Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits #1.5)(32)

“Like you give me the out?” I hedge. Noah never pushes me. Ever.

“I need you to be sure.” Noah meets my eyes. “I want it to be different with us. I don’t want you to view me as some sort of prize you scored or as the * that used you. I don’t want to lose the way you look at me—like I’m something...someone. I’ve survived a lot, but I don’t think I can survive if you regretted it. It would kill me if you looked at me any different than you do now.”

There are moments when your heart breaks and melts at the same time. When there’s so much love flooding your soul that you’re drowning in the tide. This is that moment with Noah. “I could never look at you differently.”

Noah stares at the floor, and his voice gets strained. “I hope not.”

The direction of the conversation bothers me. More than I would have thought it would. “Don’t you trust how I feel? What I say?”

Noah’s that soft place I fall. He makes me laugh. I can talk to him for hours, plus he makes every area of my body hot and drives it close to the brink of insanity. I love him. He loves me. Why am I hesitant to make love to Noah? What is it that I don’t trust?

“Someday, Echo, you’re going to wake up and realize that you’re more than me. That everyone you know is right. That I’m a phase that’ll die out. Someday I won’t be the man you want to walk down the street with.”

A slow, agonizing burn tortures my stomach as I replay his last statement. “You don’t trust me?”

A long heavy silence. I might as well be suffocating.

“Probably as much as you trust me.” He clears his throat. “Which is more than I trust anyone else in my life.”

I am suffocating, and that sting in my chest is the lack of air. It’s creating a strange numbness throughout my mind and limbs. “I guess that’s good.”

But is it enough to help us last beyond a few months of living in a bubble?

“Do you ever think...” I cut myself off while focusing on a framed print of fir trees on the wall.

“Do I ever think what?”

“Are you scared that we’re going to be heading home soon? Back to everything that threatens to pull us apart?” This summer was supposed to change me, and it hasn’t. I’m returning the same person as when I left.

Noah nods, and his agreement smarts more than it should.

“What does that mean for us?” I ask.

Noah releases a long breath and crosses his arms over his chest.

My fingers shake as I shove my hair away from my face. “Did we leave Kentucky because we didn’t believe we’d last if we stayed?”

“I don’t know.” Noah kneads his eyes and when he lowers his hands he repeats, “I don’t know.”

Noah

Flames lick along the stairwell, blocking the only way up, and it’s the coughing from the living room that keeps me from charging the bedrooms. Smoke smothers my eyesight...my ability to breathe.

It’s dark. Too dark to see, but a burst of color from something electrical exploding in the kitchen creates a flash that illuminates my brothers on the floor. Jacob lying over a lifeless Tyler.

“Jacob!” I shout, and he lifts his head.

“Noah!” He hacks so hard that I’m afraid he’s choking—dying. Fear grips me like it never has before. They’re dying. My family is dying.

My lungs constrict and burn. I cough then crouch to move along the floor. Jacob launches himself at me. My heart beats again with the feel of tiny arms around my neck and the sight of Tyler’s chest fighting upward for air.

Sweat beads on my brow. The heat threatens to melt my skin. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

“Upstairs.”

Upstairs. Nausea rolls through my stomach. My brothers out first. Then my parents. Maybe they escaped through the back. Out the window, down the tree. But this paralyzing panic eats the logic. They’d never leave without Jacob and Tyler. Never.

Behind me, the flames dance closer to the door. Protect them—a screaming mantra in my brain. I grab two blankets off the floor, wrap my brothers up and race for the exit.

Two steps to go for the foyer and there’s a crack from above. In pure instinct, I turn my body and huddle Tyler and Jacob close to my chest. A rush of hot air, embers flying around and pain slams into my shoulder. I yell out as fire feeds off my shirt, and I dart through a wall of flames for the door. Jesus Christ, I’m on fire.

My eyes shoot open, and my body jolts. There’s a pounding through my bloodstream, and my heart’s a damn freight train. I’m not a nightmare type of guy. Never have been, but sometimes, my mind replays my past.

It’s a nightmare that reminds me that I failed, and as I inhale, I remember the promise that I swore to Echo the night she recovered her memory...I won’t fail her...never again.

I glance over at the clock. It’s still early. Echo’s locked in my arms, and I’m surprised she didn’t wake when I squeezed the life out of her. She let me hold her as she slept, and it was my sole comfort in a long, torturous night. Our last words hanging over me like a guillotine.

Echo shifts, and her bottom presses into me. I take advantage and draw her closer. Her tank rides up, and I rest my palm against the heat of her stomach. I lived too long in cold isolation before Echo stumbled into my life, bringing her warmth and love. When we drove out of Louisville, we seemed indestructible.