Pushing the Limits (17 page)

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 fucking 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 cleavage 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 fuck about your scars.”

She stalked toward me, hips 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
fuck
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?

Earlier that day, I’d learned that Ashley carried a boy in her precious little baby bump. Ashley had lain on the table, staring at the black-and-white swishing screen, and said, “Oh, Echo. You’ll have a brother again.” Again. Like I lost a puppy and she cooked me up another. I wasn’t interested in a replacement.

Noah had come over to my house that afternoon and rocked my world with Isaiah’s car knowledge. He didn’t have to bring Isaiah, or share memories of his family. Once again, he showed me what an incredibly awesome guy he really was and what did I do? I threw it in his face that he slept with every girl who offered herself up to him. I told him he didn’t know how to love because he couldn’t tell me what I wanted so badly to hear from him. That he wanted more than my body—that he wanted me.

“Yes. I’m ready for the dance,” I told Mrs. Collins, returning to reality.

“Fantastic. Ah, there it is.” She flipped open my file and rewarded herself with a sip of her new addiction, Diet Coke. “I’d like to discuss your mother today.”

“What?” No one discussed my mother.

“Your mom. I’d like to discuss your mom. Actually, there’s an exercise I’d like to try with you. Can you describe her in five words or less?”

Bipolar. Beautiful. Erratic. Talented. Unreliable. I chose the safe answer. “She loved Greek mythology.”

Mrs. Collins sat back in her seat, revealing jeans and a blue button-down shirt. “I think of chocolate chip cookies when I think of my mom.”

“I’m pretty sure you know my mom isn’t the cookie-baking type.” Or the mom type.

She chuckled. I didn’t mean it to be funny. “Did she teach you the myths?”

“Yes, but she focused on the constellations.”

“You’re smiling. I don’t see you do that in my office very often.”

My mom. My crazy, crazy mother. “When she was on, my mother was on. You know?”

“No. Explain.”

My foot began to rock. “She … um … I don’t know.”

“What do you mean by your mom being on?”

My mouth dried out as if I hadn’t drunk in days. I really hated talking about her. “I realize now that my favorite moments with my mom were her manic episodes. It kind of stinks because now the only good memories I have are tainted. The way she smiled at me made me feel so important. She painted the constellations on my ceiling with glow-in-the-dark paint. We’d lie in bed and she’d tell me the stories over and over again. Some nights she’d shake me to keep me awake.”

Mrs. Collins tapped her pen against her chin. “Constellations, huh? Think you could still pick them out?”

I shrugged, shifting in my seat. My foot clicked repeatedly
against the floor. What temperature did she have the room set at? Ninety? “I guess. I haven’t looked at the stars in a while.”

“Why not?” Mrs. Collins’s demeanor changed from friendly Labrador to pure business.

Sweat crept along the back of my neck. I twisted my hair in a bun and held it up. “Um … I don’t know. Cloudy? I don’t go out at night very often?”

“Really?” she asked dryly.

Anger flashed in my bloodstream. I wished lasers would shoot out of my eyes. “I lost interest, I guess.”

“I want to show you some pictures that may trigger a memory. As long as that’s okay with you, Echo?”

Um … not really, but how could I say no? I nodded.

“Your art teacher gave me these smaller paintings you did your sophomore year. I could be wrong, but I believe they’re constellations.”

Mrs. Collins held up the first one. A first-grader could name it. “The little dipper, but in Greek mythology it would be Ursa Minor.”

The next painting was familiar to me, but maybe not to others. “Aquarius.”

The third one stumped me for one second. My mind wavered in that gray hazy area I detested. I snatched out the answer before the black hole could swallow it. Dizziness disoriented me, allowing me only to whisper, “Andromeda.”

My heart pounded and I let go of my hair to wipe the perspiration forming on my forehead. Nausea rolled in my stomach and up my throat. Good God, I was going to puke.

“Echo, breathe through your nose and try to lower your head.”

I barely heard Mrs. Collins over the ringing in my ears. The black hole grew, threatening to swallow me. I couldn’t let it. “No.”
It couldn’t grow. The black hole was already too large and this had happened once before. That time I almost lost my mind.

