. Collins, again and again, but the nagging doubt still slices through me like a ragged knife.

“What are your thoughts on my selling the house?” he asks.

I’ll miss sitting in the garage and watching Aires’s ghost work on his car as he counseled me through my high school life crises. I’ll miss staring at the constellations my mother painted on the ceiling of my room. I’ll miss the happy memories. That house has been one of the few constants in my life.

A knot in my throat keeps me from saying those things. My world’s changing again, and sometimes I hate change. “Mom called this morning.”

The hydrogen bomb I dropped alters the entire conversation.

* * *

I ram my thumb on the icon for Off and toss my cell onto the table. Blood swooshes in my veins, and each throb in my temple ticks me off more. Obviously, Dad and I were never meant to see eye to eye.

With his legs kicked out onto the sidewalk and his fingers laced across his stomach, Noah regards me from across the table. “Vexed?”

“Vexed? Did we enter medieval times?”

“It means mad,” he says.

“I know what it means. Why are you using it?”

He shrugs casually. “It was an ACT word. Figured if I had to learn the shit I might as well use it.”

I giggle in spite of myself then stop when dread weighs down my entire body. “Yeah, I’m vexed.”

Noah edges my ignored latte toward me. I pick it up and attempt to disappear by pulling my legs along with me onto the seat. “Dad doesn’t get it.”

He says nothing and glowers at the mountains in the distance. Noah overheard most of the conversation between me and Dad, at least my side of it. I drink, and the latte is like little shards of heaven in my mouth. A part of me relaxes with the introduction of caffeine into my system.

“What if I told you I don’t get it, either?”

With the coffee still poised at my mouth, I have to force the swallow. “What?”

“I don’t get why you’re interested in talking to your mom. What she did...it’s not forgivable.”

My forehead wrinkles as I set the cup on the table. “I never said I’ve forgiven her. I told Dad that maybe I should answer if she calls again. Maybe I should listen to the voice mail instead of deleting it. She’s my mom.”

“You talked to her before and didn’t get anywhere.”

“But maybe I should talk to her because...because...” Because...I don’t know, but I do know that there’s a hollowness inside me. This dull ache that screams that something’s missing. I felt this before—after I lost Aires and before I recovered my memories.

I believed that the cure would be this summer. That leaving home and spending time with Noah would heal the wound.

“I did get someplace the last time Mom and I talked. I remembered what happened that night, and I learned that she’s on her meds again, and that she’s being responsible about her condition. You don’t understand what life’s been like for her.”

“She tried to kill you.” He says it as if he’s telling me something new—something I don’t agonize over every single time I look in the mirror.

“Really?” I thrust my scarred arms into the air. “Guess I forgot.”

Noah swears and glances away. Two guys our age walk past, gawk at my scars then stare at each other. Ashamed, I lower my arms to my lap and close my eyes when I hear the whispered “freak.”

The table slams into my knees, and metal cracks against the sidewalk. My eyes flash open to find Noah’s chair flipped backward. I’m trapped by the table, and I press my hands against it, desperate for escape.

Noah grabs the nearest guy, twists the material of his shirt near his neck and pounds him into the wall. “Say it again, asshole. Say it to my fucking face.”

The table screeches against the sidewalk as I push it away and scramble to my feet. “Noah! No!”

The guy trembles in Noah’s grasp and his friend, thankfully, isn’t much help as he gapes at a distance. If this had happened to Noah and Noah’s best friend, Isaiah, had been here, it would have been a bloodbath. But then again, Noah would never disrespect a girl.

I place my hand on Noah’s biceps. His eyes flicker to mine and soften the moment our gazes connect.

“Let him go.”

It takes a second, but Noah releases his white-knuckle grip, though not without an extra shove. He refocuses on the guy then jerks his head in my direction. “Apologize.”

My lips flatten, and I wish I could disappear. One minute here. Another gone. Into thin air. No longer freaking existing.

The guy’s eyes linger on my arms, and it’s not too different from the way Noah stared at me the first time he saw my scars this past January when I’d fallen on the ice. Except back then, I was hiding them from the world. This spring, I gave up trying to care what the world thought, but moments like this...I have to admit I care.

“I’m sorry,” the guy whispers.

“It’s okay.” But it’s not. He called me a freak. I heard it, and so did Noah. Once an insult like that has been released, there’s no way to take it back. It becomes one more cut on my soul.

Noah slides away and the guy runs off, his friend trailing close behind. Around us, people have stopped what they were doing to focus on me and Noah. What’s worse is that when they reanimate, they lower their voices and talk to one another as their eyes zero in on my scars.

My foot taps the sidewalk. Somehow I thought graduation was going to be the end of this torment. That the moment I walked across the stage, all the demons that haunted me during high school would somehow be exorcised.

I can handle the questioning looks and sometimes the appalled shock, but the words still hurt. Even if they’re whispered. Especially if they’re whispered. I wonder if I’ll ever fit in.

Noah reaches over and touches my cheek, but I lean back, not allowing him the opportunity to seek redemption. Noah should have let the taunt go, but he didn’t. He drew more attention to my scars. He made more people stare, made me more of a spectacle than I already am. Instead of two guys thinking I’m a freak, an entire crowd of people thinks the same thing. For the first time since we left Kentucky, Noah did something that made me feel worse.

Noah

My younger brother Jacob inherited my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile. I normally love the familiar sight on the computer screen, but today it slowly strangles me from the inside out. If my parents had survived the fire that claimed their lives three years ago, today, July twenty-seventh, would have been their nineteenth wedding anniversary.

It doesn’t help that I’ve pissed off Echo.

I glance out the window of the coffee shop. Echo sits on the hood of her Honda Civic and burns a hole into the sidewalk with her glare. It’s hot out there and cool in here, and that shows the intensity of Echo’s anger. She’d rather roast in the sun and inhale gasoline fumes than be with me in an air-conditioned building that smells like ground coffee beans.

If I were a great guy, I’d be out there instead of in here chatting with my younger brother, but I suck at the boyfriend thing. If I went out there, I’d succeed in ticking her off more.

I lower the picture of me and Echo at the Great Sand Dunes, and Jacob remains transfixed like the photo is still there. “Mountains of sand in Colorado?” he asks.

“This is in southern Colorado,” I answer. “The forests are north. You’d like it here, Jay Bird. Enormous dunes of sand right next to towering mountains.”

I don’t know if he would or wouldn’t like it, but I pretend that I do. These Skype visits and phone calls have been a summer-long reintroduction to each other. Until last week, I didn’t know that he was allergic to peanuts. Until last month, he didn’t know that I have a long scar that snakes up my biceps and down my back.

His eyes got big and moist when I explained I got it by protecting him and our youngest brother, Tyler, from falling debris when our home burned down at the end of my freshman year of high school. The same fire that killed our parents.

I saved him from the play-by-play of how I hauled Tyler and Jacob through the choking smoke and fire. They didn’t see much as I had swaddled them in blankets and half pushed, half carried them out of the house, using my body as a shield.

I also left out how I failed him and our parents—a secret only a few that were at the scene know. Some hero I’d be to him if he knew the truth.

Jacob stares at his picture at the bottom of the screen when he talks. “Did you know that there’s an entire planet of sand in Return of the Jedi?”

“Yeah.”

Jacob leans closer to the computer, and his baseball cap hits the monitor. I chuckle and in the background, his adoptive mother, Carrie, whispers for him to take the hat off. “Dad and I watched the whole trilogy last weekend. It was super awesome, Noah. I think you would have liked that.”

The jacked-up social services system in Kentucky kept me away from Jacob and Tyler for over two years when I was labeled a discipline case. It happened after I hit an adult because he beat his son, then no one backed my side of the story.

“You’re right. I like it.” I clear my throat. “I first watched it with our dad.”

It no longer feels like someone’s yanking my balls through my ass when he refers to Carrie and Joe as his parents. The pain’s been downgraded to a railroad spike being shoved into my eye every ten seconds. The adoption became official last month. Now and forever, Carrie and Joe will be Jacob and Tyler’s mom and dad.

I’m okay with it. What I’m not okay with is being alone—being the one without a family. Echo’s the lone string that’s held me together since I decided to walk from the custody battle, and sometimes I’m afraid she’ll get tired of my shit and snap.

“When are you coming home? I want you to see me play.” Jacob had a baseball game today, and his team won. He had a double, a single and one home run. I missed each and every play. Not just today, but for the whole summer. “Mom said I only have a few games left.”

“I’m heading back east after Echo’s last gallery appointment.”

“Hasn’t she seen enough art galleries? Paintings look the same, right?”

I laugh, and Carrie reprimands Jacob in the background. “Sometimes,” I answer.

“Try to come soon, okay?”

Now washing dishes on the other side of the kitchen, Carrie says, “The last game is in two weeks.” Jacob parrots the message, then the two of them have a sidebar on whether or not he has a make-up game.

I relax back in my seat and let them talk. Jacob’s nine and thinks he’s right. Carrie has a patience with him I’m not sure I would have possessed.

Echo slides off the hood, and her hips have this easy sway as she walks to the back passenger door. Damn, she’s gorgeous—red, curly hair flowing over her shoulders, a pair of cut-offs hugging her ass and a blue spaghetti-strap tank dipped low enough to show cleavage.

My fingers twitch with the need to touch. I’m going to have to pull some major groveling to gain forgiveness. If I were smart, I’d find a way to say sorry without opening my mouth. Never fails that half the time I try to apologize, it comes out wrong.

It also doesn’t help that I’m not sorry for throwing the asshole against the wall and twenty bucks I don’t own says that’s what she longs to hear.

“So maybe my last game is in two weeks,” says Jacob, drawing me back to him. “But you need to see me play.”

Echo’s had a rough tail end of the summer when it comes to selling her paintings, and she’s contemplated adding more appointments on the way home, which could prevent me from seeing Jacob’s game. I rub at the tension forming in my neck, hating being torn between two people I love. “I’ll try.”

“Awesome!”

“Tell Tyler I’ll be home soon and that I love him.” I already told him earlier, but I want Tyler to hear it as many times as possible from as many people as he can. He’s five, and because of the foster care system that kept us apart, he doesn’t have a decent grasp of who I am.

“I will.” Jacob says goodbye and I do the same.

As I’m about to end the connection, Carrie’s blond ponytail swings into view. “Noah.”

My finger freezes over the touch pad of Echo’s laptop. Carrie and I have despised each other for three years and when I stopped pursuing custody of my brothers, we called a truce. I don’t hate her anymore, but it doesn’t mean I want to chat with her. “Yeah?”

Carrie scans the room around her then settles into the seat Jacob abandoned. “Are you really in Colorado?”

Unsure where the hell this is going, I scratch at the stubble on my face. “Yeah.”

Lines clutter Carrie’s forehead, and she releases a long breath. “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. Joe thinks it’s wrong. He says that you’re doing well and that we should let the state handle this, but when it comes to you we’ve made too many wrong choices. I’m afraid this will get lost in the system and, besides, you’re an adult and you should decide.”

“Decide what?”

“About your mother’s family,” Carrie says.

“What about them?” My mother told me she was an only child and that her parents had died before my birth. This past spring, Carrie’s husband, Joe, informed me that was a lie. At night, when Echo’s tucked close to me asleep, my mind wanders with thoughts I don’t dare entertain during the day. I have living blood relatives. Ones I could meet.

“They live in Vail.”

It’s a town north of here. “And?”

“They emailed us, asking if they could see Jacob and Tyler.”

“So?” Though my fist tightens under the table. Mom’s family didn’t try for custody of me when Carrie and Joe asked them to sign away their rights to Jacob and Tyler for the adoption. I may not have admitted it to a single soul, but the idea that I was forced into foster care when I had living blood relatives makes me feel like trash thrown to the curb.

“They also asked to see you.”

Her words land like a blow to the gut. “Little late, don’t you think?”

Carrie picks up a napkin ring and rolls it between her hands before setting it back down. Her anxiety twists the coil within me.

“Let me forward you the email. They say...” She trails off, and her cheeks puff out when she exhales. “They say that when we contacted them two years ago about adopting Jacob and Tyler, they thought we were asking to adopt you, too. There’s been a misunderstanding. They thought we were taking care of you.”

Fuck. Me.

Echo

Noah sits inside, and I sit outside. It’s not unusual for me to give him space while he talks with his brothers, but what is unusual is the silence between us before he went in. I’ve got nothing to say to him, and he obviously has nothing to say to me.

My hand flies over the page and what typically erases the unease and melts the apprehension doesn’t smooth away anything. My grip tightens on the chalk, and each swipe across the paper becomes more clipped and less thought out until the markings represent disoriented lines on a page and not an image or a picture or anything.

I toss the sketch pad and the chalk onto the table and rub at the wetness forming in my eyes. Freak. The guy called me a freak, and that’s what I am.

Noah and I are heading back home, and the nightmares I thought I was running from lurk behind every corner and coffee shop in America. In less than a month, Noah and I will start college, and I’ll have a roommate in the dorms and new classes, and a ball of dread knots in my stomach. This summer was supposed to change me, and nothing has changed.

