Breaking The Rules

“Where are they going?” I ask.

“Beats me,” answers Noah, but he offers his hand to me as he stands. This I understand about Noah: he doesn’t like being caught in a defenseless position. I let him help me up, and I brush the dirt off the back of my skirt.

“I can help you with that,” says Noah with a gleam in his eye.

“You just want to touch my butt.”

“Damn straight I do. I can’t help it if you have a beautiful ass.”

My lips curve up with the compliment, and as I go to continue the banter, Noah’s muscles stiffen. He angles his body to block me from the group. He may appear relaxed to everyone else with his thumbs hitched in his jean pockets, but he’s one second away from taking any one of them out.

While there’s a part of me that sort of likes the princess-locked-in-the-turret-with-a knight-sworn-to-protect-her vibe, another part wonders when this protective streak is going to land either Noah or me or both of us in a heap of trouble.

“S’up,” Noah says when one of the guys nods at us.

“Nothing much.” The guy with surfer-blond hair tangles his fingers with the hand of the girl in the bikini top and cutoffs. “You guys camping here?”

“Yeah,” answers Noah. “You?”

“Yep. Been coming here since I was a kid. I’m Dean.” Dean introduces everyone else.

“Noah. This is my girl, Echo.”

Everyone says something in greeting, and they all gawk at the scars on my arms. I clutch my arms close to my body, and Noah shifts so that he’s the main attraction. “Where you guys heading?”

Dean points beyond us. “There’s a gorge over that ridge. It’s a fantastic jump into cold water. Great way to end a day. You guys want to come along?”

Noah assesses me over his shoulder, and I detect that I’m-always-game-for-the-insane tilt of his mouth. He’ll bow out if I ask, but I’m game. “Sure.”

Dean leads the way through the woods, and Noah motions for me to walk in front of him as he hangs back to walk with two of the guys. That’s the kind of person Noah honestly is—the type that will literally watch my back.

Dean’s girl is easy to talk with, which is sort of nice. After a conversation weighing the pros and cons of camping in sandals, I say, “I didn’t know there was a gorge here. It wasn’t on the visitor maps.”

“It’s not on a map.” Dean turns in front of us to walk backward. “It used to be when I was a kid. People would come through here and swim in the gorge, but then one guy out of a hundred thousand jumps the wrong way and bam—he’s paralyzed. They shut the whole area down. It’s a damn shame. Entire generations will grow up thinking they can’t do anything fun because others are afraid of getting sued.”

Sure enough, the trees give way to a small rocky clearing, and my breath catches when I step out onto the towering drop. To my right, a stream pretends it’s rapids with white foam as it barrels out of the woods and falls over the cliff.

Below, gray rocks jut from the ground. The crystal-blue water reflects the green trees that protrude from the rocks and surround the area like a canopy. It’s gorgeous, but standing three feet from the edge, I’m paralyzed by the force of gravity trying to drag me over the cliff.

I agree with the posted sign threatening prosecution if anyone trespasses or jumps. This gorge is beautiful, but dangerous.

With a hand on my uneasy stomach, I ease back as everyone else races forward, and I bump into something warm and solid. Noah wraps an arm around me and rests his hand on my hip bone. “You okay?”

The girl shimmies out of her cutoffs, and the guys toss their towels to the rocks below.

“Yep.” I blink three times.

Without warning, Dean launches himself over the cliff, and my lungs squeeze. I grab on to Noah’s hand so I can brave a peek and pray like crazy that Dean’s not plastered on the rocks below. A wave shoots up when Dean hits the water, and his friends whoop and yell.

Taking longer than I prefer, Dean resurfaces and gestures for everyone else to jump, and like dominoes, they do. One right after the other. All of them without a sense of self-preservation. Without thought. Without fear.

“Want to do it?” Noah asks.

“What? Either crack my head open on a rock or drown? No, thanks.”

Noah leans over the ledge, and I wrench out of his hold because there is no freaking way I’m getting any closer. Noah chuckles. “Way too uptight, Echo.”

“You can call it uptight all you want, but I call it not being suicidal. I have a four-inch-thick file in my therapist’s office, and I can guarantee not once does the word suicidal appear. Depressed? Withdrawn? Freak of nature? Sure. But not suicidal.”