“No to what, Echo?” Why did she sound so far away?

I squeezed my hands against my head, as if the motion could physically stop me from falling into that dark chasm. A bright light ripped through the blackness and for a brief few seconds I saw my mother. She lay next to me on the floor of her living room. Red curly hair falling from a gold clip. Her eyes wide—too wide. My heart raced faster. She reached toward me, whispering the words, “And Perseus saved Andromeda from her death. Aires was our Perseus. We’ll be with him soon.”

Raw fear—nerve-breaking, horror movie, chain-saw-carrying fear—pushed adrenaline through my body. “No!” I yelled, shoving my hands out to stop her from touching me.

“Echo! Open your eyes!” Mrs. Collins shouted, her warm breath hitting my face.

Every inch of me trembled and I reached out to steady myself, only to be caught by Mrs. Collins. I blinked rapidly and shook my head. This couldn’t be happening again. I had no memory of standing. Several of the stacks of files perched on the edge of her desk now cluttered the floor. I swallowed quickly to ease my dry mouth and calm my nerves. “I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Collins swept my hair away from my face, her expression a mixture of delighted and compassionate. If she had a tail, she would have wagged it. “Don’t be. You experienced a memory, didn’t you?”

I don’t know. Did I?
I clutched Mrs. Collins’s arms. “She was telling me the story of Andromeda and Perseus.”

She took a deep breath, nodded and helped lower me to the floor, next to all the overturned files. “Yes. She did.”

The heat that had overwhelmed me earlier retreated, only to
be replaced with cold and clammy goose bumps and uncontrollable shivering. Mrs. Collins handed me an unopened Diet Coke before returning to her desk. “Drink. The caffeine will help. I think we’ve done enough for today. In fact, I think you should probably go home. Your choice, of course.”

I stared at the bottle, unsure I had enough strength to open the cap. “Why was she telling me stories? And why did she say we’d be with Aires soon? Did she forget he was dead?”

Mrs. Collins crouched in front of me. “Stop. You’ve had a huge breakthrough and you need to let your mind and your emotions rest. Echo?”

She waited until she had my full attention. “You didn’t lose your mind.”

I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t. I’d remembered something and I hadn’t lost my mind. Hope swelled within me. Maybe it was possible. Maybe I could remember and stay in one piece.

“Now, tell me, home or school?”

The Diet Coke shook in my hand. “I’m not sure I can do school.”

She gave me a soft smile. “All right. Is it okay if I step out and call your father and Ashley to tell them what happened and that you’re coming home?”

“Sure.”

“By the way,” she said, “I’m proud of you.”

Mrs. Collins shut the door behind her. Thank God. The last thing I needed was anyone in the office seeing me shaking like a leaf on her floor surrounded by a mess of files. Files. Files!

I scanned the floor and within seconds spotted Noah’s, but mine sat there on her desk—open. It was there—every moment, every secret, every answer. Noah’s first. But my eyes drifted back to mine. The need to fill the black hole pressed upon me. But
Noah needed small things—fast things—last name, address, phone numbers, and … I’d yelled at him. His first, then mine.

Crawling on my hands and knees, I snatched his file and quickly scanned the pages, searching for any trace of the names Jacob and Tyler. The first page—nothing. Second page—nothing. Third, fourth, fifth. I stared at my file. God, I was running out of time. Sixth page, seventh, eight. Ninth—Tyler and Jacob Hutchins. Placed in foster care by the state of Kentucky after the death of their parents. Currently placed with Carrie and Joe …

The door clicked open and I threw the file to the floor. “Echo, are you okay?”

I sat back on my knees. “I tried to get up, but got a little dizzy.” I blinked three times in a row.

She rushed over to me, concern ravaging her tone. “I am so sorry. Am I the worst therapist on the planet or what? Leaving you in here as weak as a kitten. Your father would have my license for sure.” Mrs. Collins helped me to my feet. “Let’s get you to the nurse’s office and let you lie down for a while. The bed in there should be more comfortable than the floor.”

“NOAH!” HE IGNORED ME THE first time I yelled his name. The nurse had finally released me with only ten minutes left of lunch. When I entered the cafeteria, he, Isaiah and Beth pitched their trash and left.