Noah

Back at the parking lot of the campsite, Echo sets her sketchbook into the passenger side of the car and riffles through her duffel bag of clothes. She hasn’t spoken to me since the incident at the café. It’s not the first time Echo’s been pissed at me, but somehow this anger feels different—weighted.

I drop the packed tent next to the open trunk and lean my hip against the car, praying Echo will at least make fleeting eye contact. It’s not like her to go this long without acknowledging me. I’ve been hoping she’d talk—give me an idea of what direction to take.

If she said, “I hate you,” then I can say, “I’m an asshole, so you should, but I love you.” If she said that she’s mad at me then I can respond that she should be, but it doesn’t matter because I love her. But she gives me nothing. Silence.

Echo tosses the duffel bag in the backseat and rummages through another. With her clothes stacked to the side, Echo withdraws a light white button-up sweater. She jams the clothes back in and closes the car door.

Fuck. Plain and simple fuck.

It’s nine in the morning and close to eighty degrees. She’s covering her scars again.

As Echo walks down a trail leading to the campground and the dunes, she slips the sweater over her arms and draws the sleeves over her fingers. I haven’t seen her do that since March. And Echo wonders why I don’t think she should talk to her psychotic mother. One phone call along with the wrong words from a stupid-ass bastard and she spirals.

The memory of the way her face paled out when I told the bastard to apologize circles my brain. Echo has a habit of making me feel like a dick, and this is one of those moments, but damn it, I went after that guy for her.

Screw it. We’ll get on the road, and she’ll calm down after some distance. I pick the tent up and try to cram it into the small space I left for it in the trunk. When it won’t fit, I push harder, and the sound of material ripping causes a rip within me. Possibly my sanity. “Shit!”

I slam the trunk with a thunderous bang. For two months, Echo and I didn’t worry about our messed-up lives in Kentucky. She didn’t focus on her mom or dad or her newfound memories or the scars on her arms, and I didn’t think twice about how in June I turned eighteen.

Eighteen. Out of foster care, out on the streets, pack your shit, get out of my fucking house, eighteen.

Soon Echo and I will be heading home and back to our problems.

Once Carrie sends the email, I’ll have one more problem to add to this list: deciding whether or not to read it and what the hell to do with the message.

My head falls back, and I focus on the crystal-blue sky overhead. I blow out a rush of air then inhale slowly. Mrs. Collins told me to do that whenever I was hit with the urge to tell her where to shove her annoying questions. I’d never admit it, but sometimes, as in now, it works.

I need to go after Echo, but I’ve got no clue what to say. Desperate for help, I pull out my cell, scroll to a familiar number and press Call. Two rings and I smile at hearing the voice of my best friend and foster brother on the other end. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the middle of nowhere?”

“S’up, Isaiah. What’s going on there?”

“Watching Beth’s back...as much as she’ll let me. Right now she’s picking up her pay at the Dollar Store.”

I met Isaiah and Beth over a year ago when social services placed me into a new foster home—the same home as Isaiah. He had been placed at Beth’s aunt and uncle’s house years ago and because of Beth’s messed-up home life, she often crashed there with us.

“Watching her back how?” I ask.

“Some shit’s going down with her mom.”

“How bad?” Beth’s mom is a nightmare, plus her mom’s boyfriend makes serial killers look like cuddly puppies.

“Bad.” The short answer creates chills. “But Beth doesn’t know, and keeping her in the dark is becoming complicated.”

“Should you keep her in the dark?”

Isaiah pauses. “It’s Beth. If she knew what her mom is mixed up in, she’d try to fix it, and then she’d end up in trouble that I couldn’t fix.”

This is the kind of guy Isaiah is: loyal to the end and a fixer. Even if the person he loves doesn’t want to be helped.

“Yeah. I get it.” There’s not much I wouldn’t do for Beth. She’s the closest thing I have to a sister. “We’ll get Beth to move out with us. The more distance she puts between her and her mom, the better.”

“Thanks, man. So why are you calling?”

My gaze roams back to the path. “I fucked up with Echo.”

“When don’t you fuck up with Echo?”

My best friend’s a comedian. “A guy called her a freak, and I threw him against a wall.”

“Good for you.”

“She’s pissed. Won’t even look at me.”

“Why?”

Exactly. “I love her, but I never said I understood her.”

“Have you said you’re sorry?”

“No, and I’m not sorry.” Not in the least.

“Try it. Who knows, it could help.”

“It could.”

“And people say you’re smart.”

“Fuck you.” I let sincerity into my voice.

“Right back at you. When are you coming home?”

I study the mountains looming on the horizon. “I don’t know. I thought we’d be heading back later this week, but some shit’s come up.”

“Shit?”

“Shit.”

“Got it.” That’s Isaiah. He doesn’t need to know details to sympathize.

“Did you put the money down on the apartment?” I made a promise to Isaiah that I wouldn’t leave him behind in foster care. Even though the state would pay for me to live in the dorms, there’s no way I can leave my non-blood brother behind, so we decided to move out together, even though he’ll only be a senior in high school this fall.

“We move in September first.”

I exhale. One less situation to worry about.

“I got a favor to ask,” says Isaiah.

“Shoot.”

“If you’re going to be gone for another few weeks...” Isaiah’s not a guy who hesitates, nor is he the kind that asks for favors. He’d rather break off his arm and sell it than ask for help. “I’d like to bring Beth out. A guy owes me, and I can get one-way bus tickets cheap. Watching Beth with her mom is like watching a ticking time bomb without a pair of pliers to clip the wires.”

“Is Beth going to be on board with this?” Beth doesn’t like being away from her mom.

“She owes me, and she knows it, but it doesn’t mean she won’t bitch.” A long pause. “The shit Beth’s mom’s into...I need to get Beth out of town for a few days. Change her perspective. Then maybe she’ll stop going over to her mom’s so much.”

That would take a damn miracle. Regardless of that I say, “Come on out.”

I should discuss it with Echo first—hell, I still need to talk to her about my mother’s family. Beth and Echo can be oil and water. It’s tough for Beth to trust people, and she’s given Echo a rough time from the get-go. I’m sure Echo’s going to be thrilled to hear we’ll have guests, but the decision needs to be made and made now.

If Echo’s anything, she’s understanding. We’ll enjoy Colorado Springs then get to Denver. I’ll take her out to a nice dinner after the showing then tell her everything. She’s got too much on her plate at the moment to deal with my baggage.

“We’ll be in Colorado Springs for the next two days. Denver for a night after that.” And screw me. “Maybe Vail will be on the list.”

“I’ve gotta go. Beth’s walking out.”

Isaiah hangs up, and a tug to return home grows. I’ve got Isaiah, Beth and my brothers waiting for me. Plus, Echo will be at my side. I’m not alone—I’m not.

Echo’s red curls bounce as she drags the cooler up the path. With her eyes fixed on the car, she lifts the cooler, tosses it into the backseat, slams the back door shut then slides into the front passenger seat and yanks that door shut with pissed-off pizzazz.

We’ve got a couple of hours in the car together, and my girl has a hell of a temper. This should be an interesting ride.

Echo

Colorado Springs is, according to the guy who tried initiating small talk a few seconds ago outside the hotel, unseasonably hot. Hot enough that I’m shocked that people don’t melt the moment they step into the sunlight. The sweater doesn’t help.

I push off the hood of my Honda Civic, twist my hair off my neck and duck into the shadow of a towering fir tree. The stark contrast between Alamosa and Colorado Springs is beyond amazing: desert and flat to green with mountains rising in the distance. The urge to paint and draw overwhelms me as the sights and colors here are a feast for my artistic palate.

I could have joined Noah in the hotel lobby, but then he’d believe he was winning, and he’s so not. We haven’t talked since the café, and he’s dead wrong if he thinks I’m caving. I don’t care how many wicked smiles he flashes in my direction or how many times he “mistakenly” brushes his hand against my cheek or thigh. He can make my head spin and my blood run hot, but I’m strong enough to resist his every temptation.

I haven’t gone this long without kissing Noah since this spring when we broke up for a couple of weeks. I shiver despite the heat. That was one of the darkest periods of my life and, unfortunately, I’m well versed in dark.

Noah exits the lobby, and I’m hypnotized by his confident strut. Even in the heat, he wears jeans and a black T-shirt and never breaks a sweat. Not impervious to hot weather, I blow a couple of curls away from my face.

“You wouldn’t be so hot if you took off your sweater,” he says.

My fingers clutch the ends of the material.

Noah rests a hand on my hip and chuckles when I pull away. “You’re going to have to talk to me sometime.”

I will not crumble. He started this fight, not me. Going around and bullying guys because they called me a name...it’s not okay, especially when it attracts attention to me and leads people to wonder if what they said is true.

He holds up one key card and with a slip of his fingers reveals two. I extend my palm and waggle my fingers for my key, but Noah only grins as he lowers his hand and walks past. Arrogant, conceited, smoking, full of himself...

Without looking back, Noah strolls into the side entrance. I’ve got two options: liquefy from the heat and dissolve into the pavement or follow Noah. I actually weigh the choices. I really, really don’t like admitting he has the upper hand because Noah is a sore winner.

A bead of sweat drips from my scalp and onto my neck. We do sleep in the same bed, and I could smother Noah with a pillow later tonight or toss his pants and boxers onto the front lawn of the hotel. Except the last one would make him smile and me blush.

With an exaggerated sigh, I yank open the door and spot Noah down the hall sliding the key card into a slot. The cool hotel hallway reeks of chlorine, and the farther I walk in the direction of our room, the sound of splashing and children shouting in delight grows.

Noah enters the room and disappears. My agitation reaches a new level as tension builds between my muscles. Is this how he’s going to be? Ignoring me? Not even waiting? My skin tightens until I feel paper-thin and ready to rip.

My hand stings when it pounds into the cracked open door, and a cold blast hits me as the air conditioner roars to life. “Do you seriously think you have the right to treat me this way after what you did this morning?”

All the air rushes out of my body. Roses cover the full-size bed closest to the door. The long-stemmed kind. Noah bought me flowers...for the first time...ever. Despite the anger and hurt from earlier, every romantic notion inside me squeals with excitement.

“I’m not sorry for defending you.” Noah leans against the wall next to the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. “But I am sorry for hurting you, so talk to me, Echo. Or yell. Anything but the silence.”

The door clicks shut behind me, and I become hyperaware. I’m alone with Noah. It’s not the first time, but whenever we enter a room with a bed, in complete isolation, the same strange sensation hums along my body, like a tuning fork being struck.

Speechless, I ease over to the bed and rub the silky petals between my fingers.

This isn’t a swanky room. In fact, it’s modest with two beds that share the same thin multicolored comforter. A two-hundred-pound television sits on a dresser, and the corner contains a particle-board table and chairs.

The air from the conditioner has a musty, this-room-is-older-than-me scent. Heck, this hotel could be older than my dad. But as I stare at the roses, it’s as if the bareness of the room fades, and I’m the princess entering her castle. Noah always has the ability to turn reality into fantasy.

I pick up one of the long stems, and the smooth petals caress my lips as I bring it to my nose. Noah’s kisses always start off soft and gentle. If I face him, would Noah notice the vein pulsing wildly in my neck? If so, he’d know I was imagining him and his kisses and right now, I’m not sure I want to be kissed.

The fragrance of the rose isn’t overwhelming. It’s mild and sweet and perfect, and it must have driven Noah crazy to buy them.

“Come on, baby, you’re killing me here.”

“This had to be expensive.”

I risk a glance at him and catch his eyes before he lowers them. “You’re worth it.”

Noah finds spending money difficult, and I try my best to understand. Until this summer, I never thought about purchasing my morning latte. Then I noticed Noah avoiding breakfast or skipping lunch or dinner. He’s fended for himself for so long that he’s constantly scared of losing what he’s earned, and his pride won’t allow me to pay for his meals. I practically had to arm wrestle him into letting me pay halves on the hotel rooms, which is why we camp, often, at my suggestion.

I lay the rose back on the bed. “I love you.”

He pushes off the wall and snags a belt loop on both sides of my hips, tugging me into him. “You didn’t say you’ve forgiven me.”

The heat of his body surrounding me in the midst of the cold room creates a fluttering in my bloodstream. It’s impossible to hold a steady thought when he’s this close. “So you agree that throwing people into walls isn’t okay?”

“It is when someone fucks with you.”

I attempt to step back, but Noah halts the escape. “I mean it. No one treats you like shit. At least when I’m around. That’s nonnegotiable.”

“You embarrassed me.”

“He hurt you.”

“You hurt me,” I snap, and this time he allows the release. I shake my head trying to expel the memory and the ache building in my chest. “When you told him to apologize and the way he looked at my arms...”

This pain, it was supposed to be over. None of this was supposed to carry out of high school and into normal life.

Noah brushes his fingers along my sweater-covered arm. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

I close my eyes at his intimate touch. It’s a slow movement, not one meant to seduce. It’s one to show how much he loves me, and I flatten my lips, fighting the urge to cry. Noah nudges me toward him and if it wasn’t for his hold, I’d drop like a house of cards.

