Breaking the Rules

by Katie McGarry

  I do, and a nervous shock causes me to jump. The path. That’s the path. How did I not notice? Oh, God, did an entire AARP tour group shuffle past, watching me and Noah make out, and I was clueless? “Are there other people?”

  “Relax. There’s no one around. You ran in circles most of the time.”

  And here I thought I had been running straight. Guess I’m not as crafty as I thought. “One of these days we really will get lost if we keep straying from the path.”

  “Paths are overrated. Besides, I’ll never let you get so far in front of me that I can’t catch you.”

  Warm fuzzies engulf me. Noah said he’ll always be around. “Promise?”

  “Promise. I’ve got no interest in letting you out of my sight.”

  I pluck a daisy off a stem. Because, at times, I playfully test how far I can push Noah, I stick the flower behind his ear. He raises an eyebrow. I grin.

  “I like it here,” I tell him. “This has been my favorite stop so far.”

  Noah yanks the flower from behind his ear and loops it through on one of my red curls. “Want to sleep here tonight?”

  “We are.” I motion with my thumb in the direction of the campsite. “Remember that tent that took us forever to put up?”

  “No, I mean sleep in the field. I can grab some blankets, and we can stay here.”

  “Walk all the way back to the campground then walk all the way back here?” Honestly, that prospect doesn’t bother me, but it sounds like a fantastic excuse.

  “You can stay here, and I’ll get everything.”

  Crap. He foiled my plot. “So we’d sleep in the open? Like alongside bugs and other things that have more legs than us crawling on me?” Or worse, things that don’t have legs and hiss and bite and have venom.

  Or big things with four legs and fur. The overgrown carnivore with hair and teeth will scare me then eat me. In the end, the whole thing will be tragic.

  Noah scratches the stubble on his jaw in an attempt to hide a smirk. “Yeah. The open.”

  I inch forward, and Noah removes his leg and arm to allow me to sit up. Bending my knees beneath me and smoothing out my skirt, I survey the area. Risk-taking. Not my strong suit. I took a huge risk this past spring when I broke into school to keep Noah from getting arrested, but since that breakthrough moment, I’ve remained fairly calm.

  My goal this summer was to change—to not be the Echo Emerson that started her senior year twelve months ago. I want to be someone different when I go to college orientation.

  Footsteps crack against the ground, and Noah and I turn to observe three shirtless guys and one bikini top-clad girl walk off the path and hike in our direction. Most of them carry beach towels over their shoulders.

  “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 f
or 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.