“I’m sure the guy before Mrs. Collins used the word sociopath in my file, so jumping’s my style.”

“But Mrs. Collins is the reigning therapist now, and we go with what she writes and neither one of us are suicidal!”

Noah laughs, and I can’t help but smile with him. Only the two of us can joke about such subjects. “You’re the one that said you wanted to take more risks. Look, we’ll do it together.”

A little twinge of guilt along with happy warmth funnels through my cells. I can see it play out. Noah taking my smaller hand in his. Him leading the way. The rush of falling together and the splash of cold water at the bottom.

I have no doubt that I won’t regret it. It’ll possibly be the most exhilarating experience I’ve ever had, and Noah does look extraordinarily sexy wet. I bite my bottom lip and peer over the edge like it’s going to reach up and snatch me.

“What do you see when you look down?” asks Noah.

“You sound way too much like Mrs. Collins, and that’s not a compliment.”

“Answer the question.”

I should be poetic and mention the green trees and the white foam floating atop the blue water and the purple wildflowers blowing in the breeze, but honestly all I see are... “Rocks. Lots of sharp, kill-me-by-impaling rocks.”

Noah stands right on the edge so that his toes are off the side, and dirt crumbles near his feet and plummets to the death trap below. A pang of fear grips my chest, and I reach out to him. “You should step back.”

Because he’ll fall and then the one person I desperately need will die...like Aires. “I’m serious. Just step back. Okay?”

“Know what I see?” Noah says as if I hadn’t spoken.

You continuing this sick, twisted replay of my life? I love and trust someone, then they die a horrible, violent death? “I’ll sleep in the field. That’s risk-taking. As in there are probably venomous spiders and snakes and rabid raccoons. That’s a lot more death-defying than this.”

“Water. I see water, Echo. A large pool of water.”

Our gazes meet, and his dark brown eyes are so soft that my belly tightens and flips. But there’s also an ache there. Something I don’t quite comprehend. “What else do you see?”

Noah breaks our connection and stares out into the glorious ravine. “A missed opportunity.”

I lower my head as the nausea strikes hard and fast. “I can’t do it.” But I want to. I wish to be a risk-taker, but this overpowering fear has me rooted to the ground.

Because God can occasionally be merciful, Noah steps away from the cliff. “All right. We’ll leave suicide off the to-do list for the night. Instead of jumping off cliffs, how about we sleep in the open?”

I want to be a risk-taker. I want to change. A silent mantra said over and over again. Sucking in a deep breath, I accept the death sentence if only because I stupidly offered it earlier. “Okay. We’ll sleep in the field.”

Noah chuckles. “Are you sure?”

“Nope, but I’m willing to do it anyway.” Forced smile. Very, very forced.

Noah yells down a goodbye, and they shout goodbyes back. We stroll back in comfortable silence, and I discover another con of wearing sandals when the leather strap rubs the skin beneath it raw. Returning to the field where Noah caught me a while ago, I pause and pull the sandal off my foot.

Noah narrows his eyes at it then surveys me. “Why don’t you stay here and I’ll bring what we need back.”

“I’ll be okay. It’s not even a blister yet.”

“Let me do this,” says Noah. “Sit down and relax.”

Noah wades through the field toward the path. He has swagger when he walks and powerful shoulders. With him, I’m hardly ever afraid. Noah possesses the ability to scare my monsters away, at least the ones that haunt me while I’m awake. For a brief few days, he’s also scared away the demons that torture me in my sleep.

It’s not until Noah reaches the path that I notice how fast we’ve lost light. There are more shadows in the forest than there is light from above. While night isn’t my favorite, I’ve never really been spooked by the dark, but there’s a nagging sensation pricking at me. An unease in the way this feels like a memory in slow motion.

Aires left this way—in the shadows. When his leave from the Marines ended, my brother said his goodbyes to everyone the night before and asked us to sleep in since he had an early-morning flight. He requested that we let him depart without a fuss. My father and Ashley agreed to it, but I never did.

I woke earlier than Aires. With a light jacket and in my pajama pants and shirt, I sat on the front porch steps waiting for that last moment with my older brother, my best friend. The sole person in the universe who kept me sane in a house full of chaos.