I fall into him, and Noah wraps me in his arms. “It’s okay, baby. We’re okay.”

I cling tighter to him, because it doesn’t feel okay. For the past two months, life was good and easy and everything I dreamed it could be. Despite my efforts, the muscles at the corner of my mouth tremble. I wanted to be done with tears and with whispered comments thrown in my direction like knives and with this overwhelming sense that I’m less and that I’ll never belong.

“I thought I was past this.” Past caring what people thought. Past people caring about the scars on my arms. Like a diploma somehow gave the world and myself a magical maturity.

“You are.”

“I’m not.” I’ve been living in a delusional bubble. The world hasn’t changed, and neither have I.

“You are. It’s the day.” Meaning like everyone else, he blames my mom. “Just a bad day.”

Noah kisses the top of my head before cradling me to his chest. I love the sensation of my cheek against him, the protective shelter of his arm around my waist and the sound of his steady heart. If I could live here for the rest of my life, I could be happy. But at some point, he’ll have to let go, and then I’ll be back where I started: alone.

“What if this is all I’ll ever be? What if this is only a small taste of what’s waiting for me at home?” I whisper. Chilling adrenaline drips into my body at the rawness of the statement. This week we’ll no longer be heading away, but going back. “What if I’ll always be the person on the outside? The person who doesn’t belong.”

“You belong, Echo,” he says against my temple. “Right here with me.”

Noah

Rays of the late-evening’s summer sun stream through the crack of the curtains. I lay on the bed with Echo curled tight next to me and my arms locked around her. Our shoes are still on and so are our clothes. The roses are bunched together on top of the bedside table.

We’ve lain like this for an hour, maybe two. We’ve been quiet the whole time, but sometimes we both say more within a silence than we can in hours of words.

She needs me. I need her. I never knew what peace there was in being wanted, but I hate how today has gone. I hate how one phone call and one asshole’s comment have caused her to withdraw. I hate how I fear and long for one email.

The email. I should tell Echo about Vail and Isaiah and Beth. Denver. I’ll wait until after the gallery in Denver.

I sweep my fingers along Echo’s arm to the tip of her fingers to wake her in case she’s drifted to sleep. She swipes her thumb across my hand in response.

Parts of me stir with her touch. Echo has no idea how sexy she is and how I dream night after night of completely showing her how much I worship her body.

I tug at the ends of her sweater near her wrist, and her fingers twist up in defense. Nope. Not having it. First chance I get, I’m throwing every long-sleeved item in the trash and burning it with a single match and a gallon of gas. She’ll be pissed, but I won’t watch her backtrack.

Ignoring her hold, I pull at the material, easing the sleeve down.

“Noah,” she whispers in reprimand.

“You’ve never complained when I’ve tried to undress you before.”

Echo readjusts so she can see me, and for the first time since this morning, those eyes dance. “Yes, I have.”

“When?”

“The last day of school.”

“So you’ve complained once.” When I led her to the nook of the abandoned hallway in the basement near my locker. I only meant to sneak in for a kiss during lunch, but things got hot and heavy and well...sue me. “I didn’t buy a yearbook, so I was memory-making.”

Her mouth gapes. “They would have kept us from participating in graduation if we got caught.”

“Walking across stages is overrated.”

“Is not.” She lightly kicks my shin. “It was awesome, and you know it. Did you forget the dressing room at the mall?”

Forget? I have wet dreams involving that day. “That’s not my fault. You asked how you looked in those jeans.”

“Good would have sufficed. Attempting to take them off wasn’t necessary.”

“They did look good. Good enough that I wanted to touch, and then I wanted to touch more.”

Echo laughs, and the sound warms my heart. “They have security cameras. People go to jail over stuff like that.”

I roll onto my side and drape my leg over hers. “I had you covered from sight. Very covered.” Backed her up against the wall and covered her body with every inch of mine.

That siren smile that I love so much crosses her face. Her fingers reach up and trace the line of my jaw. “You are the most impossible person I know.”

“Damn straight.”

“That’s not always a good thing. Sometimes you make life more complicated than it needs to be.”

“Never said I was going to be easy.”

“I know,” she says as her smile fades. “I never said I was going to be easy, either. In fact, I promised the opposite.”

“I like you just the way you are.”

My fingers tease the end of her sweater again, but this time Echo doesn’t stop me as I edge the material off her arm. In fact, she leans forward so I can slip the entire sweater off and toss it to the floor where it belongs.

I skim the length of her arm, specifically the longest scar from top to bottom. “Why, Echo?”

“Why what?”

“Why hide them again?”

She’s silent, and we won’t leave this bed until she answers.

It’s hard to imagine her lying in a pool of her own blood. It drives me crazy that I almost lost her before I had the chance to meet her. I’m schooled in loss and understand its permanence.

Just the thought of losing Echo creates an anger bordering on fear. It’s a dangerous combination, and I hate her mother for causing such suffering and pain.

Echo’s breathing hitches when I slide my thumb along a smaller scar. She likes that spot. I’ve memorized it. A centimeter below the crook of her elbow. Her skin is sensitive there, and when I kiss it, Echo normally falls apart and nearly shatters.

I gently press my lips behind her ear, and Echo nudges closer to me. “Why, Echo?”

“Because.”

I nip at her earlobe, and she shivers. “Because why?”

Her shoulder moves under my body. A half shrug maybe. “It makes me feel better.”

Fuck that. “Why?”

A kiss on her neck. A long one. A lingering one. God damn, Echo tastes so good. Her skin is soft and tempting. But I want answers.

“Because sometimes I want to blend in.”

I raise my head and stare straight into her eyes, spotting the plain honesty. What she doesn’t understand is that she could never blend in. Blazing red hair. Bright emerald eyes. The most beautiful girl in the world. She’d turn heads regardless of a sweater.

As I open my mouth to respond, my phone rings.

Echo

Noah drops his forehead to my shoulder and groans. Good God, I completely understand. My body pulsates like a five-alarm fire. I kiss his collarbone and rub my hand along his spine, in regret...in apology. His phone rings a third time. “You should answer.”

“Fuck.” He presses his lips against my neck before drawing away and yanking his phone out of his back pocket. “Yeah.”

Noah’s eyes meet mine, and I tilt my head in question. I exhale when he subtly shakes a no, telling me the call is benign.

“Yeah,” he says again then flashes a smile promising lots of naughtiness. “I understand.”

Noah cups my waist and swipes his finger underneath the material of my shirt. My mouth pops open. No way. There is no way he means to explore while he’s on the phone. His hand begins to travel for my bra. Holy freaking crap. I bat at his arm and mouth. “No.”

“Why?” he mouths back, but his grin grows.

“Because,” I yell-whisper.

Noah lowers his arm away from my bra and instead snakes it around my waist, gathering me to his side. He nuzzles my hair before saying into his cell, “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Thanks.”

He ends the call and slides his phone back into his jeans. “Tell me I’m forgiven.”

“Who was that?” I ask.

In lightning-fast movements, Noah rolls us both, and his heavy weight pins me against the mattress. “Say I’m forgiven.”

“For what?” My brain goes blank. Noah’s on top of me, and subconsciously my legs hook around his. Through his jeans and my jean shorts there are parts of him that are sweetly touching parts of me.

We haven’t made love yet. I think of it. I dream of it. Sometimes I wake up so on edge that I worry I’ll explode, but when it comes to it, I haven’t found the courage to cross the line. And Noah’s always patient...so patient. Even when he has to resort to cold showers or really, really long hot ones.

I don’t ask what he’s doing in there, but I kinda can guess, and that only makes me feel epically worse.

“For upsetting you this morning,” he answers. “Tell me I’m forgiven.”

I nod because I love him, and I can’t imagine not forgiving him. “Just don’t do it again.”

Noah rests his forehead against mine and closes his eyes as if I handed him a death row pardon. “I love you, Echo.”

The pterodactyls that only he can create lift their wings and soar in my stomach. I love those words out his mouth. Almost as much as I love his hands on my body and the way his eyes devour me. Almost as much as I love him.

He kisses my lips and before I can repeat the same to him, he’s off the bed. “I’ve got to roll. The last Malt and Burger jacked up my hours in the system, and they want me to go into a local one and fix it.”

I sit up on the bed and bite the inside of my lip to keep from throwing a fit like a toddler. “How long?”

“An hour. Maybe longer.” Noah places one of the room keys on the dresser next to the television. “By the way, I want to take you out to dinner in Denver to celebrate. Someplace nice.”

“Celebrate what?”

“For when you blow those pretentious assholes away with your paintings.”

I smile, amazed by the roses, by his faith in me and by the fact that he’s absolutely fantastic. “Thanks.”

Noah gently pulls one of the curls. “Damn, baby, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you want me to kiss you.”

But I do want him to kiss me. Instead, I shove at his wall of a chest, and he winks at me before he grabs the keys to the car and walks out the door. The air conditioner kicks off, and I lean against the headboard, staring at Noah’s roses on the bedside table. I pick one up, inhale the sweet scent and wonder, when it comes to it, why I’m waiting.

Noah

Time sheets from two weeks ago hang on the overpinned bulletin board, and balls of wadded paper overflow from the trash. I’m not feeling that this Malt and Burger is organized. In the cramped back office, I reenter my time from last week then roll back my chair to give space for the manager to approve it.

“The guy at the store down south said you’re a great worker. That you’re fast and keep your grill clean.” The manager, Jim, according to his name tag, wears pants that are too long and not in the girl-catching way.

I nod at his statement. I’m good at what I do, but being a fry cook isn’t my die-hard aspiration for a career. My goal’s to be a man that Echo will be proud to walk down the street with. What I am now won’t be enough to keep her for life.

He leans over, and his tie hits the screen. “Want to take a few shifts here?”

“Not staying in Colorado Springs long enough. Thinking about heading to Vail. Any stores there?”

“Yeah. I know the manager there and could give him a call if you want.” Jim minimizes the screen.

Personal recs make getting in easier. “I need to check an email to see if Vail is an option.” I motion at the screen with my chin. “Mind if I use this?”

“Go ahead.”

One of his employees calls his name, and the two have a conversation at the door of his office. With a few clicks I’m into my personal email account, and my gut coils like a damn snake. Carrie sent the email.

I run my hand over my head then hover the cursor over her name. This could change everything.

Echo

There’s nothing like the rush of being chased by the great Noah Hutchins.

Yesterday, we stayed the night in a hotel room. Tonight, we’re at a campground outside Colorado Springs, but I don’t mind it. Especially since the two of us have left behind the problems we ran into in Alamosa and have returned to complete and utter freedom.

The bark of the huge tree I hide behind is rough on my back, and I slowly slide against it as I chance a glance behind me. The fading evening light dances in the thick forest and reveals the green on the trees and the dirt of the ground, but what I see deceives me. If only by sense, I know Noah is close.

Twice he has almost caught me and twice I’ve eluded his grasp. Both times, if Noah wanted, he could have trapped me, but like me, he loves this game.

It’s like I’ve merged into my namesake: the true Echo, the wood nymph my mother loved in stories. But I’m Echo before the nightmare that created her myth—a girl I’ve never understood before this summer, a girl that Noah helped bring to life. I’m playful, and I’m free.

Two words no one would have ever associated with me.

A twig snaps, and I jerk back behind the trunk. My pulse speeds up as I fold into myself. A few feet in front of me is a clearing full of wildflowers—white, yellow and purple. My fingers twitch. For two months, I’ve stopped and drawn anything I craved for as long as I’ve desired. I’m spoiled, and while the field before me is beauty that deserves to be immortalized on paper, there’s a game that I plan on winning.

I inhale through my nose, and the scent of pine fills my lungs. This national forest has become our playground. It’s awe-inspiring and magical, and I almost believe that we’ve been transported to another realm...another time. No worries. No past. Just us. As if we’ve stepped out of the black-and-white and into the brilliant and majestic Land of Oz.

I hold my breath and strain to listen past the late-day birds singing in the branches above. The fine hair on the back of my neck rises as if Noah has appeared behind me and deliciously blown over my skin. I close my eyes. He’s so near I can imagine his body wrapped around mine.

Noah is wily and good at seeking, but I’m crafty and better at hiding. I edge to the side again and in painfully slow movements look behind me and...

“Gotcha.”

I scream. Loudly. My heart ramming through my chest. Birds’ wings beat together as dozens of them take to the sky. The moment I spot the laughter in Noah’s chocolate-brown eyes, my scream quickly morphs into a fit of giggles. He reaches for me, but I stumble back from the solid arm attempting to sneak around my back.

“You’re not getting away this time.” Noah’s deep voice vibrates down to my soul.

Noah’s arm slides one way and in a maneuver so slick it seems choreographed, I slip to the side, once again barely dodging his grasp.

“You’re too slow,” I taunt as I gain traction and sprint for the field of untamed wildflowers. The white-and-yellow daisies brush against my legs as I push forward. My skirt swishes against my thighs, and I love how the smooth material grazes my skin. Clean air fills my lungs, and my blood beats manically in my veins. Never in my life have I felt so alive. So high that I’m soaring.

