Dare You To (Pushing the Limits #2)(59)

In slow motion, Ryan rolls his head to look at me. He sits on the ground with his torso sloppily supported by a stack of baled hay. A glaze covers his light brown eyes. I give him major props. At six beers, the boy has drunk me under the table. Correction—under bales of hay. “Which one?”

“Isaiah,” I say and my heart twists. “He’s the guy with the tattoos.”

“Is the other one your boyfriend?”

I mean to chuckle. Instead it comes out more of a snort and a hiccup. Ryan laughs at me, but I’m so weightless I don’t care. “Noah? No, he’s helplessly in love with some insane chick.

Besides, Noah and I aren’t friends. We’re more like siblings.”

“Really?” The disbelief oozes from Ryan.

“You don’t resemble each other.”

I wave my hand frantically in the air. “No. We’re not related. Noah can’t stand me, but he loves me. Takes up for me. Like siblings.”

Love. I purposely knock the back of my head against the ground in frustration. Isaiah said he loved me. I search the cobwebbed corridors of my emotions and try to imagine loving him back. All I find is a hollow emptiness. Is that what love is? Emptiness?

Ryan narrows his eyes for a deep-in-thought expression, but six beers in an hour tells me he probably spaced out. “So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“Nope.”

Ryan cracks open another beer. I start to protest as he has infiltrated my stash, but decide against it. I want weightless, not puking. I have to return to Scott’s in three hours and coherency will be required.

“Why is Isaiah mad at you?” he asks.

“He loves me,” I say without thinking, and immediately regret it. “And other things.”

“Do you love him back?” That’s the fastest Ryan has responded since his second beer.

I sigh heavily. Do I? “I’d throw myself in front of a bus to push him out of the way.” If it would save him. If it would make him happy.

That’s love, right?

“I’d do that for most people, but it doesn’t mean that I love them.”

“Oh.” Oh. Then I have no idea what love is.

“What other things?” he prods.

Other things? Oh yeah, Ryan asked why Isaiah is mad at me. I shake my head back and forth, causing the straw to crackle. “You wouldn’t understand. My problems…” My mom. “My family isn’t perfect. We have problems.”

Ryan chuckles and sips his beer.

I rise on my elbows. “What’s so damn funny?”

Ryan tilts back the beer and I watch his throat move as he swallows. He crushes the empty can in his hand. “Perfect. Family. Problems. Gay brothers.”

We’re obviously not talking about me and Isaiah anymore. “You’re drunk.”

“Good.” Even inebriated, the ache I saw earlier while he was carrying me out of the Jeep darkens his eyes.

“Is that why you got defensive with the football ass**le?” I ask. “Because you have a g*y brother?”

Ryan tosses the can near the other empty ones and rubs his eyes. “Yes. And if you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk about it. Or talk at all.”

“Fine.” I can do silence. My arms fall over my head as I plop back onto the straw. Isaiah would let me talk. I could rattle on about anything…ribbons and dresses, and he’d placate me when I questioned whether I was too harsh with Noah. Sometimes I think about what life would be like if I gave Echo a break.

I mean, she does make Noah happy and Isaiah likes her. Sometimes she’s cool.

“You’re talking,” says Ryan. “In fact, you’ve been talking since you finished your first beer.”

I blink and close my mouth, not having realized that I had verbalized a thing.

A black bird flaps its wings overhead, creating a shadow on the ceiling. Images of a deadly archangel coming to destroy us all enter my mind. The bird grows more agitated and the other birds fly to a beam on the opposite side of the barn. He takes off into the air and smacks the wall, dips down, flies across the barn, and rams into the opposite wall. My heart thunders with every hit. I watch with wide eyes and shaking hands. “We have to help him.”

I jump up and stumble toward the barn door. Struggling for balance, I force one of the doors open with a loud creak. I lean against the frame and wait for the bird that’s damaging itself over and over again to escape. “Go! Get out of here!”

“Shut the door,” Ryan says. “Birds are stupid. If you want it out, you’re going to have to trap it and drag it out.”

I gesture wildly into the open night. “But the door is open!”

“And the bird’s so panicked that it’ll never see the opening. All you’re doing is inviting your uncle to come in here and find us. Unless you’re ready to go home, close the door.”

The bird smacks itself into the wall again and flutters to a nearby beam. He ruffles his feathers over and over again, then finally draws in his wings to rest. My stomach rolls in torture. Why can’t the bird see the way out?

“Who’s Echo?” asks Ryan.

“But the bird…” I say, ignoring his question.

“Doesn’t understand you’re trying to help. If anything, it sees you as a threat. Now, tell me, who’s Echo?”