The humidity of the night left a dew on the ground and on the bushes. The curls I had straightened the night before reappeared within minutes. The porch light flipped on, the front door opened and, dressed in fatigues, Aires paused when he saw me.

With his lips thinned out, he closed the door behind him and motioned for me to stand. I did, and I was still small next to his massive frame. He resembled our father with his brown hair and height. I favored our mother.

“You don’t listen,” he said.

“I don’t like it,” I answered. “That you’re leaving when the sun’s not even up. It feels...” Unlucky. Wrong. “Early.”

He offered a sympathetic half smile. “It’s a Marine thing.”

“Are you happy?” I asked. “Being a Marine?”

“I love the traveling,” he admits, and I hear what he doesn’t say. Aires couldn’t live here anymore. Because Mom and Dad couldn’t speak to each other without raising the decibel level to earsplitting, Aires became the go-between as he always tried to bring peace. That part of his personality sentenced him to a life of presenting each of their arguments to the other like a courier pigeon.

Before he had signed the papers to join the Marines, he confessed to me that he felt trapped.

Aires peered over my shoulder and down the street. Like he had asked, the cab waited at the corner. He didn’t want the headlights or the idling car to wake any of us. “I’ve got to go.”

I threw myself at him. So hard and fast that he rocked on his feet. He dropped his duffel bag and hugged me in return. “I’ll be back soon.”

Hot wetness burned my eyes and I swallowed, hoping it would help me form a sentence or a word, but all I could do was squeeze him tighter.

“I’m coming back home,” he said. “I promise. There are too many important things here for me not to.”

Because I was pathetic, I craved to hear him say the words. “Like what?”

“Well...my car’s here.” His 1965 Corvette. He found it in a scrap yard, and it had become the love of his life as he pieced it back together. “I’m not going anywhere until my baby is working.”

I released him and rolled my eyes, even though I heard the tease in his voice. “Of course. Love the car more than your sister.”

He grinned. “Priorities. Be good, Echo.”

Aires started down the driveway and into the shadows. My heart beat faster as he merged into one more dark image in the unforgiving night.

“I love you,” I yelled out.

“Back at you.” His voice seemed too distant, too far away. Then the night became too black and my brother was gone.

Gone.

And Noah is fading into a shadow. It’s like a steel knife lodges into my throat. I can’t lose him. Not the person that I love. Not again. I jump to my feet and run through the field as if my life, as if Noah’s life depends on it. “Noah!”

He keeps going, and this frantic panic pummels my bloodstream. Don’t lose sight of him. Don’t. “Noah!”

On the edge of light, Noah stops and pivots to me. His face falls as he notices my arms pumping, the air puffing out of my mouth.

“What’s wrong?”

He grabs on to me when I skid to a halt, and I try to bend over to breathe again.

“You’re trembling.” Noah rubs his fingers over my hands. “Damn it, tell me what happened.”

My mouth dries out, and I shake my head because the words solidify into concrete. I search for a way past the block. The last time I saw Aires was three years ago this month. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and a shiver snakes up my spine. Three years. Oh, God, I’ve been without him for three years.

“Echo,” he urges.

I could tell him. He’d probably understand. Noah lost his parents.

“I...just...” Huge, shaky breath. “I need to go with you.”

Noah’s eyes narrow with worry, but he nods as he tucks me under his shoulder. “Okay.”

He surveys the field as if he could catch sight of the ghosts tormenting me, but in order to do that, he’d have to crawl into my brain, and I’d never want that. My thoughts are a terrifying place to visit.

“We’re staying in the tent tonight,” he says.

My stomach sinks. “Noah—”

He presses a hand to the small of my back and urges me to the campground. “Another time. Another night. But not this one.”

If Aires had left at another time or on another day, if Noah had chosen another time to return home the night of the fire or another day to go on that date, would the worst moments in our lives have happened?

Even worse? There’s a dark part of me that’s grateful for the way life has turned out because without any of that, I wouldn’t have the man walking beside me.

Hurt rages like a flash flood, and I edge closer to Noah, hoping his strength can keep this new demon away. “Okay. Another time. Another day.”