“I’m letting you win,” he calls out.

“You are not.” I slow and pivot to watch as he struts behind me. The tall grass and flowers reach his jean-covered legs. For once, his dark hair doesn’t hide his eyes, and I love the spark of naughtiness in them. “You’re sore that you’re losing.”

He flashes the type of grin that encourages tingles. “You’re becoming cocky, Echo.”

I laugh, and the sound causes his smile to widen. Even though he’s slow in his approach, his wide gait closes the distance between us faster than I’d like. I steadily walk backward, unable to tear my eyes off the fluid way he moves. “Now, now. Out of the two of us, we both know you own that title.”

“Own it, wear it, I am it. I’ve never claimed differently.”

Nope, he never has. Noah is exactly who I see. A few months away from Kentucky, away from home, the rough foster kid is evolving into a man.

“Hey, Echo.” Noah gestures with his chin that he has something important to say, and I stall, watching as his gaze falls to my midriff. “Your tank rode up.”

I peer down and in a heartbeat realize my mistake when grass rustles and Noah grabs my waist. In a dizzying circle, my arms wrap around his neck and somehow we both end up on the ground. Me on top. Noah on the bottom. As always, Noah becomes my safe place to land.

With a wink, Noah rolls us, reversing our positions, but I don’t complain. I dream of his body over me. The heavy sensation is familiar and addictive. Noah skims his nose along the side of my neck, and the pleasing tickle causes me to suck in air.

“I won,” he whispers against my skin.

I find myself in a waking dream as I savor his caresses. “Did not.”

Noah presses a kiss to that sensitive spot behind my ear. A stream of warmth floods my body. Longing for more, I twist to expose my neck.

“Did, too.” His hands roam, sliding to my side. I melt and tense at the same time. We’re in the wide open, but I can’t stop the way my body molds to his. My fingers bunch the material of his shirt as I play with the idea of removing it. We’re far from the walking trail, far from the campsite. How many people, besides Noah and me, allow themselves to wander to the point of being lost?

“You said you could find me in five minutes,” I say softly. “That was longer than five minutes.”

“Echo,” he says as he raises his head. His fingers begin this little dance. Moving up then slowly down. Each down is slightly lower and promises very wicked things.

“Yes?”

“I’ve got you beneath me and not a person in sight. That’s winning.”

A peacefulness unfurls within me. I have to agree. That is winning.

I scan our surroundings, and a snippet of concern enters my brain. “Are we forest-ranger-can-find-us lost or one-of-us-better-know-how-to-start-a-fire-with-twigs lost?”

Noah shifts to the side, leaving one leg and arm draped over me. “Look to the left.”

I do, and a nervous shock causes me to jump. The path. That’s the path. How did I not notice? Oh, God, did an entire AARP tour group shuffle past, watching me and Noah make out, and I was clueless? “Are there other people?”

“Relax. There’s no one around. You ran in circles most of the time.”

And here I thought I had been running straight. Guess I’m not as crafty as I thought. “One of these days we really will get lost if we keep straying from the path.”

“Paths are overrated. Besides, I’ll never let you get so far in front of me that I can’t catch you.”

Warm fuzzies engulf me. Noah said he’ll always be around. “Promise?”

“Promise. I’ve got no interest in letting you out of my sight.”

I pluck a daisy off a stem. Because, at times, I playfully test how far I can push Noah, I stick the flower behind his ear. He raises an eyebrow. I grin.

“I like it here,” I tell him. “This has been my favorite stop so far.”

Noah yanks the flower from behind his ear and loops it through on one of my red curls. “Want to sleep here tonight?”

“We are.” I motion with my thumb in the direction of the campsite. “Remember that tent that took us forever to put up?”

“No, I mean sleep in the field. I can grab some blankets, and we can stay here.”

“Walk all the way back to the campground then walk all the way back here?” Honestly, that prospect doesn’t bother me, but it sounds like a fantastic excuse.

“You can stay here, and I’ll get everything.”

Crap. He foiled my plot. “So we’d sleep in the open? Like alongside bugs and other things that have more legs than us crawling on me?” Or worse, things that don’t have legs and hiss and bite and have venom.

Or big things with four legs and fur. The overgrown carnivore with hair and teeth will scare me then eat me. In the end, the whole thing will be tragic.

Noah scratches the stubble on his jaw in an attempt to hide a smirk. “Yeah. The open.”

I inch forward, and Noah removes his leg and arm to allow me to sit up. Bending my knees beneath me and smoothing out my skirt, I survey the area. Risk-taking. Not my strong suit. I took a huge risk this past spring when I broke into school to keep Noah from getting arrested, but since that breakthrough moment, I’ve remained fairly calm.

My goal this summer was to change—to not be the Echo Emerson that started her senior year twelve months ago. I want to be someone different when I go to college orientation.

Footsteps crack against the ground, and Noah and I turn to observe three shirtless guys and one bikini top-clad girl walk off the path and hike in our direction. Most of them carry beach towels over their shoulders.

“Where are they going?” I ask.

“Beats me,” answers Noah, but he offers his hand to me as he stands. This I understand about Noah: he doesn’t like being caught in a defenseless position. I let him help me up, and I brush the dirt off the back of my skirt.

“I can help you with that,” says Noah with a gleam in his eye.

“You just want to touch my butt.”

“Damn straight I do. I can’t help it if you have a beautiful ass.”

My lips curve up with the compliment, and as I go to continue the banter, Noah’s muscles stiffen. He angles his body to block me from the group. He may appear relaxed to everyone else with his thumbs hitched in his jean pockets, but he’s one second away from taking any one of them out.

While there’s a part of me that sort of likes the princess-locked-in-the-turret-with-a knight-sworn-to-protect-her vibe, another part wonders when this protective streak is going to land either Noah or me or both of us in a heap of trouble.

“S’up,” Noah says when one of the guys nods at us.

“Nothing much.” The guy with surfer-blond hair tangles his fingers with the hand of the girl in the bikini top and cutoffs. “You guys camping here?”

“Yeah,” answers Noah. “You?”

“Yep. Been coming here since I was a kid. I’m Dean.” Dean introduces everyone else.

“Noah. This is my girl, Echo.”

Everyone says something in greeting, and they all gawk at the scars on my arms. I clutch my arms close to my body, and Noah shifts so that he’s the main attraction. “Where you guys heading?”

Dean points beyond us. “There’s a gorge over that ridge. It’s a fantastic jump into cold water. Great way to end a day. You guys want to come along?”

Noah assesses me over his shoulder, and I detect that I’m-always-game-for-the-insane tilt of his mouth. He’ll bow out if I ask, but I’m game. “Sure.”

Dean leads the way through the woods, and Noah motions for me to walk in front of him as he hangs back to walk with two of the guys. That’s the kind of person Noah honestly is—the type that will literally watch my back.

Dean’s girl is easy to talk with, which is sort of nice. After a conversation weighing the pros and cons of camping in sandals, I say, “I didn’t know there was a gorge here. It wasn’t on the visitor maps.”

“It’s not on a map.” Dean turns in front of us to walk backward. “It used to be when I was a kid. People would come through here and swim in the gorge, but then one guy out of a hundred thousand jumps the wrong way and bam—he’s paralyzed. They shut the whole area down. It’s a damn shame. Entire generations will grow up thinking they can’t do anything fun because others are afraid of getting sued.”

Sure enough, the trees give way to a small rocky clearing, and my breath catches when I step out onto the towering drop. To my right, a stream pretends it’s rapids with white foam as it barrels out of the woods and falls over the cliff.

Below, gray rocks jut from the ground. The crystal-blue water reflects the green trees that protrude from the rocks and surround the area like a canopy. It’s gorgeous, but standing three feet from the edge, I’m paralyzed by the force of gravity trying to drag me over the cliff.

I agree with the posted sign threatening prosecution if anyone trespasses or jumps. This gorge is beautiful, but dangerous.

With a hand on my uneasy stomach, I ease back as everyone else races forward, and I bump into something warm and solid. Noah wraps an arm around me and rests his hand on my hip bone. “You okay?”

The girl shimmies out of her cutoffs, and the guys toss their towels to the rocks below.

“Yep.” I blink three times.

Without warning, Dean launches himself over the cliff, and my lungs squeeze. I grab on to Noah’s hand so I can brave a peek and pray like crazy that Dean’s not plastered on the rocks below. A wave shoots up when Dean hits the water, and his friends whoop and yell.

Taking longer than I prefer, Dean resurfaces and gestures for everyone else to jump, and like dominoes, they do. One right after the other. All of them without a sense of self-preservation. Without thought. Without fear.

“Want to do it?” Noah asks.

“What? Either crack my head open on a rock or drown? No, thanks.”

Noah leans over the ledge, and I wrench out of his hold because there is no freaking way I’m getting any closer. Noah chuckles. “Way too uptight, Echo.”

“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’m sure the guy before Mrs. Collins used the word sociopath in my file, so jumping’s my style.”

“But Mrs. Collins is the reigning therapist now, and we go with what she writes and neither one of us are suicidal!”

Noah laughs, and I can’t help but smile with him. Only the two of us can joke about such subjects. “You’re the one that said you wanted to take more risks. Look, we’ll do it together.”

A little twinge of guilt along with happy warmth funnels through my cells. I can see it play out. Noah taking my smaller hand in his. Him leading the way. The rush of falling together and the splash of cold water at the bottom.

I have no doubt that I won’t regret it. It’ll possibly be the most exhilarating experience I’ve ever had, and Noah does look extraordinarily sexy wet. I bite my bottom lip and peer over the edge like it’s going to reach up and snatch me.

“What do you see when you look down?” asks Noah.

“You sound way too much like Mrs. Collins, and that’s not a compliment.”

“Answer the question.”

I should be poetic and mention the green trees and the white foam floating atop the blue water and the purple wildflowers blowing in the breeze, but honestly all I see are... “Rocks. Lots of sharp, kill-me-by-impaling rocks.”

Noah stands right on the edge so that his toes are off the side, and dirt crumbles near his feet and plummets to the death trap below. A pang of fear grips my chest, and I reach out to him. “You should step back.”

Because he’ll fall and then the one person I desperately need will die...like Aires. “I’m serious. Just step back. Okay?”

“Know what I see?” Noah says as if I hadn’t spoken.

You continuing this sick, twisted replay of my life? I love and trust someone, then they die a horrible, violent death? “I’ll sleep in the field. That’s risk-taking. As in there are probably venomous spiders and snakes and rabid raccoons. That’s a lot more death-defying than this.”

“Water. I see water, Echo. A large pool of water.”

Our gazes meet, and his dark brown eyes are so soft that my belly tightens and flips. But there’s also an ache there. Something I don’t quite comprehend. “What else do you see?”

Noah breaks our connection and stares out into the glorious ravine. “A missed opportunity.”

I lower my head as the nausea strikes hard and fast. “I can’t do it.” But I want to. I wish to be a risk-taker, but this overpowering fear has me rooted to the ground.

Because God can occasionally be merciful, Noah steps away from the cliff. “All right. We’ll leave suicide off the to-do list for the night. Instead of jumping off cliffs, how about we sleep in the open?”

I want to be a risk-taker. I want to change. A silent mantra said over and over again. Sucking in a deep breath, I accept the death sentence if only because I stupidly offered it earlier. “Okay. We’ll sleep in the field.”

Noah chuckles. “Are you sure?”

“Nope, but I’m willing to do it anyway.” Forced smile. Very, very forced.

Noah yells down a goodbye, and they shout goodbyes back. We stroll back in comfortable silence, and I discover another con of wearing sandals when the leather strap rubs the skin beneath it raw. Returning to the field where Noah caught me a while ago, I pause and pull the sandal off my foot.

Noah narrows his eyes at it then surveys me. “Why don’t you stay here and I’ll bring what we need back.”

“I’ll be okay. It’s not even a blister yet.”

“Let me do this,” says Noah. “Sit down and relax.”

Noah wades through the field toward the path. He has swagger when he walks and powerful shoulders. With him, I’m hardly ever afraid. Noah possesses the ability to scare my monsters away, at least the ones that haunt me while I’m awake. For a brief few days, he’s also scared away the demons that torture me in my sleep.

It’s not until Noah reaches the path that I notice how fast we’ve lost light. There are more shadows in the forest than there is light from above. While night isn’t my favorite, I’ve never really been spooked by the dark, but there’s a nagging sensation pricking at me. An unease in the way this feels like a memory in slow motion.

Aires left this way—in the shadows. When his leave from the Marines ended, my brother said his goodbyes to everyone the night before and asked us to sleep in since he had an early-morning flight. He requested that we let him depart without a fuss. My father and Ashley agreed to it, but I never did.

I woke earlier than Aires. With a light jacket and in my pajama pants and shirt, I sat on the front porch steps waiting for that last moment with my older brother, my best friend. The sole person in the universe who kept me sane in a house full of chaos.

