Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1)(44)

“How are you going to react when we’re this close and you take off my shirt? Are you still going to want me when you see red and white lines? Are you going to flinch each time you accidentally touch my arms and feel the raised skin? How about when I touch you?”

She pulled away from me, leaving my body cold after experiencing her warmth. “Or will you forbid that? Will you tell me how to dress or what I’m allowed to take off?”

Her anger only fed mine. “For the last time, I don’t give a f*ck about your scars.”

“Liar,” she spat. “Because the only way anyone will ever be okay with me is if they love me. Really love me enough to not care that I’m damaged. You don’t love people. You have sex with them. So how could you want to be with me?”

She’d summed me up perfectly. I didn’t love people—only my brothers. Echo deserved more. Better than me. One shot. Take it or go home. Kiss her and risk an attachment or leave her and watch some other guy enjoy what could have been mine.





Echo

When I graduated from high school I planned on painting a plaque for Mrs. Collins: Therapy Stinks. Pink and white with polka dots to match the curtains on the windows.

“Sorry I had to reschedule your session and take you out of business technology. The conference in Cincinnati was fabulous! Are you ready for the Valentine’s Dance tomorrow? When I was a teenager, we had dances on Fridays instead of a Saturday like you.” Mrs. Collins hunted through the growing stacks of papers and folders on her desk for my file. How could she misplace the thing? Thanks to her copious note taking, my three-inch file had grown to four.

She placed a folder off to the side and the name caught my eye—Noah Hutchins. We hadn’t talked in a week and a half. Okay—not totally true. Last week, he’d taken thirty seconds before calculus to download his latest plan of attack. He planned on disrupting my therapy session to ask Mrs. Collins for some type of form. He hoped she’d leave the office and I could gain access to our files. It didn’t happen. Noah stormed out of her office ten minutes before the end of his session and never returned.

I wanted to talk to him on Monday when he, Beth and Isaiah came over for the next tutoring/car repair session, but he kept our conversation exclusively on calculus. When we finished studying, he cut up with Beth and Isaiah, purposely keeping me out of their loop.

Not that I blamed Noah for avoiding me. I’d said some pretty horrible things to him in my garage. Things I had no idea how to take back. Besides, how would I even begin to explain why I’d been in such a foul mood?

Earlier that day, I’d learned that Ashley carried a boy in her precious little baby bump. Ashley had lain on the table, staring at the black-and-white swishing screen, and said, “Oh, Echo. You’ll have a brother again.” Again. Like I lost a puppy and she cooked me up another. I wasn’t interested in a replacement.

Noah had come over to my house that afternoon and rocked my world with Isaiah’s car knowledge. He didn’t have to bring Isaiah, or share memories of his family. Once again, he showed me what an incredibly awesome guy he really was and what did I do? I threw it in his face that he slept with every girl who offered herself up to him. I told him he didn’t know how to love because he couldn’t tell me what I wanted so badly to hear from him. That he wanted more than my body—that he wanted me.

“Yes. I’m ready for the dance,” I told Mrs. Collins, returning to reality.

“Fantastic. Ah, there it is.” She flipped open my file and rewarded herself with a sip of her new addiction, Diet Coke. “I’d like to discuss your mother today.”

“What?” No one discussed my mother.

“Your mom. I’d like to discuss your mom. Actually, there’s an exercise I’d like to try with you. Can you describe her in five words or less?”

Bipolar. Beautiful. Erratic. Talented. Unreliable. I chose the safe answer. “She loved Greek mythology.”

Mrs. Collins sat back in her seat, revealing jeans and a blue button-down shirt. “I think of chocolate chip cookies when I think of my mom.”

“I’m pretty sure you know my mom isn’t the cookie-baking type.” Or the mom type.

She chuckled. I didn’t mean it to be funny. “Did she teach you the myths?”

“Yes, but she focused on the constellations.”

“You’re smiling. I don’t see you do that in my office very often.”

My mom. My crazy, crazy mother. “When she was on, my mother was on. You know?”

“No. Explain.”

My foot began to rock. “She … um … I don’t know.”

“What do you mean by your mom being on?”

My mouth dried out as if I hadn’t drunk in days. I really hated talking about her. “I realize now that my favorite moments with my mom were her manic episodes. It kind of stinks because now the only good memories I have are tainted. The way she smiled at me made me feel so important. She painted the constellations on my ceiling with glow-in-the-dark paint. We’d lie in bed and she’d tell me the stories over and over again. Some nights she’d shake me to keep me awake.”

Mrs. Collins tapped her pen against her chin. “Constellations, huh? Think you could still pick them out?”

I shrugged, shifting in my seat. My foot clicked repeatedly against the floor. What temperature did she have the room set at? Ninety? “I guess. I haven’t looked at the stars in a while.”