Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits 1.50)

“I’m tired,” she says in a strained voice, and when I look up she’s massaging her temples. “I’m tired, and we’re talking in circles.”

It’s like watching the last remnants of sand run through the hourglass, and I’m chained to the wall unable to flip it back over. A flash of panic strikes. Echo could send me away. “Will you let me hold you?”

“No,” she bites out.

I flinch and it’s like she’s impaled me with a sword. “Can I stay?”

A pause. A long one. Please, Echo.

“On the other bed.” She turns off the light and plunges us into darkness. Her mattress creaks and a few seconds later, there’s only the sound of her breathing.

Echo’s laughter, her sighs, the tingle of her silky hair against my bare skin, each sweet and hot kiss...each one of them I’ve taken for granted. Not anymore. I can’t live life thinking there will be a tomorrow for the two of us. “I love you, Echo.”

It’s like I’ve said it into a black hole. The silence stretches then finally she whispers, “I’ve never doubted the love. It’s the going forward part that’s blurry.”

“Maybe it won’t seem complicated after we rest.”

“I’m taking the internship with Hunter,” she says into the darkness. “Regardless of what happens between us, I’m taking it. Just so you know when we try to figure out what’s ahead—that is if we have a future.”

Her words knock the wind out of me and leave me grappling to speak.

“We have one.” Damn it, we do. “But good. I’m glad.”

Good. It’s what she wants. It’s what she deserves, and there’s the possibility she might not have taken it in order to please me. “You deserve it, Echo. You deserve happy.”

“So do you,” she whispers.

Echo asked for simple. She asked for us not to change. I thought we could slip by with both, but the truth is, we can’t. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how to make us right. She could have forced me to leave, but Echo decided to fight for us...at least for tonight.

That doesn’t give me as much hope as it should. Sometimes you hold tighter right before you let go, and I’ll be damned if I allow that to happen.

Echo

I stretch, and the pull on my muscles feels good—like a soak in a hot tub. The large intake of new air filling my lungs brings a smile to my face and I shift, snuggling closer to Noah.

His arms lock around me, and I nuzzle my face into his chest. I love his spicy scent. I love the

se stolen moments in the morning. I love...

A flash of pain and my eyes snap open. My entire body jolts, and Noah runs a hand along my spine in comfort, in apology. I don’t love the memories of last night crashing back into my brain. I lift my head, and I’m met by Noah’s dark eyes. Dear Lord, he resembles something Lila’s cat would hack up.

My head whips. I’m not in my bed, but in Noah’s. My eyes scrunch together. How did I...

“You crawled in bed with me.” Noah answers the question before I verbalized it. “After you went to the bathroom.”

The vague memory catches up. “Oh.”

In my half-asleep state I had forgotten what happened between us. I had a nightmare, not a full-blown terror, but a nightmare, and I woke up, went to the bathroom and forgot why Noah wasn’t in my bed.

“Go back to sleep, baby. It’s still early,” Noah says. “You’ve barely slept an hour.”

I groan and scratch my fingernails into my skull. I haven’t felt this heavy since the morning I had a hangover after Michael Blair’s party in January.

Noah’s fingers creep up and tunnel in my hair, shooing away my own fingers, and assumes the task of eradicating the discomfort.

Part of me knows I should push Noah away. That I should yell and scream and cry, but there’s this sense that I’m already losing him and that these are our final moments. Moments that I don’t want to miss.

I settle back onto his chest and stare at the light shining through the cracks in the curtain. There’s this strange thin barrier between Noah and me that has never existed before.