The humidity of the night left a dew on the ground and on the bushes. The curls I had straightened the night before reappeared within minutes. The porch light flipped on, the front door opened and, dressed in fatigues, Aires paused when he saw me.

With his lips thinned out, he closed the door behind him and motioned for me to stand. I did, and I was still small next to his massive frame. He resembled our father with his brown hair and height. I favored our mother.

“You don’t listen,” he said.

“I don’t like it,” I answered. “That you’re leaving when the sun’s not even up. It feels...” Unlucky. Wrong. “Early.”

He offered a sympathetic half smile. “It’s a Marine thing.”

“Are you happy?” I asked. “Being a Marine?”

“I love the traveling,” he admits, and I hear what he doesn’t say. Aires couldn’t live here anymore. Because Mom and Dad couldn’t speak to each other without raising the decibel level to earsplitting, Aires became the go-between as he always tried to bring peace. That part of his personality sentenced him to a life of presenting each of their arguments to the other like a courier pigeon.

Before he had signed the papers to join the Marines, he confessed to me that he felt trapped.

Aires peered over my shoulder and down the street. Like he had asked, the cab waited at the corner. He didn’t want the headlights or the idling car to wake any of us. “I’ve got to go.”

I threw myself at him. So hard and fast that he rocked on his feet. He dropped his duffel bag and hugged me in return. “I’ll be back soon.”

Hot wetness burned my eyes and I swallowed, hoping it would help me form a sentence or a word, but all I could do was squeeze him tighter.

“I’m coming back home,” he said. “I promise. There are too many important things here for me not to.”

Because I was pathetic, I craved to hear him say the words. “Like what?”

“Well...my car’s here.” His 1965 Corvette. He found it in a scrap yard, and it had become the love of his life as he pieced it back together. “I’m not going anywhere until my baby is working.”

I released him and rolled my eyes, even though I heard the tease in his voice. “Of course. Love the car more than your sister.”

He grinned. “Priorities. Be good, Echo.”

Aires started down the driveway and into the shadows. My heart beat faster as he merged into one more dark image in the unforgiving night.

“I love you,” I yelled out.

“Back at you.” His voice seemed too distant, too far away. Then the night became too black and my brother was gone.

Gone.

And Noah is fading into a shadow. It’s like a steel knife lodges into my throat. I can’t lose him. Not the person that I love. Not again. I jump to my feet and run through the field as if my life, as if Noah’s life depends on it. “Noah!”

He keeps going, and this frantic panic pummels my bloodstream. Don’t lose sight of him. Don’t. “Noah!”

On the edge of light, Noah stops and pivots to me. His face falls as he notices my arms pumping, the air puffing out of my mouth.

“What’s wrong?”

He grabs on to me when I skid to a halt, and I try to bend over to breathe again.

“You’re trembling.” Noah rubs his fingers over my hands. “Damn it, tell me what happened.”

My mouth dries out, and I shake my head because the words solidify into concrete. I search for a way past the block. The last time I saw Aires was three years ago this month. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and a shiver snakes up my spine. Three years. Oh, God, I’ve been without him for three years.

“Echo,” he urges.

I could tell him. He’d probably understand. Noah lost his parents.

“I...just...” Huge, shaky breath. “I need to go with you.”

Noah’s eyes narrow with worry, but he nods as he tucks me under his shoulder. “Okay.”

He surveys the field as if he could catch sight of the ghosts tormenting me, but in order to do that, he’d have to crawl into my brain, and I’d never want that. My thoughts are a terrifying place to visit.

“We’re staying in the tent tonight,” he says.

My stomach sinks. “Noah—”

He presses a hand to the small of my back and urges me to the campground. “Another time. Another night. But not this one.”

If Aires had left at another time or on another day, if Noah had chosen another time to return home the night of the fire or another day to go on that date, would the worst moments in our lives have happened?

Even worse? There’s a dark part of me that’s grateful for the way life has turned out because without any of that, I wouldn’t have the man walking beside me.

Hurt rages like a flash flood, and I edge closer to Noah, hoping his strength can keep this new demon away. “Okay. Another time. Another day.”

I try to pull myself to the present. Tomorrow will be a new destination. A new adventure. But my past beckons to me, this time in the form of guilt.

Noah

Echo was silent on the way back to camp and has remained that way as I gather everything we need to start a fire. Dark fell fast over the campground because of the thick clouds hanging overhead. Unfortunately, clouds aren’t the only thing dangling over us.

It’s been a long time since I’ve lost Echo to her mind. Possibly since the first week after we took to the road, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Sitting on a blanket next to our tent, she becomes a shell of the girl I love. Overall, she looks the same—same beautiful green eyes and red silky hair. Today she wears a white lace tank that shows a hint of the gifts God gave her and because I’m a lucky man, a skirt that ends mid-thigh.

But in the light of the neighboring campfire, Echo’s green eyes possess the life of a dollar-store plastic doll, and she’s paler than normal, making her freckles stick out.

In the span of a minute, something flipped in Echo’s brain. Only her brother and her mother have the power to haunt her. I’d like to serve them both with eviction notices from her mind.

I drop the milk jugs I filled with water harder than I meant, and Echo switches her focus from the pine needles on the ground to me. Her brother’s ghost doesn’t bother me as much as her mother’s. Aires died, and I understand that type of pain, but I still hate to see Echo anything but happy.

A breeze blows through the thick forest surrounding the campground, and a group of children runs past us on their way to the bathrooms. A few feet over, a boy around my youngest brother’s age plays with a toy fighter jet. Complete with the appropriate noises for war.

I wish he’d shut the hell up. Echo’s brother died in Afghanistan.

Since I entered foster care at the end of my freshman year, I’ve never been the boyfriend type, but Echo deserves the best. I scratch the back of my neck and try to do that making her feel better shit. “You okay?”

She nods. “Just thinking about Aires.”

Good. I still don’t handle her mother baggage well and after our fight at the Sand Dunes, I’m not eager to revisit those issues. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Echo never does, and because she respects my privacy when it comes to the loss of my parents, I back off. She returns her attention to the ground near her feet, and I pop my neck to the side. We’ve only got a few days left on the trip, and this isn’t how I want it to end. “Tell me Aires’s myth.”

Echo’s psychotic mother named them both after Greek myths. Last winter, Echo told me the myth associated with her name while she kicked my ass in pool. Maybe sharing a happy story will brighten her mood.

Her forehead wrinkles. “I’ve told you that story.”

I crouch and pile two logs then thread smaller sticks for kindling under them. “No, you haven’t.”

“Yes,” she says with a bite. “I have.”

That was out of left field. I check Echo from the corner of my eye, and my girl is glaring at me like she caught me groping a gaggle of cheerleaders. “You haven’t.”

“I would tell you that story. You don’t remember me telling you. That would mean that I don’t discuss Aires, and I do!”

That’s it right there—she doesn’t. “You hardly mention Aires. And before you say something smart back, think who you’re talking to. I mean what I say at all times. Don’t mess with my word. If I say you haven’t told the story, then you haven’t.”

“Like you’re Mr. I-Share-Everything when it comes to your family?”

“Mind retracting the claws?” I say in a low tone. “Because I don’t feel like bleeding.” Or feeling threatened.

Echo blinks, and the anger drains from her face. “I am so sorry—”

A high-pitched shriek cuts her off and pierces my soul. I heard that type of scream before, and it’s not one I’ve wanted to hear again. My entire body whips toward the sound, and I convulse at the sight of the toy airplane in the bonfire in front of the neighboring tent. The kid that was shooting down pretend targets seconds before is now crying and shaking as a small flame licks up his pants.

Tyler.

Jacob.

My brothers.

I snatch a blanket off the ground and in six strides I tackle the child. My heart pounds as I smack at the flame. The smell of burned flesh rushes through my mind, and the roar of flames lapping against walls fills my ears.

“Noah!” a voice that’s familiar, but doesn’t belong in this nightmare, calls to me. “Noah, you put out the flame!”

Soft fingers grasp my biceps, and it’s as if I’m yanked from a long, dark tunnel. I turn my head, and the girl I love, the girl that owns my heart, stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“Let him go,” she says. “The flames are out.”

I look down, and a small child with black hair and blacker eyes gapes at me. My hands hold his blanket-covered leg. I lift my arms, and Echo removes the blanket, revealing singed, now threadbare, jeans. The skin beneath is only slightly red. Not even a real burn.

I suck in air and smell smoke. No burned flesh. I fall back onto my ass and run my clammy hand over my forehead to catch the small beads of sweat. The sights. The smells. I’d been reliving the damned memory of the night my parents died.

“Oh, thank God!” A woman appears at the boy’s side. He sits up at her touch and begins to weep. Jacob wept like that after I dragged him out the house. So did Tyler. I couldn’t cry. No matter how I felt like I’d been torn open again and again, I couldn’t cry.

“What happened?” she asks.

“His plane fell in the fire.” Echo points to the melting toy in the thick of the fire. “We didn’t see it, but he must have tried to get it. Noah yanked him out and put out the flames.”

“Thank you,” says a voice beside me. It’s a man. Black hair. Black eyes. The damn bastard is probably his dad. “We walked over to say hi to friends camping with us. My son knows better than to play near the fire—”

I’m on my feet and in his face before he can finish. “He’s a child! What the fuck is wrong with you that you’d leave him alone near an open flame? People get hurt this way! They die!”

“Noah!” Echo shoves an arm in front of me and uses her body as a shield between me and the bastard who should have his parental rights revoked. “It’s okay.”

“Okay!” I explode. “It’s not fucking okay. That kid could have died!”

Echo pushes at my chest, attempting to walk me backward. “You’re scaring him!”

“Good!” The bastard needs a kick in the ass.

“The child!” she chides. “You’re scaring the child!”

It’s as if she dumped a bucket of cold water over my face. The child is clinging plastic-wrap tight to his mom, his body shaking. A park ranger is applying something to the wound. Another one is talking into a cell phone, and I hear words like ambulance not needed.

The undertone of voices and movement from the campground has come to a lull as everyone scrutinizes the boy. Echo scans the area then links her fingers with mine. “You did great, Noah, but let’s leave them alone, okay?”

“Is everything fine here?” The park ranger moves the phone away from his mouth and jerks his chin from me to the dad, who’s continually combing his trembling hands over his head.

“Yeah,” I say, and secure my grip on Echo. Without another word, I lead her back to our tent and unzip it, motioning for her to get inside. I join her and in a second, zip the door up, wishing it could block out the entire world.

Echo clicks on a lantern and makes herself smaller as she tucks her legs beneath her. “Are you okay?” She drums her fingers to that silent rhythm.

Fuck me. Wasn’t that the question I asked her a few minutes ago? I rub my eyes. No. I’m not okay. I’m the furthest thing from it.

Three months ago, I held Echo’s hand in a hospital and watched her battle for her sanity. I promised her and myself that I’d become the man she deserves. The man who’d be strong enough to get past my shit in order to take care of her. I let Echo down once, just like I let my parents down the night of the fire.

The guilt of that night, of how I failed, has left a deep, dark stain on my soul. Echo’s dealt with enough of my crap since we met, and she’s had a hard time sorting through her stuff since she retrieved her memories.

I can’t unload my fucked-up problems onto her. The truth would drive her to realize that she shouldn’t be with a punk like me, and she’d finally walk. “I’m tired.”

Her fingers tap faster on her thigh. “It’s still early. Maybe we should go do something—”

“I’m tired,” I cut her off. I’m being rough, I know it, but I can’t deal with anything right now. I lie down and turn away from her. “And you said you wanted to get into Denver early so you can prepare for the show.”

Echo’s silent, and after a few strained minutes, she clicks off the lantern and settles beside me. Because the girl has always been a damned miracle, she slowly edges near me and places a cool hand on my shoulder.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she whispers.

Her words cut deep. She may get the loss, but she doesn’t understand feeling responsible for them dying.

Echo presses her lips to my shoulder blade, and I close my eyes.

“Aires...” She falters. “Aires was a ram sent by Zeus to save someone.”

My eyebrows furrow together as I move to face her. Her body is nothing more than a shadow in the night. I can’t see her features, but I can hear the pain.

“I...” she continues in a taut voice that rips out my heart. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

She doesn’t have to. I find Echo’s hand and guide her until she tangles her body with mine.

“We’re okay,” I lie. It feels like it did when they lowered my parents’ caskets into the ground. It feels like it did when Echo broke up with me a few months back. It feels like it did when I decided that my brothers were better off without me.

Echo slides an arm around my chest and holds on like I’m preventing her from falling off a cliff. My girl sometimes mentions God. Some days she believes in him. Other days she’s not sure he exists. I don’t think much one way or another because if there is one, he doesn’t believe in me.

With that said, I toss up a silent prayer that all this hurt, all this guilt, will be gone in the morning. Not for my sake, but for Echo’s.

She deserves happiness.

Echo

“I’m two hours late calling my father, my boyfriend looks like he’s ready to step in front of an oncoming freight train to cure his boredom, I’m terrified someone will mention my mother and no, I don’t like the use of the gold against the greens in the painting.”

