Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits 1.50)

Why do I want to forgive Mom? “Dad loves me, but he has Ashley and Alexander. Aires...is gone.” My voice breaks, so I let any thought of him drift away with the cool breeze blowing across the parking lot. “Mom seems to be trying. It’s messed up that she asked her friends to buy my paintings, but...”

My hand touches my throat in an attempt to ease the strangling sensation. “I’m tired of the blackness inside me—this goo that sludges in my veins. I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of being heavy. Letting the past go, it’s got to be easier, right?”

I peek up at him, wary of Noah’s reaction.

“I’m the wrong person to ask,” he says. “Me and the past aren’t friends.”

My forehead wrinkles, and a burst of worry overtakes me. What demons did Mrs. Collins dredge up?

“I’ve tried to let go of the past,” I tell him. “But it’s like running laps and being shocked I finish where I started.”

A car rips into the parking lot, and the beams of the headlights flash over us as they turn toward the main entrance of the hotel.

“If your mom said she was sorry, you’d forgive her,” Noah says as a statement.

As the prospect of actually forgiving her sinks in, I snuggle closer to Noah. The newly found memories of my mother lying beside me while blood flowed from the cuts on my arms torture my mind. Noah tightens his hold as if he could squeeze out the nightmares.

“I think I want to forgive her,” I answer. “But I’m scared to.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s selfish. Mom has always done what she wants, never thinking about anyone else. It’s like after I saw her in the cemetery, my entire view of the life we shared together got distorted. If I forgive her, doesn’t that imply I’ll have a relationship with her again? And if that happens, does that mean I have to trust her again? Does that mean I have to put up with her selfish crap because she said she was sorry? But if I don’t forgive her, will I always be bitter? I’m exhausted of being bitter.”

I’m sick of feeling alone.

I’ve got Noah, but will we work? Are we a forever type of thing?

An invisible vise clenches around my heart, and I can’t comprehend anything associated with Noah leaving. He drew me plans for a house—our house. We made love. This is forever now. Noah would have never made love to me if we weren’t a forever thing, but there’s this doubt. This lingering doubt that Mrs. Collins said I’m not facing.

My mom is blood family, and family is that segment of my life that’s supposed to stic

k with me. If that’s the logic I should follow, shouldn’t I be wavering toward having more family in my life rather than less?

If I’m going to continue to be so starkly honest, raw to the point that the truth rubs like sandpaper against my soul, then I’ll admit the last fear. “Is having bad family better than having no family?”

Noah dips his head so that his cheek is against mine, practically shielding me from the world with his entire body.

“I don’t know, Echo,” he whispers. “I don’t know.”

Noah

Through the rim of light outlining the drapes of the hotel’s window, I can decipher Isaiah as he rolls to a sitting position and places his feet on the floor. Like he does most mornings, he pops his neck to the side—a release of the pressure that builds inside him day after day.

Echo flips in her sleep, and I shift along with her. For the first time on our trip, she took sleeping pills, and she slept like the dead. The stillness of her body throughout the night would jerk me awake. Each time a wave of horror thundered through me, thinking that she had left.

Is having bad family better than having no family? Echo’s question has circled my mind. I asked about her mom in an attempt to understand my mom’s family, but I only upset Echo.

I’m a goddamned selfish bastard.

Swamped in guilt, I press the balls of my hands onto my forehead. Echo said her mom was selfish, but I’m just as bad. I never once thought about Echo sleeping in a room with two other people and the fear she must possess over having a night terror in front of them. Echo hates relying on the pills, and I drove her to them.

Just fuck me.

The dim light from the clock radio shines against Isaiah’s double row of earrings, and he jacks his thumb in the direction of the bathroom. We’ve been living together in cramped quarters for over a year and have memorized each other’s rhythms. “You want the shower?”

“It’s yours,” I mumble. “I’m going to grab Echo some coffee. You want anything?”

Beth launches a pillow at me, and I catch it in midair before it can hit Echo. “For you two to shut up and go back to bed.”