Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5)(98)

“Hunter came looking for you. He said you left upset.”

Her forehead wrinkles, and I lose her to the water again. “He probably thinks I’m nuts.”

“Doesn’t matter what he thinks.”

Echo’s shoulders roll forward, and she appears to shrink. “That’s it, Noah. That’s why I’m here. I spent an entire summer searching for someone who’d tell me that I was good. To tell me that I had talent, and do you know where it got me?”

Me eating out of the palm of her hand? “Where?”

“Nowhere. I’m in the same exact place as I was before. Aires is still dead. The scars are still on my arms, and this big fat gaping wound in my chest is still there. I’ve tried everything to fill the void. I’ve tried art, and I’ve tried regaining the memories. I’ve tried pretending that I’m okay and that going forward is better.

“But nothing can replace Aires. Not you. Not the memories I fought so hard to recover. Not a relationship with my mother or father. Nothing. And to realize that he’s gone and that there’s nothing I can do about it...”

Echo’s voice breaks, and my soul cracks along with it. “It hurts, Noah. It hurts, and it’s here, and it’s becoming overwhelming, and Mrs. Collins is wrong because this whole talking-about-it crap hurts like hell!”

The word hell vibrates off the rock walls and repeats in the wind. We both jerk our heads to the sound.

“It’s an echo,” I tell her. Echo manically giggles, and I grab hold of that one thread. “Remember when you told me what your name meant?”

“I beat you at pool, and you stared at my chest.”

And her ass. “I let you win.”

“I handed your manhood to you on a platter.”

Yes, she did. “Echo was the girl who lost her voice, right?”

She nods.

“Then tell me who Aires was.”

Her forehead crumples. “Did you not hear me? This hurts. This whole Aires thing hurts. It doesn’t feel better to remember him. It doesn’t feel better to talk about him. It feels like someone is torturing me.”

“I know.” I press a hand over my chest, over my heart, understanding the exact location of the ache she’s referring to. “I get it. It’s like a pain you can’t stop suffering through. You think it has to stop at some point, but it doesn’t. I get it, Echo, and I’m telling you to tell me about Aires. Tell me the story.”

Echo’s lower lip trembles, and I don’t dare advance in her direction again because she keeps edging away the closer I try to get. I swear she wavers with the breeze. “Aires...”

“Come on, Echo. You can do it.”

“Aires...Aires was a ram.” She sadly smiles. “Which is fitting because he was so stubborn.”

“Just like you?” I ask, with a slight tease, and Echo blushes. I’m getting to her. I’m slowly sliding past the hurt to her heart. One step at a time. “Keep going.”

“A king took on a second wife.” The statement strangled with sarcasm. “And she hated the daughter and son that he had conceived from a previous marriage.”

I kick at a stone, and it bounces off the wall before it lands next to a protruding rock at the bottom. That’s a long way down. “Is that how you feel about Ashley?”

I expect a fast yes, but Echo winces. “No. It used to be, but no...I used to believe she hated me, but...anyhow...the stepmother devised this plan where the son was going to be sacrificed, and the son’s mother prayed to Zeus for him to stop it and Zeus sent Aires, the golden ram, to save them.”

“So this is one of the good stories.” Not like Echo’s name where the girl loses her voice then fades away into nothing.

“No...” Echo pauses. “It’s not. Aires saves the brother and the sister, but the girl still falls to her death, while the boy lived.” She trails off, and the wind whips through the trees, through Echo’s hair, and I hate that it pushes in the direction of over.

“Do you know what I used to think?” she asks.

I think I want her away from the edge. “What?”

“That the brother had to be mad at Aires.”

“Why?”

Echo’s eyes harden into stone. “Aires’s one job was to save both of them, and he only saved one.”

“I’m mad at my mom.” Damn me to hell, I said the words. I admitted it, and the guilt of feeling this way about someone I loved and who is dead destroys me. “I’m mad my mom didn’t tell me about her family. I’m mad at both of my parents for not having a will. For not figuring out their shit enough to secure a future for me and my brothers in case they died. I’m f*cking pissed that they didn’t change the batteries in the fire detectors, and I’m even more f*cking pissed that they died.”

My chest pumps rapidly, and I can’t control the intake of air. Echo seems to mimic the same ability to not breathe, and her hand goes to the nape of her neck as if she can wrench free the invisible noose. “I can’t be mad.”

“Why not?” I shout. “Because I am. And here’s the thing. It doesn’t change that I loved them.”

I dig deep, thinking of what my uncle said. It’s not my fault my parents died. My mother would be proud of me...even if I’m pissed. Especially that I’m pissed. “Being mad doesn’t change that they died. Not being mad, acting like they were perfect...it doesn’t bring them back.”