It’s how I’d love to respond to the curator tipping her empty champagne glass at the floor-to-ceiling painting in front of us, but admitting such things will hurt the fragile reputation I’ve established for myself this summer in the art community. Instead, I blink three times and say, “It’s beautiful.”

I glance over at Noah to see if he caught my tell of lying. He bet me that I couldn’t keep from either lying or blinking if I did lie for the entire night. Thankfully, he’s absorbed in a six foot carving of an upright prairie dog that has headphones stuck to his ears. If I lose, I’ll be listening to his music for the entire car ride home from Colorado. There’s only so much heavy metal a girl can take before sticking nails into her ears.

In a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans and black combat boots, Noah shakes his head to himself before downing the champagne in his hand. Absorbed was an overstatement. Prisoners being water tortured are possibly having a better time.

Noah stops the waiter with a glare and switches his empty glass for a full one. He’s been scaring the crap out of this guy all night and at this rate, Noah may get us both kicked out, which may not be bad.

“I heard you tried to secure an appointment with Clayton Teal so he could see your paintings.” The curator’s hair is black, just like I imagine her soul must be, yet I force the fake grin higher on my face.

“I did.” And he rejected me, or rather the assistant to his assistant rejected me. I can’t sneeze this summer without someone gossiping about it. I swear this is worse than high school. It’s been months since graduating from what I thought was the worst place on earth, and I’ve descended into a new type of hell.

“Little lofty, don’t you believe?”

“I sold several paintings this spring and—”

She actually tsks me. Tsks. Who does that? “And you don’t think your mother had anything to do with those sales?”

My head flinches back like I’ve been slapped, and the wicked witch across from me sips her champagne in a poor attempt to mask her glee.

“Well?” she prods.

I tuck my red curls behind my ear. “My work speaks for itself.”

“I’m sure it does.” She gives me the judgmental once-over, and her eyes linger on the scars on my forearms. The black sleeveless dress shrinks against my skin. I’ve only had the courage to show my arms since last April, and sometimes, as in now, that courage dwindles.

In high school, no one knew how the white, red and raised marks had come to be on my arms, and for a long period of time, neither did I. My mind repressed the night of the accident between me and my mother. But with the help of my therapist, Mrs. Collins, I remember that night.

As I’ve traveled west this summer, visiting art galleries, I’ve discovered a few people in my mother’s circle are aware of how I had fallen through her stained-glass window when I had tried to prevent her from committing suicide.

Unfortunately, I’ve also met a few people who loathe my mother and prefer to slather their displeasure with her like a poisoned moisturizer onto my face.

“She contacted people, you know?” she says. “Telling them that you were traveling this summer like a poor peddler and that she’d be grateful if they showed you some support.”

It appears this woman belongs to the I-hate-your-mother camp, and the sole reason I’ve been asked to this art showing is for retribution for some unknown crime committed by my mother. A person, by the way, I no longer have contact with. “Would you have been one of those people she called?”

She smiles in the I-drown-kittens-for-fun sort of way. “Your mother knows better than to call me.”

“That’s nice to know.” I half hope my mother dropped a house on her sister and that she’s next.

The curator angles away from me as if our conversation is already done, yet she continues to speak. “A piece of advice, if I may?”

If it’ll encourage her to pour water over herself so that she’ll melt, I’m all for advice. “Sure.”

“There’s no skipping ahead. Everyone has to pay their dues and you, my dear, the daughter of the great Cassie Emerson, are no exception. Using your mother’s name, no matter how many people are misguided into believing her work is brilliant, is no substitute for actual talent. I’m taking this meeting with you tomorrow because I promised a friend of mine from Missouri that I would if he agreed to feature some of my paintings. Do us both a favor and don’t show.”

I know the man she refers to. He was one of the last to buy a painting from me and since that day in June, I’ve hit a dry spell. The smile I’ve faked most of the night finally wanes, and Noah notices as he sets his glass on the outstretched prairie dog’s hand.

I had two goals for this summer. Number one: to explore my relationship with Noah, and that has proven more complicated than I would have ever imagined. Number two was to affirm to myself and the art world that I’m a force of nature—someone separate from my mother. Regardless of what my father believes, that I’m capable of making a living with canvas and paint and that I have enough talent to survive in an unforgiving world.

The curator turns to walk away, but my question stops her. “If you detest me so much, then why invite me tonight?”

“Because,” she says, and her eyes flicker to my scars again. “I wanted to see for myself if the rumors were true. If Cassie really did try to kill her daughter.”

Wetness stings my eyes, and I stiffen. I wish for Noah’s indifferent attitude or one of his non-blood sister Beth’s witty comebacks. Instead, I have nothing, but this witch didn’t completely break me. She was the first to look away then leave.

The corners of my mouth tremble as I attempt to smile. Realizing that faking happiness is completely out of the realm of reality, I let the frown win. But I’ll go to hell before I cry in front of this woman. I release a shaky breath and will the tears away.

A waiter passes and in one smooth motion I grab a glass of champagne off his tray and hurry for the door. My heart picks up pace, and my throat constricts. This isn’t how the summer was supposed to go. I was supposed to evolve into someone else...someone better.

I slide past a couple gesturing at a painting, and the glass nearly slips from my hand when I ram into a wall of solid flesh. “What’s going on, Echo?”

“Nothing.” Something. Everything. I pivot away from Noah, not wanting him to see how each seam of my fragile sanity is unraveling one excruciating thread at a time in rapid succession.

Noah’s hand cups my waist, and his chest heats my back as he steps into me. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

I briefly close my eyes when his warm breath fans over my neck, and his voice purrs against my skin. It’s a pleasing tickle. Peace in the middle of torture.

“Look at me, baby.” When I look up, Noah’s beside me, and his chocolate-brown eyes search mine. “Tell me what you need.”

“To get out of here.” The words are so honest that they rub my soul raw.

Noah places a hand on the small of my back and in seconds we’re out the front door and into the damp night. Drops of water cling to the branches and leaves of the trees. Moisture hangs in the air. Each intake of oxygen is full of the scent of wet grass. While inside experiencing my own hurricane, it rained outside.

She contacted people, you know? I didn’t know. I had no idea, and the thought that any of my success belongs to Mom kills me. A literal stabbing of my heart, shredding it to pieces.

Resting the champagne glass I’ve now stolen onto the hood of the car, I tear into the small purse dangling from my wrist and power on my phone. The same words greet me: one new message.

Not listening to my father or Noah or anyone, I kept it. Last April, I thought I could sever my mother from my life—that after one meeting with her, I could move on, but she’s still here, surrounding me, haunting me, like shrapnel embedded too deep to retrieve.

Noah slowly rounds on me as if I’m teetering on the edge of a bridge, ready to jump. As I meet his eyes, I realize he’s not far off. “She called people. She told them to buy my stuff.”

He assesses the phone then refocuses on me. “Your mom?”

I nod.

“Who’d she call?”

“The galleries...” I trail off when the door to the gallery opens and laughter drifts into the night. My mind jumps around, searching for another answer, hoping for a plausible solution other than that I’ve been handed the truth.

But maybe Mom didn’t call. Maybe this woman is wrong. Maybe the curator is mean and she’s evil and before I can think it through, my thumb is over the button. The phone springs to life. Numbers dial. Little lines grow with the cell phone reception. The phone rings loudly once.

Noah bolts forward. “What the fuck do you—”

“Echo?” The desperate sound of my mother’s voice shatters past the confusion and slams the fear of God into my veins. The phone tumbles from my hands and crashes to the ground.

The phone beeps—the call lost—and Noah stands openmouthed over the cell as if I murdered someone. “What the hell, Echo?”

“I...” The rest of my statement, my train of thought, catches in my throat. I called her. I knot my fingers into my hair and pull, creating pain. Oh, my God, I called her. I initiated contact, and now the door is open...

Cotton-mouthed, I whisper, “What have I done?”

Noah scrubs both of his hands over his face. “I don’t know.”

“This is bad.”

He steps forward. “It’s not. You hung up. She’ll assume it was a mistake.”

The phone rings. Each shrill into the night is like a knife slicing through me, and the panic building in my chest becomes this pressure that’s difficult to contain—a pulse that’s hard to resist. Answer, answer, answer!

“Think about this, Echo.”

My eyes snap to Noah’s. “I need to know.”

“She’s not going to give you the answers you want.”

“What if she did call the galleries? What if my success was a pity offering from her?”

“Echo—”

Closer than him, more desperate than him, I swipe the phone off the ground before he can move, but the phone stops ringing. My hands shake, and this desperation claws at me as I run a hand over my neck, searching for whatever is constricting my ability to breathe. “I could call her back.”

With both hands in the air like he’s handling a kidnapping negotiation, Noah edges in my direction. “You could, but let’s discuss it first.”

My fingers clutch the phone. “If she did this I need to know. I need to know if she asked people to buy those paintings from me.”

“What if she did? Why does it matter?”

“Because if she did, I’m a failure!”

He halts, and his eyebrows furrow together. “That’s bullshit.”

“But it’s true.”

“It’s not. Nothing good happens when you talk to your mom. What makes this different? What she says to you, what she’s done—it fucks with you!”

“She’s my mom!”

“And I’m the one holding you in the middle of the night when you can’t decipher what’s real and what’s a dream. She’s not here. I am. Not her!”

Anger explodes up from my toes and spirals out of my body. “You don’t understand! It’s more than the paintings. It’s more! She’s my mom. You don’t understand what it’s like to be torn between wanting to hate someone and wanting them in your life, then hating them all over again!”

“Fuck that, because I do. My mom’s family contacted me. They want to meet me. The goddamned people she ran from want me in their fucked-up lives.”

Noah

Echo and I stare at each other, and I suck in air to get my breathing under control. Her eyes are too wide, and my heart’s pounding too fast. It’s not how I meant to tell her, but it’s out, and I can’t take it back. The edges of my sight are blurry. I’ve drunk too much, but I’m glad the truth is out.

“What did you say?” she asks.

I yank the folded email out of my back pocket and offer it to her. Echo reaches for the paper like she’s seconds from handling a ticking time bomb. She unfolds it, and I slump against her car. Rainwater pooled on the hood, and it soaks through the bottom of my jeans. Damn this entire week to hell.

Too many emotions collide in my brain, and I rake both hands through my hair to ward off any spinning. The alcohol was supposed to help, not hurt.

“It’s not that long, so quit stalling.” The email is short, to the point, and every misspelling informs me that the shit I’m in is deep.

Ms. Peterson,

We no the adoption is compleet, but we’d like to see the boys for a visit. My Sarah wood have wanted that. If not the younger ones, then Noah. He’d be a teen by now. Let him decide.

Diana Perry

The paper crackles as Echo folds it again, and her heels click against the blacktop. Her sweet scent surrounds me followed by the butterfly touch of her fingers on my wrist. “Noah.”

She lowers her hand to my thigh and damn if fire doesn’t lick up my leg. Even when I’m drunk, my body responds to her. My legs automatically drop open, and the tension melts as she eases herself closer. Her fingers caress my face and with gentle pressure, she edges my chin up. I lose myself in those green eyes.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

I wind my arms around her waist and slide one hand down her spine. Echo’s my solid, my base, my foundation. She has no idea that the single fear that keeps me up at night is knowing one day she’ll discover she doesn’t need me like I need her.

“Noah,” she whispers again. Echo’s always been a siren, calling me to her even when I don’t want to be captured. “Please talk to me.”

Her lips brush the corner of my mouth, and my fingers fist into her hair. Echo’s warm and soft. I shouldn’t kiss her now. I shouldn’t crave to kiss her now, but damn, she owns me.

“Talk to me,” she murmurs. “I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

As she sweeps my hair away from my eyes, I hear myself say, “They’re in Vail.”

Her head nods against mine in understanding. “We’ve got time before we have to be back.”

“Mom ran from them.”

“You don’t know that.” She pulls back to look at me, but my grip on her hips keeps her near. “There could be a million reasons why your mom left.”

“Carrie and Joe said that Mom’s family is bad news.”

“Carrie and Joe said that you shouldn’t have been around your brothers. They were wrong then. They can be wrong now.”

The same thought has circled in my brain since Carrie broke the news. “What if they’re right?”

“What if they’re wrong? And if they are right, what if your mom’s family did screw up? Maybe they deserve a second chance.”

My eyes flash to hers, and my blood goes ice-cold. “Are we talking about my situation or yours?”

She tilts her head. “They may not be so different.”

“Fuck that. There’s no comparison.”

“You’re drunk, Noah.”

“I am.”

Her foot taps against the ground, and she does that thing where she glares off in the distance. It’s not hard to read she’s silently tearing me a new ass, but has enough grace to leave the internals internal. One of these days, she’ll snap.

She’s torn into me before, and the last time she did, she left me. My stomach plummets as I wonder if she’ll walk again.

Reaching behind me, Echo lifts the glass of champagne she brought with her from the gallery. “Well, there’s good news. It looks like we’ll be free tomorrow. The curator and I decided it would be best if we no longer share breathing space...or continents.”

