Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5)(75)
“Are you ready to discuss what happened this morning?” she asks.
No. “It can wait.”
“Are we alone?”
“Yeah.” My body screams to stride over to her, wrap my arms around her waist, kiss her until she’s drunk on me and slowly remove every article of clothing on her body. Because I love Echo, and she deserves respect, I hitch my thumbs in my pockets and cock a hip against the wall. “Homework?”
She squishes her lips to the side. “No. Yes. I don’t know. If I get enough of it done in time, Hunter says he’ll enter this and ten of my sketches in his work-in-progress wall at the Denver Art Festival.”
This is where I bite back the crappy comment and prod for where she’s at on this. Echo can give me shit all she wants about what I say and do, but in the end, I’m learning fast. “Denver—is it a good thing or a carnie sideshow?”
Echo giggles, and her laughter plays along my skin, easing some of the stress built from my conversation with Hunter. “Carnie sideshow?”
“Tilt-a-whirl, Guess Your Weight, cotton candy and hot dog purging, Traumatized Goldfish Games. Carnie sideshow.”
“It’s not a carnie sideshow, but there’d be a ton less pressure on me if it was.” She gets lost in the painting again.
I walk over, rest on the bed beside her and slide my fingers along the nape of her neck. “Jesus, Echo. You’re cement blocks.”
Echo waggles her eyebrows. “Are you going to rub the tension away?”
Any room I had before in my pants vanishes. She means the tension in her neck. In her neck alone. I cup both hands over her shoulders and begin to knead out the knots. I love how she dips her head forward, and her muscles melt under my touch.
A soft moan leaves her lips, and screw me, that sound vibrates to my toes. I clear my throat. “Denver’s a good thing, then?”
Any ground I’d gained with her muscles I lost with the question, but I keep massaging her shoulders. It’s not a sacrifice to have an excuse to touch her smooth skin.
“It’s a good thing,” she replies. “He wants to put up the sketches I did of your hands.”
My fingers still. “My hands?”
“Uh...yeah... I...um...” Heat radiates from her neck, and red splotches develop. “Sometimes, after we made out and stuff, you’d fall asleep, and I’d sketch your hands because...well...” The blush spreads from her neck to her face. “I...uh...liked how you touched me so I wanted to draw your hands.”
When Echo used to draw, I saw the picture on the paper. Being with her this summer, seeing her create, experiencing the same day together, I understand now that there’s a meaning in what she chooses to draw. Echo wasn’t drawing my hands, she was drawing us.
“You can draw my hands anytime you want.” A surge of pride wells deep within me. Unable to contain it, I let the hands in question glide down her arms. I press my lips to the spot below her ear, and she leans back into me.
My hands sneak around her waist, and she links our fingers together. I pull her tight to me, and Echo admires the canvas again.
“When’s the art show?” I ask.
“The end of next week.”
Next week. Thursday or Friday. The time we need to leave so I can attend Jacob’s last game. My teeth click together.
“If he puts my work in the show, I’d like to be there,” she says quietly.
I’d miss my brother play ball. He asked me to come. I told him I’d try. “I don’t know.”
“I know.” Echo slips away. “You don’t have to decide now. He was sort of speaking gibberish by the end of the conversation, so I have no idea if it’s going to happen.”
Guilt eats at me over how casual she’s behaving. This is important to her, but part of me is ready to head home. It’s time for us to go back to our real life and figure us out there. It’ll be easier when we go home. Much easier. That is if Echo wants to return home with me.
She releases my hand and turns to face me. “If my work is displayed in the show...what if I stay and you go home?”
My eyes flash to hers. “Leave without you?”
She shrugs and immediately casts her gaze down at her lap. “It’s not like you enjoy the shows anyhow, and I know you’re ready to go home and see your brothers, and we’ll be okay away from each other, right? Like we’re okay if we don’t see each other every day?”
“Are you asking for time away from me?”
“No! I’m saying there are things that are important to you, and there are things that are important to me, and we’ll be okay together if we pursue them separately, right?”
It’s happening. What Mia said, what Hunter said, all of my fears...Echo’s moving forward...without me.
“Noah...” Her head falls back, and she stares at the ceiling like she’s saying a silent prayer. “Hunter asked me to study with him here in Colorado...for the year...and I might want to do it, and I was wondering what you thought?”
I think someone slashed me open with a rusty blade, and I strive for numb. Why did I decide to feel again? I was good at numb. I survived well on numb.
Echo’s eyes plead with me as she waits for an answer.
Stay with me.
Not here.
Not with him.
Katie McGarry's Books
- Long Way Home (Thunder Road, #3)
- Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)
- Chasing Impossible (Pushing the Limits, #5)
- Dare You To (Pushing the Limits, #2)
- Take Me On (Pushing the Limits #4)
- Crash into You (Pushing the Limits, #3)
- Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1)
- Walk the Edge (Thunder Road, #2)
- Walk The Edge (Thunder Road #2)
- Nowhere But Here (Thunder Road #1)