Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits #1.5)(77)

In the distance people yell as if encouraging someone to do something. I nod in agreement with Isaiah’s words, but it leaves an emptiness in my stomach. A car parks beside us, and we remain quiet as five people pile out of a four-door sedan.

One girl stops laughing the moment she notices Isaiah, and then she smiles again when she surveys me like I’m about to flirt with her boyfriend, and she knows I don’t have a shot.

Isaiah stiffens. Crap, he senses a threat.

The group continues to the party and when they’re far enough away I say, “What was that?”

“What?”

I gesture to the group. “That. She looked at us strange, and then you got all tight.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He does, but he’s not spilling. “You should go find Beth.”

Isaiah hooks an arm around my neck, reminding me a lot of how Aires used to treat me. “You’re hanging with me and Beth tonight.”

“You said I should give Noah space.”

Isaiah leads me away from the crowd. “He knows some people from work. Besides, Noah’s always found someone to hang with at parties. Me and you, we’ll have a couple of beers and babysit Beth after she gets high. It’ll be fun.”

I snort. “Lots of fun.”

“Two beers in, and you’ll find a happy place. Besides, Noah will be shit-faced drunk in an hour and will be pathetic and will grovel on his knees because he was an ass.”

A part of me aches because he won’t. Another part of me wishes with all my soul that it happens.

Noah

I raise the plastic cup to my mouth and glance at Echo from the corner of my eye. She cradles a matching red cup in her hands, and it’s the same one she’s nursed since she settled near the bonfire. If she’s concerned about me, she sure as hell keeps it locked tight.

Occasionally, Isaiah makes her laugh. Beth causes her to drop her head, but she stays interested in that damn fire.

We’ve been here an hour, and I should be trashed. I should be numb, carried away by alcohol or the pot offered to me multiple times. Instead, nausea eats at my gut. No matter how many times I consider slinking back into my old life, my eyes drift to Echo, and I can’t cross the line. She deserves better than me, but I guess she knows it.

She’s going to leave me.

For a year.

Then forever.

Echo finally looks up and inches her gaze my way. Angling away from her, I return my attention to the group of people I work with at the Malt and Burger. Someone tells the punch line to their dirty joke, and I’m the only one who doesn’t laugh. My insides shred into nothing.

Echo once said that it was easier to go back than to go forward. She’s right. Anger is a hell of a lot better than pain.

“The redhead. That’s your good girl, isn’t it?” Mia slides up beside me like a snake in tall grass.

“She came.”

“And she’s not hanging out with you.” Mia’s eyes are glazed over, and she stumbles into me with a gust of wind. “I remembered your tattooed friend. I almost told her that we f*cked each other’s brains out last summer because I bet you didn’t. Twenty dollars the truth would end this doomed relationship.”

A rush of adrenaline and anger pushes into my veins. “What did you do, Mia?”

“Nothing, but I should have. My boy—” she points at Echo and I lower her hand to keep Echo from noticing, but Echo peers over the moment my hand touches hers “—did the same thing. After he became focused on school and started to get bored with me. I brought him to a party and he was all downer. At one point, the look on his face...”

Tears dot Mia’s eyelashes, and her lower lip trembles. Damn. She’s one of those emotional drunks. “He was disgusted with me.”

I check on Echo again, and she pours the remains of her drink to the ground. Echo then stands and brushes the grass off her ass. She starts for the cars, and my heart stops. Beth jerks to life, and she calls Echo’s name. Echo hesitates then crouches next to Beth. There’s at least fifty high guys here and my girl doesn’t need to be alone.

“Now you’re interested in Echo?” Isaiah says beside me.

“Go away,” slurs Mia. “That girl is no good for him. It’s ending between them, and neither one of them wants to admit it. But it’s there. The last sign is there.”

“What sign?” I stare at her like she possesses the most important answer in the world, and Isaiah glares at her like she’s a threat.

“Remember me?” she says with a sly smile to Isaiah, ignoring my question.

“Private conversation going on between me and him,” Isaiah replies.

Mia snort-laughs and points to the tree line. “I’ll be over there having a good time being bad. Come find me, Noah, if you want the answer to that question.”

Mia rams and shoulders her way through a group of people talking and disappears. I glance back at Echo, and she’s still talking to Beth.

“She shouldn’t be alone,” I growl.

“No, she shouldn’t. Your ass should be over there next to her doing that smooth wooing shit you’re supposed to be so good at. And while we’re on the topic of what you should and should not be doing, you sure as hell shouldn’t be chatting it up with one of the girls you screwed last year.”