Echo presses the glass to her lips, but I lift it from her hand. I’ve had a few of those tonight. More than a few. Enough that walking a straight line could be a problem.

My girl throws me a hardened expression that could send me six feet deep. “Damn, Echo. I’m not stealing your firstborn. I’m the drunk one, remember?”

She releases a sigh that steals the oxygen from my lungs, and she moves so that her back rests against me. I mold myself around her and nuzzle my nose in her hair. Echo inclines her head to the glass now in my possession. “How many of those have you had?”

* * *

I drink half the champagne while eyeing the prairie dog again through the gallery window. Champagne’s not my style, but free alcohol is free alcohol. “Not enough to understand that.”

“It’s a prairie dog,” she answers.

“With headphones.”

“It’s a commentary on how we are destroying nature.”

“That’s wood, right?” I ask.

Echo rolls her eyes, and I smirk. She hates it when I do this.

“Yes, the artist cut down a tree, used a chainsaw that required gas, and the whole process defeats the purpose.”

“Chainsaw?” These bastards are strange.

“Yes.”

I finish out the glass. “As I said, not enough.”

A couple exits the gallery, and they’re way too loud and way too full of themselves to peer in our direction. While I could give a shit about everyone inside, Echo cares, and the longing in her eyes as she watches them hurts me.

“Want to talk about the stuck-up bitch in there?” I ask.

“Nope.”

Good. Odds are I’d say things that would make Echo cry. “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Echo

Noah and I slept deeply, we slept long, and then we held each other for longer than we should have. Now, checkout is looming.

Cross-legged on the middle of the bed, I cradle my cell and stare at three messages: one new voice mail, one missed call, one new text. Each one from my mom. There’s a pressure inside me—this overwhelming craving to please my mother, to gain her approval—that prevents me from deleting them. The memories don’t help...both the good and the bad.

Mom said she’s on her meds. She said that she’s in control of her life. If that’s true, is she mimicking my father’s parenting style by attempting to dominate my life?

Noah steps out of the bathroom fully dressed, and his hair, still wet from his earlier shower, hangs over his eyes, leaving me unable to read his mood.

“Did you call her?” he asks.

“No.” I pause. “But what if I did?”

Noah shrugs then leans his back against the wall. “Then you did. I don’t claim to understand, but I promised you back in the spring that I’d stand by you. I’m a man of my word.”

He is. He always has been. “But you don’t agree that I should call her.”

“Not my decision to make.”

I shift, uncomfortable that Noah’s not completely on my side. “I’d like to know you support me.”

“I support you.”

“But you don’t approve.”

“You need to stop looking for people’s approval, Echo. That’s only going to lead to hurt.”

My spine straightens. “I didn’t ask for a lecture.”

“You asked me to be okay with you contacting the person that tried to kill you. Forgive me for not setting off fireworks. You want to call her, call her. You want to see her, then do it. I’ll hold your hand every step of the way, but I don’t have to like seeing her in your life.”

His words sting, but they’re honest. The phone slides in my clammy hands. “I won’t call her today.”

“Because that’s your decision,” Noah says. “Not because you’re trying to please me.”

We’re silent for a bit before he continues, “I called the Malt and Burger in Vail. They can fit me into the schedule this week. If I want in, they can give me the walk-through of the restaurant this evening.”

A sickening ache causes me to drop a hand to my stomach. A week. We were supposed to travel back to Kentucky today. We were going to take another route so that I could try new galleries. But Noah has this need to find his mom’s family. He desires a place to belong.

Just like me.

If he wants to search for them, I can’t be the person standing in the way. “You should ask them to schedule you.”

“What if my mom’s family is bad news? Why would I want them in my life?”

“I don’t know.” It’s a great question. One I deal with daily. Maybe if we go, Noah will finally understand my struggle with my mother. “Let’s do this. Let’s go to Vail.”

Noah cuts his gaze from the floor to me. “This means you’ll be giving up visiting galleries on the way back.”

It will. Granting him this can cost me my dreams, but I’ve had enough time, and I guess I’ve failed. “There are probably galleries in Vail.” Hopefully.

“We’ll stay in a hotel the whole time. I’ll pay.”

“Noah...” My voice cracks. “No. I’m fine with the tent or I can help pay—”

“Let me do this,” he says, and the sadness in his tone causes me to nod.

“So we’re still heading west,” I say.

“West,” he responds.

Noah

My head pulses with the same speed as the cursor on the computer at the Vail Malt and Burger. Champagne hangovers suck.

“Clock in as soon as you walk in, and clock out the moment your shift is done and this is where you put your orders, you hear me?” The manager of the Malt and Burger is in the process of explaining to me the way “his” restaurant runs. He’s a six-two, two-hundred-and fifty-pound black man who, like the other managers throughout the summer, thinks he’s the only one that uses the system of sticking the paper orders over the grill. Two words: corporate policy.

“Got it,” I answer.

“You hear me?” he asks with a wide white grin. “It doesn’t leave the grill until it hits one hundred and sixty degrees.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Food poisoning’s a bitch.

He slaps my back and if I wasn’t solid, the hit might have crushed me. “Good. Called around about you. Hear you’re a good man. We get a lot of travel employees through here, and you aren’t the only fresh face working this week. I expect you to pull your weight and not miss a beat, hear me? Otherwise, I’ll put you out.”

Loud and clear, and it’s going to be a long week if he says that phrase as much as he has in the past thirty minutes.

“So we’ll see you tomorrow?” He uses a red bandanna to wipe the sweat off his brow.

“Tomorrow.”

We shake hands, and I let myself out the back when the drive-through worker yells that the headset shorted. Vail’s cooler than Denver, but not by much and because of that, I walk in the shadows of the alley.

“You were too serious-looking in there, you know? Surely a year can’t change someone that much.”

I glance behind me and notice a girl with short black hair and wearing a Malt and Burger waitress T-shirt leaning against the brick wall next to the Dumpster. A cigarette dangles from her hand and as she lifts it to her mouth, the ton of bracelets on her wrist clanks together.

“Do you know me?” I ask.

She releases smoke into the air. The sweet scent catches up and for the first time in months, the impulse for a hit becomes an itch under my skin. The chick’s smoking pot.

“I know you, Noah Hutchins. I know you very well.”

I scratch my chin as a dim memory forces its way to the surface: pot, beer, her naked body and the backseat of my car. Shit.

“Mia,” I mumble. She introduced me to the employee travel program. Last fall, she trekked across the country working for different stores, and for two weeks while she had stopped in Kentucky, we traveled down each other’s pants.

“You remember my name. I’m touched.” She extends the joint to me. “Our last encounter started this way, too, which works for me. I just got off shift and if I remember correctly you had a killer backseat.”

I shove my hands in my pockets. “I don’t have my car.”

“You don’t?”

“We took my girlfriend’s.”

She chuckles then takes another hit. Mia’s silent as she holds the smoke, then studies me while she blows it out. “Never thought of you as boyfriend material. Pegged you to be like me.”

“Guess you pegged me wrong.”

“Guess I did.” Mia smashes the small remains of the joint between her fingers, and it disintegrates as it falls to the ground. “Did you move here or are you visiting?”

“Visiting for the week.”

“What a coincidence—so am I.” She releases the same sly grin she gave me moments before going down on me last year. Twenty bucks the girl knows what she’s doing now just like she knew exactly what she was doing then. “Tell me about your girl.”

Standing here and reminiscing with someone I spent hours exploring in a haze isn’t the best way to be true to Echo. “I’ve gotta go.”

“You were badass, Noah, but you were never a dick. This is just a conversation between two old friends.”

She’s wrong about me, and sometimes Echo is, too. I am a dick, and I especially was when I was doing her. “We’re not friends.”

There’s a pessimistic tilt to her lips. “Touché, but we did enjoy the hell out of each other’s bodies. We will be working together, and as I said about the whole dick thing—it meant you had a slight conscience. So let me guess, you found the good girl who redeemed you.”

I rub the back of my neck. This is one of the things I hated about sleeping around. Occasionally, a girl had the stones to call me out on my shit and they’d be right.

Two minutes of conversation. I can give it to this girl if it’ll wipe the slate clean. “Yeah, but it’s more like she found me.”

She nods like I said more than I did. “So how redeemed has she made you? College route now?”

The hairs on my body rise like I’ve got a sniper trained to me. “Yeah.”

“When was the last time you hung out with anyone not her and partied? You know, be eighteen and not ninety?”

Before the two of us got serious. “What’s it matter?”

She toes a piece of green broken glass. “Matters more than you think. You’ll need to bring your girl in to let me meet the competition.”

“There’s no competition,” I say.

“Oh, Noah.” She pushes off the wall and walks backward for the opposite street. “Life is only about competition.”

I watch what I used to be leave. This is going to be a great conversation with Echo: You know how I decided to stay here for a week, ruining your chances to meet with other galleries before we head home? Great news: I fucked one of the waitresses, and she wants to meet you.

My cell vibrates, and I pull it out of my pocket, hoping to see a text from Echo. My eyebrows draw together when I spot Isaiah’s name: Where you at?

Me: Vail

Isaiah: Staying?

Me: Fir Tree Inn Room 132

Isaiah: See you by morning.

“Damn.” I forgot to tell Echo about Isaiah and Beth.

Echo

Nestled at the bottom of a mountain, Vail is possibly the most beautiful town I’ve ever visited. The cobblestone streets with tidy buildings transport me into a cute little Swiss mountain village. Each store I pass screams expensive and boasts if you break it, you buy it. Well, the ice cream shop doesn’t boast that, but it would be cool if it did.

Staying in the hotel with Mom’s messages on my phone became torture, and walking alone isn’t the needed distraction.

A couple exits a store, and they laugh and hold hands. They’re beautiful together—wearing the same type of clothes and smile. They look like they’ve materialized out of a J. Crew catalog and chat over their shared love of some vase.

Noah and I would never have that conversation.

Feeling suddenly insecure and underdressed in my cut-offs and blue T-shirt, I tuck my free-flowing curls behind my ears and cross my sweater-covered arms over my chest as I wander past a line of galleries. I’ve visited lots of galleries over the summer, and judging by the quality of art in the windows, none of them have been this high-end. In any of these places, my work wouldn’t be fit to display in the bathroom. If what the curator in Denver said was true, my paintings are probably inhabiting a Dumpster.

Noah wouldn’t say it, but he harbors guilt for changing our plans. He won’t after I gush over the number of galleries in Vail. This side trip could be life-altering. Maybe I do have one last shot at proving myself before going home.

My pack dangles from my shoulder. I brought a sketchbook and chalk in case inspiration hits. Lots of inspiring views around me, but the art...wow. Talk about feeling less.

A beautiful painting of the night sky hangs in the window of a gallery and catches my attention. It’s not the lines or the choice of coloring that draws me to it. It’s the constellation, and I become completely lost.

“What do you think?”

“Excuse me?” I glance to my right, and a guy with a mop of sandy-brown hair sporting a pair of jeans and T-shirt stands next to me. He’s older than me. Easily thirtysomething, I guess. To be honest, people sort of blend in between twenty-five and forty.

He raises a bag in his hand. “I’ve walked by a couple of times, and you’ve been here staring. So I’m thinking you must like it.”

I blink, not realizing I had been entranced for so long. “It’s good,” I answer, because it is. “I like the shading here.” Then motion to where the blacks and blues merge. “It gives it a nice Impressionist feel.”

With the bag on his wrist, he shoves his hands into his pockets and appraises me as if I should have more to say, which I don’t.

“Is there a problem?” I ask.

“You don’t like the painting.”

I hike a brow. “I like the painting.”

“No.” The reusable grocery bag crackles. “You don’t. There’s a look people have when they like something, and you don’t have that light.”

Not caring for the interrogation, I break the news. “It’s wrong.”

His head jerks back. “What?”

“It’s wrong,” I repeat and gesture to the middle of the constellation. “It’s missing a star.”

“It’s art. There’s only what the artist intended.”

“True, but I don’t think that’s the case here.”

“Why?”

I motion with my finger where the star should be. “Because if I meant to leave the star out, I would have made this area a shade darker. Just enough that you could only see it if you were searching. I also would have left a small indication that something so important, something so critical to your soul has disappeared. The sole reason a constellation exists is because it’s a sum of its parts. To lose one of those parts...it’s painful and irreversible.”

He’s silent for a moment as he focuses on the area I pointed out. “Maybe you’re wrong on the constellation.”

“My brother’s name was Aires. I couldn’t forget that constellation if I tried.” A heavy weight slams into my chest. I’ve gone too long without remembering my brother. I used to think about him several times a day, and now I haven’t thought of him since last night. I miss him, and what does it mean that he’s not haunting my every thought? Am I forgetting him?

With a sigh that actually causes me pain, the man stalks into the gallery, lifts the painting off the easel and carries it into the back. If I was Noah, I’d drop the f-bomb right now, but I’m not, so a simple crap will suffice. I broke a cardinal rule: keep your mouth shut until you know who the gallery owner and the artist are because they can be hiding in the Trojan horse of a tourist with reusable shopping bags.

