Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5)(37)

Isaiah extends his hand, and we share a short shake. “Tell Echo I’m not freeloading. I’ll cover me and Beth.”

“It’s all good.” But as I walk out the door, I’m drowning in worry.





Echo

I should have brought pepper spray.

Noah bought me some the day before he started his shift at the St. Louis Malt and Burger. Even though the campsite we stayed at was so family friendly it bordered on annoying, and despite the fact that I planned to call on art galleries, Noah felt uneasy with me being alone.

He also tried to teach me how to throw a punch, but all I ended up doing was accidentally kneeing him in the crotch. As he held on to the trunk of the car, half bent over, he didn’t see the humor, but I giggled.

The memory causes me to pause outside the coffee shop. After the past few days, thinking of such a lighthearted time with Noah honestly stings. If going home is the problem, maybe we should stay away forever.

A part of me floats—maybe we should.

At a back table of the coffee shop, Hunter looks up from a sketch pad and spots me. In seconds, he moves from startled to relieved, then waves.

“Not the Bates Motel.” I enter and inhale the rich scent of ground coffee beans.

It’s a quaint shop with seven older-than-me round wooden tables and just as worn wooden seats. What I like are the raw sketches tacked onto the walls, creating a wallpaper of art in progress. I feel like a missionary Jesuit priest walking into St. Peter’s Basilica and a bit like a child skipping into Disney World—small, high and enlightened.

Near the front, two girls with their heads huddled together whisper intently, and midway through the shop, a guy has his legs propped up on a chair as he sketches with charcoal. Behind the counter, a cute girl with blond hair slicked into a ponytail sits on a stool and reads a worn paperback with yellow pages. She gives me a cursory glance and when she notices Hunter stand, she returns to the words on the page.

“Now, that look,” says Hunter, “is what I like. That means you like my shop.”

“Your shop?”

In a dark blue button-down short-sleeve shirt and too-baggy-for-him jeans, Hunter flashes an I’m-a-proud-daddy smile. “Opened it four years ago on my twenty-fifth birthday.”

In other words, he’s much older than me, still sort of young, and is business savvy.

I smirk. No reason to make his life easy just because he’s an artist and established. Though I won’t admit it to Noah, the guy did creep me out this morning. “Is that your way of getting me to share?”

He laughs. “Maybe.”

And I’m smart enough to not answer, for now. “Let’s discuss the painting.”

“Fair enough. Coffee?”

I’d love coffee, but for the moment, it’s best not to accept drinks. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

He motions for us to sit, and when I do I become enthralled with the sketch of a baby cuddling near a delicate shoulder.

“It’s for my sister,” he says. “She had her first child last month.”

“It’s good,” I respond. Very good.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

I comb my fingers through my hair, wishing I did accept his offer for a drink so I’d have something to fiddle with. Hunter Gray is a name I’ve heard several times this summer. He’s some sort of an artistic genius that exploded into the art scene a couple of years ago. Some people at shows mocked him for his success and his indifferent attitude to the art community, and some people called him courageous and gushed about him like he was a rock star. With all that was said, nobody ever trashed his work. It was wildly understood that he is exceptional.

And I told him one of his paintings was wrong. “I’m sorry.”

His sandy-blond hair is a little like Noah’s in the front, but unlike Noah’s, it’s long everywhere else. The waves lick his shoulders. “That’s your name?”

Just crap, he had asked me a question and I spazzed. “No, it’s Echo.” Leaving off the Emerson because I’m not giddy about involving my mom.

He falls back into his seat, causing the wood to squeak. “That’s definitely better than I’m sorry. And the pissed naked guy at your hotel room would be your brother?”

“My boyfriend—Noah.” And he had jeans on.

“Figured. The beautiful girls seem to have those.”

There’s a muttered “Humph” from behind the counter, and while I assess the girl, Hunter keeps his eyes on me. Rushed by the sensation of being on display, I slip my hand along the scars of my left arm. I should have worn the sweater, but I was so mad at Noah that I forgot.

“So...the painting?” I say, circling the conversation back around.

He leans forward and picks up the pencil he’d been drawing with. “Let’s discuss it, Echo with no last name and who must be old enough to travel with her boyfriend. Tell me which would you do—paint in the star, or do what you said and make the area where it’s missing darker?”

Not caring for how he stares at me like I’m announcing the cure for cancer, I grab a napkin out of the dispenser and fold the edges. “What did you intend for it to be?”

“To be the full constellation, but when I tried to fix it last night, I couldn’t. I kept hearing your voice yapping about constellations and how they represent the sum of their parts. But what struck me was when you mentioned a darkness because something is missing from your soul. I realized at three in the morning that I wanted the painting to be that and more.”