Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5)(93)

I shake my head as if to shake away the reality. To deny what really happened. “Mom wasn’t the type to stay up. My job was to be home on time for curfew.”

I still remember the way my heart picked up speed when the car I was riding in turned the corner and I spotted the lick of flames shooting out of my younger brother’s window on the second floor. How the car hadn’t fully stopped when I bolted out of the backseat and ran up the front walk and kicked open the front door.

The girl I had been with was screaming my name and so were her parents, but they didn’t follow. No one followed.

The smoke was thick, and I hunched over in a fit of coughs. The urge was to go up, into the heart of the fire, to drag out the people who meant the most to me in life, but then I heard the small voices of my brothers, and I realized in that moment that I loved them more.

My head drops, and a single tear falls down my face. I loved them more.

“You did exactly what your mother would have wanted. She loved you boys more than her own life.”

“Got all that from two phone calls a year?” I attempt to shut the emotion down, but the rough sound of my voice confirms we’re past that point.

“There are some things in life that you can know about a person in thirty seconds. She loved you, Noah. With all her heart, all her soul and all her mind.”

“I didn’t go after her or my dad,” I admit, and I slam my eyes shut. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been four years since my last confession. “I didn’t fight hard enough.”

“There was nothing you could have done. Saving your brothers was an extraordinary feat.”

The sight of my mother bowing her head during service sweeps into my mind as she reverently mumbled the prayer—that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do...

I failed in saving them. “I handed Jacob and Tyler off to neighbors. The police were there, and the firefighters just pulled up and I turned back for the door, but this guy—” it’s difficult to breathe “—this guy stepped in my way.”

Bigger than me, but not badder than me. I had never been in a fight. Had never thrown a punch, and the thought never crossed my mind. I never dreamed of laying out the man preventing me from rescuing my parents. A mistake, I swore after the fact, that would never happen again.

Echo’s expression the day I shoved that * into the building and the words I said to her later replay in my mind... No one f*cks with you, Echo. I’m protecting her the only way I know how. In ways that I was too weak to do for my parents.

“And when I tried to run past, another guy stepped in, and I let them stop me. I let them keep me from going back in.”

“Your parents were already dead. They died of smoke inhalation. Not of burns. They probably drifted away in their sleep. The fire detectors weren’t working. There was no warning for any of them. You saved the only people who could be saved. It’s time for you to let this guilt go. It’s time for you to start moving forward. Just like your mother would have wanted.”

With my head in my hands, I rock in the seat, unable to keep the explosion of emotions from killing me. “I should have fought harder for her. I should have tried!”

“She would have wanted you to fight for yourself. To fight for your own life. You saved the parts of her soul that meant the world to her. You honored your mother and your father that night. You honored them with the devotion to your brothers. You honor them by sitting here, searching for people who you honestly shouldn’t be searching for.

“Your mother named you Noah because you had already done what you are so desperately worried you failed at...you saved her...you gave her a second chance.”

I blink, trying to understand.

“The story, son. I know your mother would have told you the Bible story.”

God told Noah a flood was coming to destroy the earth and He promised to save Noah, his family and all the other creatures of the earth if Noah obeyed and built an ark.

“God gave Noah and his family a second chance,” he continues. “Your father’s love rescued your mother, but you, you were her first glimpse at her new world.”

I lean back in the seat and let the wall handle my burden, handle my weight, because I’m too weak to shoulder it alone anymore. Echo and Beth and Isaiah. Each of us cursed with weight too heavy for anyone to carry. Troubles no one should have to face.

“If you allow me to be a priest instead of your uncle for a minute...”

When I say nothing, he goes on, “God sifts us like wheat. He refines us like flour. He works through the good in our lives and through the bad. He’s preparing us to become who He wants us to be. You can look at what’s happened in your young life as a burden, or you can see it for what it is—God refined you early. Made you a man before most. You have two options—you can deny it or you can embrace it. Your mother chose to embrace it. My prayer for you is that you do the same.”

Run, or stand my ground and be a man.

Last night, even though I thought my intentions were correct, I ran, and I hurt Echo. I’m done running. It’s time to be a man. “This doesn’t mean I believe in God.”

He chuckles. “Your mother was also stubborn. Stubborn as a damn mule.”

I laugh, and he laughs along with me. “Dad used to say the same thing, and Mom would wear this look that said that she knew he was right, but she was too stubborn to admit it.”