So much for the idea of making connections in Vail.

I stand there, staring at the empty slot, wondering if there’s any way to salvage this, like: “I didn’t mean it” or “I smoked crack before I traipsed over here” or “I’ve been kidnapped and a bomb’s been strapped to my chest, and if I don’t trash other people’s paintings, a bus on the highway will explode.”

Yeah, I don’t think he’ll buy it.

I turn and begin the long walk of shame back to the hotel. My cell vibrates. I pull it out of my pocket and frown the moment I spot the name of my therapist, Mrs. Collins. It’s like the woman is hardwired to me.

Her: What are your thoughts on moving our Skype visit to tomorrow?

I stop dead in the middle of the cobblestone street, and I rush out an apology when a couple has to separate their hands to move around me. Me: My father told you, didn’t he?

Her: Told me what? :)

Me: That my mom called! And the drill sergeant control freak finally returns. My father lasted two months longer than I thought he would before interfering with my therapy. Me: I thought he was giving me space!

Time. Too much time. Maybe she’s moved on with her life instead of stalking mine. Right as I slip my phone into my pocket, it vibrates again. Her: He wasn’t the one to tell me.

My chin drops to my throat. Noah is a dead man.

* * *

Sitting on the floor of the hotel room, I stare at a blank pad of drawing paper and rub my temples. Oh, God, what have I done? It seemed like a great idea at the time. In fact, it seemed like the most brilliant idea in the course of human history, but I was mad. So mad and Noah is going to freak.

Freak.

Noah’s never been truly angry at me. Aggravated? Yes. Ticked at me? Yep. Strongly annoyed? Heck, yeah. Infuriated? No.

The handle on the door rattles, and a half second later there’s a click when Noah’s key card unlocks the door. I press my hand to my stomach, hoping it will prevent the contents of lunch from making a reappearance.

He steps in and smiles the moment he spots me. It’s a horrible, horrible, sweet smile. The type that says he loves me beyond belief. His hair partly covers his dark eyes, and when his face widens with the grin, I can spot the sexy, rough stubble of a five o’clock shadow on his cheeks.

Oh, hot Hades in a snowstorm, he’s happy. I wish I could crawl under the bed and die.

“You okay?” he asks as he heads to his suitcase on the extra double bed. He’s a foot from me, and he’s going to want fifty football fields between us when he opens that bag.

When I don’t answer, he continues, “We’re going to splurge tonight and eat at a restaurant. I meant to take you out in Denver after the showing, but...”

But Denver was the fifth level of hell.

He begins to unzip his suitcase, and I blow out air to stop a dry heave. “Noah,” I say to try to interrupt him, but he doesn’t hear my quiet declaration because he realized he had opened the wrong part.

“A nice restaurant. I know my shirt from last night needs to be washed, but I’ve got another nice shirt in here somewhere. Your choice of where to eat and don’t worry about the money. You deserve something nice.”

“No, I don’t.” I really, really don’t.

His hands pause on the zipper as he glances at me, and my heart thrashes once against my rib cage. He is going to go nuclear with a hundred percent chance of radiation fallout.

“I want to do this,” he says. “Besides, we need to talk.”

The crackling of the zipper starts again. I jump to my feet and charge Noah like a linebacker in the Super Bowl, only I weigh a hundred and twenty and barely cause Noah’s hair to blow in the breeze. “Stop!”

I wrench his hands off his suitcase, and Noah grabs on to my fingers. “What are you doing?”

“I am so sorry.” My foot taps against the floor, and I shiver because this is so freaking bad. “I’m sorry. But you texted Mrs. Collins, and you told her that my mom called and then she texted me and I was so angry because that’s something my dad would have done, and I don’t want to be dating my dad. I mean, he’s a control freak and you’re not, so why would you contact her? And I was so angry that I did this and now I wish I didn’t do this, and I’m sorry.”

His dark eyes dart around my face. “Mrs. Collins told you that I texted her?”

“She told me that you told her.” A flash of anger and hurt strikes me like a lightning bolt, and I yank my hands away, remembering why I’ve done this. “How could you? It’s my decision if I want to talk to Mrs. Collins about my mom. Not yours.”

“I didn’t tell her,” he says.

“But if you didn’t...” Blood rushes out of my head, leaving me light-headed. I suck in a breath of air, but it stays in my mouth. “...and my dad didn’t...”

“Baby, you need to sit down.”

Little lights appear in my vision, and for a second, I think they’re pretty. A high-pitched ringing drowns out all other sounds...all other sounds but one.

“Fuck!”

Noah

With my knuckles, I rub the back of my head and when I inhale, the air contains a full dose of chlorine. I chuckle because what the fuck else is there to do?

“I am so sorry.” Echo stands beside me with her arms wrapped tight around her waist and stares at me with the most pathetic puppy dog eyes. After she realized that her mother, not me, had contacted Mrs. Collins, Echo hyperventilated. Scared the shit out of me, but after I sat her down and gave her some water, she returned to breathing normally.

Can’t exactly be mad at someone when you’re happy they’re okay, plus this...well...Echo’s got balls. “My boxer shorts are in the filter.”

She slams her eyes shut, and I extend an arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer to me. “It’s all good, baby. No harm, no foul...assuming management hasn’t figured it out, otherwise we’ll be staying in the tent tonight.”

Every article of clothing I own is floating at the top of or has sunk to the bottom of a small indoor rectangular pool. Our voices carry in the closed-in room, and because one thing today is going right, it’s completely empty except for us.

She groans and drops her forehead into my chest. “I threw your clothes in the pool and hot tub. You have got to be angry.”

Hot tub. Hadn’t caught that one yet. Sure enough, my button-down shirt drifts at the top. “Damn.”

“I’m so sorry,” she mumbles again into the fabric of my lone dry shirt. “Are you mad?”

Am I mad? I step back from Echo and pop my neck to the right. I’m not happy, but am I mad? The filter ejects a pair of my socks. Son of a bitch.

I bend my knees, and in a swift motion sweep Echo off her feet and toss her into the pool. Water splashes up and soaks part of my shirt and jeans, but at this point, I don’t care.

I crouch by the edge and watch as Echo kicks up from the bottom. Her red hair wildly fans out in the water, and as she breaks through to the surface, it slicks back against her head. She coughs, then drags in her first gulp of air. Damn if my siren doesn’t look sexy all wet and disheveled.

“Feel better?” she half chokes out.

“I’m not mad,” I respond.

“You forgot to add anymore.”

“My bad. Anymore.”

Echo laughs, and I smile along with her before releasing a long breath. The past couple of days have been like dragging Echo through glass in the middle of a firefight. If I’d known throwing her in a pool would erase the tension, I would have done it earlier. Guess there’s something to be said for baptism.

With some effort, Echo slides off her shoes and throws them onto the concrete. Then she peels off the sweater, also lobbing that to the side. I make a mental note to steal it when she’s not looking.

“I really am sorry.” She treads water in the middle of the pool, and I hate the shadow that crosses her face. “I didn’t stop to think that my mom would contact Mrs. Collins. I’m so used to Mom being gone, you know? It’s just...I don’t know.” She slaps the water with her hand. “Crap, Noah. I don’t know about any of this.”

“I get it.”

“Do you?” It’s there in her expression, the same desperation that mirrors the craziness clawing at my insides.

“Yeah, I do.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again. There’s a white silence in the closed-in room, and it makes her apology seem solemn. “For this. For all of it.”

“Me, too.” The water ripples around Echo as she stays afloat, and it eventually reaches the wall next to me. “Time to start bobbing for jeans.”

Her mouth squishes to the side and the contents of my stomach bottom out. “What?”

“I can’t open my eyes under water.”

“You’re kidding.”

Tiny voice. “No.”

Fuck me. I straighten, pull the shirt over my head and kick off my shoes and socks.

“What about your jeans?” Echo asks. “It’s just us and I’m cool with you swimming around in your boxers. You need at least one dry outfit.”

I glance at my jeans and they hang right at my hips. “It wasn’t a boxer type of day.”

Echo sinks and when she resurfaces, it’s only with her eyes then slowly up to her chin. “One of these days you are going to get us into a ton of trouble.”

“Baby, so far the trouble’s been on you. Breaking into guidance counselors’ offices—”

“That was you!”

“—tossing clothes into the pool.”

She splashes me as she kicks back.

I shake my head to get the water out of my hair. “You’re paying for that one, princess.”

“You have to catch me first,” she taunts as she grabs at a floating blob. My favorite black T-shirt smacks onto the concrete with a wet flop.

“Little full of yourself tonight, aren’t you?”

I love the light in her eyes. “I was the three-year-straight swimming champ.”

That I didn’t know. “So was I. Mine in the Y from third to fifth grade. What’s your story?”

Echo’s grin widens. “Backyard baby pool against Lila. Reigning preschool champ.”

“You’ve got me quaking in my boots.”

She goes under for the balled socks in the three foot section, and I eye the deep end. A pile of blue jeans covers the drain. Wonder how many quarters it will take to dry all of this. Doesn’t matter. The answer doesn’t get my clothes onto land. Like my dad taught me, I raise my hands over my head and dive in.

Echo

Dripping from head to toe and shivering so much that my brain rattles, Noah and I scurry down the hallway, each of us carrying a hundred-pound load of completely soaked clothes. Okay, only I scurry. Noah more or less struts, and I tote fifty pounds while Noah shoulders the rest.

My hands shake so badly that I miss the slot for the key card twice and breathe a sigh of relief when the door clicks open. The air conditioner I had turned down earlier in the day has officially become my worst enemy as goose bumps creep up my arm to my neck.

“Damn, Echo. Freezing meat?”

“I was hot.”

Noah dumps his clothes into a lump on the floor and readjusts the thermostat from arctic winter to what will eventually be tropical heat.

“Really?” I ask. “We’ve got to sleep in here.”

“Win the lottery?”

Good point. Even if our clothes weren’t drenched with pool water, hotel dryers cost a fortune to get clothes to somewhat damp. “So what’s the plan?”

“Lay them out flat and bring on the room heat. That is, after a shower.”

I drop my own bundle of clothes at the mere mention of a shower. Heat against my skin, soaking past my muscles to my bones. I’ve never yearned for anything more in my life. A cold bead of water escapes from my scalp, glides down my face and onto my chest. My teeth rattle, and Noah assesses me at the sound. “Let’s go before you turn hypothermic.”

“You’re letting me go first?”

“Do you think I’d make you wait?” Noah walks into the bathroom and I follow, rubbing my hands against my arms. He opens the shower curtain and leans over to turn on the water.

Good God, he’s gorgeous. Noah’s jeans ride low, low enough that if he hadn’t told me, I’d still know he wasn’t wearing boxers. Every single one of his glorious abs are exposed, and I even spot some of the smooth skin beneath the ripped-out muscles that lead to very private areas.

Warmth curls in my belly. A warmth I wish would spread through the rest of me. Water splashes against the tub, and my eyes widen when Noah flicks the button of his jeans through the hole.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Noah’s lips slowly form into that wicked grin I’m way too familiar with. Oh, crap. Just crap. “I’m cold, Echo, and so are you. A hot shower sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

I nod, too frightened I’ll squeak instead of speak. Noah and I have messed around, a lot. We’ve kissed and touched and shed clothes in moments where things became as hot as an inferno, but there’s always been a discreet air surrounding us.

Certain things stayed on when other things came off. Hands would wander below instead of a complete unveiling. And the times that we pushed beyond our normal boundaries and our blood rushed too hot for too long...there would be a blanket and one night, his black leather jacket.

After that delicious night, I will never smell leather again without blushing.

But now, this, standing in the middle of a hotel bathroom, Noah is suggesting that we strip ourselves of everything and huddle together behind a shower curtain and...well...bathe. That’s just...intimate.

“I...”

And Noah unzips his jeans. I spin on my heel, and my reflection in the mirror confirms the shock exploding in my body. My green eyes are too bright against my pale skin, and my drenched hair molds to my head and cheeks. Goose pimples outline my skin, and my body quakes.

Because they’re wet, Noah’s jeans are a bit stubborn sliding down, but he’s successful, and in the mirror I’m drawn to his naked body. I love the raw power of his shoulder blades and the curve of his back that trails lower to his...my mouth dries out...oh, crap...his butt is...how do I describe something so exquisite?

Everything about Noah is sexy, and as he bends to pull the jeans off his foot—

“If you get in the shower with me, Echo, you’d get a better look and you’d warm up.”

“I should get...my pj’s...so that they’re in here...when we...finish.” Or something.

“Finish?” he repeats with a tease. “I’m all about finishing.”

Internally screaming, I half turn and throw myself into what I believe is the doorway and instead ram into the corner of the wall. “Ow!”

My hands fly up to my bang line to cover the now possibly dented and crushed area of my skull. I am the most impaired person on the face of the planet.

“Echo?” Noah’s concern leaks into his voice, but I wave him off—without peeking.

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