Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1)(97)

“She can’t hurt you ever again.” My father held my bandaged hand, tears pouring down his face.

“Go to sleep,” my mother cooed, lying on the floor next to me, my blood creeping toward her on the floor.

My father scooped me up and cradled me in the hospital bed. “I’ll scare the nightmares away. I promise. Please, just sleep.”

And the constant screaming stopped and I gasped between shallow breaths and a cold, calm hospital room blinked into view. A woman in blue scrubs finished pushing something in an IV line and gave me a small smile before walking away.

My eyelids became heavy and I fought it.

“Go to sleep, baby.” Noah’s voice soothed like balm on a wound.

I swallowed and turned my heavy head to the sound of his voice. “She drugged me.”

He gave me a sad smile and squeezed the hand he held. “Welcome back.”

My voice was slurred. “She put all of the sleeping pills in the tea without me knowing and she gave me a glass.”

His lips pressed against my hand. “You need to rest.”

My eyes flickered. “I want to wake up.”

“Sleep, Echo. I’m right here and I swear I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”





NOAH


“Still here, Noah?” Mrs. Collins strode into Echo’s hospital room. “Mr. Emerson said you brought her in.”

I raked a hand through my hair in an attempt to wake my brain. Echo had slept through the entire night. I spent most of it staring at her, holding her hand, and sometimes drifting off in the chair. “Yeah.”

Mrs. Collins’s blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore blue jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Dragging a chair to the other side of the bed, she took Echo’s hand. “Has her dad been down?”

“He stayed here for a couple of hours last night, but they’d already put her to sleep before he showed. He talked to the doctor before he went back to help Ashley feed the baby.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“That he’ll know if her mind cracked when she wakes up.”

She let out a brief sarcastic chuckle. “Is that how he put it?”

“That’s my own spin.” My thumb caressed Echo’s hand. She slept on her own now. They hadn’t given her anything else to keep her calm or help her sleep. Nothing to do now but wait. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

Mrs. Collins cocked an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you asked. You know better than I do that she’s a fighter.”

I relaxed back in the chair. It felt good to hear someone else say it. But still, after watching her fight for her sanity last night … How much could a mind take?

“Did you know she saw her mother yesterday?” asked Mrs. Collins.

Muscles tensed again. “What?”

“Yep. She sure surprised me. I didn’t know Echo had it in her to defy her father. Guess you were a bigger influence than I gave you credit for. She used her trips to different art galleries to find her mom. Left letters for her everywhere until her mother finally agreed to meet.”

“How do you know this?”

“I guess the meeting didn’t go well and her mother called her father and told him to find Echo.”

Damn. Just damn. And she’d tried to save me. Echo wanted to know what happened to her, but had been terrified to remember. I’d never really understood. Yesterday must have pushed her mind over the edge—seeing her mother, fixing Aires’ car, almost becoming a felon. I knotted my fingers with her lifeless ones. I promise, Echo, I’ll take care of you now and forever.

“You really didn’t know, did you?”

“Had no clue.” I thought about what she said. “Mr. Emerson didn’t go after her, did he?”

Mrs. Collins tucked the blanket tighter around Echo. “Ashley went into labor after the phone call. The baby came early.”

Once again, second place. The story of Echo’s life. Echo had a habit of making me feel like a dick in comparison to her and today would be no exception. She left me so I could have a family, making her—alone. How could I ever have let her walk away?

“I’m proud of you, Noah.”

The past twenty-four hours had been one long nightmare. I lost my brothers. Echo came close to losing her mind. “Why is it when people are proud of me that my life sucks?”

“Because growing up means making tough choices, and doing the right thing doesn’t necessarily mean doing the thing that feels good.”

We sat in silence and listened to the sound of Echo’s light breathing and the steady beep of the heart monitor. My heart ached with the promises I silently made to her and longed to fulfill. She’d never be alone again.

“She had a moment before she fell asleep,” I said. “She said her mother drugged her with sleeping pills. Echo cried a lot during the hallucination or whatever you want to call it. Sounded like her mom was in a depression, decided to kill herself, and then Echo showed. Psycho mom changed the plan to include her.”

Mrs. Collins sighed and patted Echo’s hand. “Then she remembers.”





Echo

Mrs. Collins sent me an encouraging smile when the tiny pieces of tissue fell from my hands onto the blanket. “Sorry,” I said. I shifted in the hospital bed and sighed when more tiny pieces fell to the floor.