Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits #1)(43)

Her cheeks filled with color and her eyes lit like sparklers. “Noah.” She gasped, out of breath. “We did it. We’re going to fix his car. Oh, God, Noah …” She threw her arms around my neck and pressed her head into my shoulder.

Everything within me stilled. I wrapped my arms around her warmth and softness, closing my eyes to savor the peace Echo’s presence brought to me. Life would almost be enjoyable if I could feel this way all the time. I nuzzled the top of her hair with my chin, sending Isaiah a glance of gratitude. He nodded once and shifted his footing as he caught a glimpse of Beth.

She had a hand on her throat, disbelief draining her face of color. “Isaiah, I …” She took two steps backward before turning and bolting.

“Beth!” Isaiah raced after her. The door to the garage slammed shut behind him.

Using my arms as chains, I kept Echo locked against me when she pulled her head off my shoulder. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

My messed-up friends are ruining my moment. “Isaiah’s into Beth and doesn’t want to admit it and Beth doesn’t want to be into anyone. At least not the guy she considers her best friend. But your hugging him got her riled up.”

“Oh.” She unlocked her hands from my neck and pushed her body against my arms, but I wasn’t ready to let her go—not yet. “Noah?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m kind of done hugging you.”

Reluctantly, I let go. One shot. One f**king shot. What the hell do I do now? What the hell do I want? Echo. To feel her body wrapped around mine, to smell her enticing scent, to let her deliver me to that place where I would forget everything but her.

She packed her books in her bag, speaking the words on my mind. “What’s going on between us?”

I don’t know. I rubbed my hand over my face before glancing at Echo. A hint of her cle**age peeked from her shirt. Damn, she was sexy as hell. I wanted her, badly. Would one night be enough, even if she gave it to me? Echo already felt like a heavy drug. The kind I avoided on purpose—crack, heroin, meth. The ones that screwed with your mind, crept into your blood and left you powerless, helpless. If she gave her body to me, would I be able to let go or would I be sucked into that black veil, hooks embedded into my skin, sentenced to death by the emotion I reserved for my brothers—love? “I want you.”

Echo zipped up her pack and threw it at the door to the house. It smacked the wood with a bang and slid to the floor. “Do you? Really? Because these scars are sexy.”

How did she see herself? “I don’t give a f**k about your scars.”

She stalked toward me, h*ps swaying side to side, eyes hardened with anger. Echo pushed her body against mine, parts of her fitting perfectly into parts of me. I swore under my breath, fighting for control over my body.

“How are you going to react when we’re this close and you take off my shirt? Are you still going to want me when you see red and white lines? Are you going to flinch each time you accidentally touch my arms and feel the raised skin? How about when I touch you?”

She pulled away from me, leaving my body cold after experiencing her warmth. “Or will you forbid that? Will you tell me how to dress or what I’m allowed to take off?”

Her anger only fed mine. “For the last time, I don’t give a f**k about your scars.”

“Liar,” she spat. “Because the only way anyone will ever be okay with me is if they love me. Really love me enough to not care that I’m damaged. You don’t love people. You have sex with them. So how could you want to be with me?”

She’d summed me up perfectly. I didn’t love people—only my brothers. Echo deserved more. Better than me. One shot. Take it or go home. Kiss her and risk an attachment or leave her and watch some other guy enjoy what could have been mine.

Echo

When I graduated from high school I planned on painting a plaque for Mrs. Collins: Therapy Stinks. Pink and white with polka dots to match the curtains on the windows.

“Sorry I had to reschedule your session and take you out of business technology. The conference in Cincinnati was fabulous! Are you ready for the Valentine’s Dance tomorrow? When I was a teenager, we had dances on Fridays instead of a Saturday like you.” Mrs. Collins hunted through the growing stacks of papers and folders on her desk for my file. How could she misplace the thing? Thanks to her copious note taking, my three-inch file had grown to four.

She placed a folder off to the side and the name caught my eye—Noah Hutchins. We hadn’t talked in a week and a half. Okay—not totally true. Last week, he’d taken thirty seconds before calculus to download his latest plan of attack. He planned on disrupting my therapy session to ask Mrs. Collins for some type of form. He hoped she’d leave the office and I could gain access to our files. It didn’t happen. Noah stormed out of her office ten minutes before the end of his session and never returned.

I wanted to talk to him on Monday when he, Beth and Isaiah came over for the next tutoring/car repair session, but he kept our conversation exclusively on calculus. When we finished studying, he cut up with Beth and Isaiah, purposely keeping me out of their loop.

Not that I blamed Noah for avoiding me. I’d said some pretty horrible things to him in my garage. Things I had no idea how to take back. Besides, how would I even begin to explain why I’d been in such a foul mood?