I try to pull myself to the present. Tomorrow will be a new destination. A new adventure. But my past beckons to me, this time in the form of guilt.

Noah

Echo was silent on the way back to camp and has remained that way as I gather everything we need to start a fire. Dark fell fast over the campground because of the thick clouds hanging overhead. Unfortunately, clouds aren’t the only thing dangling over us.

It’s been a long time since I’ve lost Echo to her mind. Possibly since the first week after we took to the road, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.

Sitting on a blanket next to our tent, she becomes a shell of the girl I love. Overall, she looks the same—same beautiful green eyes and red silky hair. Today she wears a white lace tank that shows a hint of the gifts God gave her and because I’m a lucky man, a skirt that ends mid-thigh.

But in the light of the neighboring campfire, Echo’s green eyes possess the life of a dollar-store plastic doll, and she’s paler than normal, making her freckles stick out.

In the span of a minute, something flipped in Echo’s brain. Only her brother and her mother have the power to haunt her. I’d like to serve them both with eviction notices from her mind.

I drop the milk jugs I filled with water harder than I meant, and Echo switches her focus from the pine needles on the ground to me. Her brother’s ghost doesn’t bother me as much as her mother’s. Aires died, and I understand that type of pain, but I still hate to see Echo anything but happy.

A breeze blows through the thick forest surrounding the campground, and a group of children runs past us on their way to the bathrooms. A few feet over, a boy around my youngest brother’s age plays with a toy fighter jet. Complete with the appropriate noises for war.

I wish he’d shut the hell up. Echo’s brother died in Afghanistan.

Since I entered foster care at the end of my freshman year, I’ve never been the boyfriend type, but Echo deserves the best. I scratch the back of my neck and try to do that making her feel better shit. “You okay?”

She nods. “Just thinking about Aires.”

Good. I still don’t handle her mother baggage well and after our fight at the Sand Dunes, I’m not eager to revisit those issues. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Echo never does, and because she respects my privacy when it comes to the loss of my parents, I back off. She returns her attention to the ground near her feet, and I pop my neck to the side. We’ve only got a few days left on the trip, and this isn’t how I want it to end. “Tell me Aires’s myth.”

Echo’s psychotic mother named them both after Greek myths. Last winter, Echo told me the myth associated with her name while she kicked my ass in pool. Maybe sharing a happy story will brighten her mood.

Her forehead wrinkles. “I’ve told you that story.”

I crouch and pile two logs then thread smaller sticks for kindling under them. “No, you haven’t.”

“Yes,” she says with a bite. “I have.”

That was out of left field. I check Echo from the corner of my eye, and my girl is glaring at me like she caught me groping a gaggle of cheerleaders. “You haven’t.”

“I would tell you that story. You don’t remember me telling you. That would mean that I don’t discuss Aires, and I do!”

That’s it right there—she doesn’t. “You hardly mention Aires. And before you say something smart back, think who you’re talking to. I mean what I say at all times. Don’t mess with my word. If I say you haven’t told the story, then you haven’t.”

“Like you’re Mr. I-Share-Everything when it comes to your family?”

“Mind retracting the claws?” I say in a low tone. “Because I don’t feel like bleeding.” Or feeling threatened.

Echo blinks, and the anger drains from her face. “I am so sorry—”

A high-pitched shriek cuts her off and pierces my soul. I heard that type of scream before, and it’s not one I’ve wanted to hear again. My entire body whips toward the sound, and I convulse at the sight of the toy airplane in the bonfire in front of the neighboring tent. The kid that was shooting down pretend targets seconds before is now crying and shaking as a small flame licks up his pants.

Tyler.

Jacob.

My brothers.

I snatch a blanket off the ground and in six strides I tackle the child. My heart pounds as I smack at the flame. The smell of burned flesh rushes through my mind, and the roar of flames lapping against walls fills my ears.

“Noah!” a voice that’s familiar, but doesn’t belong in this nightmare, calls to me. “Noah, you put out the flame!”

Soft fingers grasp my biceps, and it’s as if I’m yanked from a long, dark tunnel. I turn my head, and the girl I love, the girl that owns my heart, stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“Let him go,” she says. “The flames are out.”

