Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits #1.5)(3)

“How’s Ashley?” My stepmom, and an excellent change of subject.

A year ago she was my wicked stepmother from Oz. Now she’s my stepmom who means well, but doesn’t know when to stop. Like when I ask her thoughts on an outfit, and I’m not really searching for complete and utter honesty, and she drones on for twenty minutes about how I should wear something that flatters my figure because, let’s be honest, God blessed me in the top area, but fell short on the hip portion...yeah, that’s how Ashley talks.

“She’s good. Alexander still wakes up at night so she’s having a rough time functioning during the day. I’m worried that she’s sleep deprived.”

“Uh-huh.” Try two years of insomnia, then we can discuss tired.

“Where are you heading next?” he asks.

“We’re going to stay in Colorado Springs for the next two nights, then we’ll head to Denver. Noah and I are visiting a gallery there. This one is huge. I hear people have been trying to get an invite into this show for weeks.”

“That’s good.”

That’s good. I roll my eyes. The men in my life don’t understand the biggest part of me. Sometimes Noah shows the same disappointing amount of enthusiasm.

“I assume Noah’s treating you well,” Dad says, like he’s one hundred percent on board with me being on this road trip with—how did he refer to Noah before I left Louisville? Oh, yeah, as a guy I barely knew, that is if I really paused and thought this through. Which, according to him, he doesn’t believe I did, but hey, I’m here and Dad’s in Louisville. I won this round.

“He’s treating me great.” My dad and Noah have an unsteady relationship. Dad respects Noah for seeing beyond my scars and for being there for me during an awful period this past spring, but he’s still wary.

On the outside, Noah can still come across as the rough foster-care kid, and what parent would be thrilled with his daughter taking off for an entire summer with a guy half her school is terrified of? The day before Noah and I left, Dad sat me down and talked to me for a long time about how “this is a phase in your life” and not to do anything I would “regret” and that if I ever needed him, to call.

“Echo...”

Warning flags. The use of my name along with any dramatic pause by my father means bad, bad—very bad—news. I accidentally forgot your favorite stuffed animal at the hotel...your mother is bipolar...your brother, Aires, is being deployed to Afghanistan. Bad news.

“I’m considering selling the house.”

“Oh.” I slump back in my seat, half relieved to discover that the plague hasn’t been intentionally released into the world, but then a sickening sensation strikes. “Oh.”

“I’ve considered it for years,” he continues. “But it was your home, and I didn’t want to take something else away from you after you’d lost so much.”

Like how I’d lost Aires when he died in Afghanistan, or how I’d lost my mind after a visit with my mother went horribly wrong at the end of my sophomore year of high school.

That type of lost.

“But now that you’ve graduated and are moving on, I thought Ashley and I could start somewhere...” He cuts himself off.

“New,” I finish for him.

There’s a crackling silence on the line, and Dad releases a heavy sigh. “Yes.”

He’s not replacing me. He’s not shoving me away. Yes, Dad has a new wife and a new baby, but I’m not being thrown out of this family. I’m part of it. I’ve talked this over with my therapist, Mrs. Collins, again and again, but the nagging doubt still slices through me like a ragged knife.

“What are your thoughts on my selling the house?” he asks.

I’ll miss sitting in the garage and watching Aires’s ghost work on his car as he counseled me through my high school life crises. I’ll miss staring at the constellations my mother painted on the ceiling of my room. I’ll miss the happy memories. That house has been one of the few constants in my life.

A knot in my throat keeps me from saying those things. My world’s changing again, and sometimes I hate change. “Mom called this morning.”

The hydrogen bomb I dropped alters the entire conversation.

* * *

I ram my thumb on the icon for Off and toss my cell onto the table. Blood swooshes in my veins, and each throb in my temple ticks me off more. Obviously, Dad and I were never meant to see eye to eye.

With his legs kicked out onto the sidewalk and his fingers laced across his stomach, Noah regards me from across the table. “Vexed?”

“Vexed? Did we enter medieval times?”

“It means mad,” he says.

“I know what it means. Why are you using it?”

He shrugs casually. “It was an ACT word. Figured if I had to learn the shit I might as well use it.”

I giggle in spite of myself then stop when dread weighs down my entire body. “Yeah, I’m vexed.”

Noah edges my ignored latte toward me. I pick it up and attempt to disappear by pulling my legs along with me onto the seat. “Dad doesn’t get it.”

He says nothing and glowers at the mountains in the distance. Noah overheard most of the conversation between me and Dad, at least my side of it. I drink, and the latte is like little shards of heaven in my mouth. A part of me relaxes with the introduction of caffeine into my system.