I look down, and a small child with black hair and blacker eyes gapes at me. My hands hold his blanket-covered leg. I lift my arms, and Echo removes the blanket, revealing singed, now threadbare, jeans. The skin beneath is only slightly red. Not even a real burn.

I suck in air and smell smoke. No burned flesh. I fall back onto my ass and run my clammy hand over my forehead to catch the small beads of sweat. The sights. The smells. I’d been reliving the damned memory of the night my parents died.

“Oh, thank God!” A woman appears at the boy’s side. He sits up at her touch and begins to weep. Jacob wept like that after I dragged him out the house. So did Tyler. I couldn’t cry. No matter how I felt like I’d been torn open again and again, I couldn’t cry.

“What happened?” she asks.

“His plane fell in the fire.” Echo points to the melting toy in the thick of the fire. “We didn’t see it, but he must have tried to get it. Noah yanked him out and put out the flames.”

“Thank you,” says a voice beside me. It’s a man. Black hair. Black eyes. The damn bastard is probably his dad. “We walked over to say hi to friends camping with us. My son knows better than to play near the fire—”

I’m on my feet and in his face before he can finish. “He’s a child! What the fuck is wrong with you that you’d leave him alone near an open flame? People get hurt this way! They die!”

“Noah!” Echo shoves an arm in front of me and uses her body as a shield between me and the bastard who should have his parental rights revoked. “It’s okay.”

“Okay!” I explode. “It’s not fucking okay. That kid could have died!”

Echo pushes at my chest, attempting to walk me backward. “You’re scaring him!”

“Good!” The bastard needs a kick in the ass.

“The child!” she chides. “You’re scaring the child!”

It’s as if she dumped a bucket of cold water over my face. The child is clinging plastic-wrap tight to his mom, his body shaking. A park ranger is applying something to the wound. Another one is talking into a cell phone, and I hear words like ambulance not needed.

The undertone of voices and movement from the campground has come to a lull as everyone scrutinizes the boy. Echo scans the area then links her fingers with mine. “You did great, Noah, but let’s leave them alone, okay?”

“Is everything fine here?” The park ranger moves the phone away from his mouth and jerks his chin from me to the dad, who’s continually combing his trembling hands over his head.

“Yeah,” I say, and secure my grip on Echo. Without another word, I lead her back to our tent and unzip it, motioning for her to get inside. I join her and in a second, zip the door up, wishing it could block out the entire world.

Echo clicks on a lantern and makes herself smaller as she tucks her legs beneath her. “Are you okay?” She drums her fingers to that silent rhythm.

Fuck me. Wasn’t that the question I asked her a few minutes ago? I rub my eyes. No. I’m not okay. I’m the furthest thing from it.

Three months ago, I held Echo’s hand in a hospital and watched her battle for her sanity. I promised her and myself that I’d become the man she deserves. The man who’d be strong enough to get past my shit in order to take care of her. I let Echo down once, just like I let my parents down the night of the fire.

The guilt of that night, of how I failed, has left a deep, dark stain on my soul. Echo’s dealt with enough of my crap since we met, and she’s had a hard time sorting through her stuff since she retrieved her memories.

I can’t unload my fucked-up problems onto her. The truth would drive her to realize that she shouldn’t be with a punk like me, and she’d finally walk. “I’m tired.”

Her fingers tap faster on her thigh. “It’s still early. Maybe we should go do something—”

“I’m tired,” I cut her off. I’m being rough, I know it, but I can’t deal with anything right now. I lie down and turn away from her. “And you said you wanted to get into Denver early so you can prepare for the show.”

Echo’s silent, and after a few strained minutes, she clicks off the lantern and settles beside me. Because the girl has always been a damned miracle, she slowly edges near me and places a cool hand on my shoulder.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she whispers.

Her words cut deep. She may get the loss, but she doesn’t understand feeling responsible for them dying.

Echo presses her lips to my shoulder blade, and I close my eyes.

“Aires...” She falters. “Aires was a ram sent by Zeus to save someone.”

My eyebrows furrow together as I move to face her. Her body is nothing more than a shadow in the night. I can’t see her features, but I can hear the pain.

“I...” she continues in a taut voice that rips out my heart. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

She doesn’t have to. I find Echo’s hand and guide her until she tangles her body with mine.