Chapter 5
5
ECHO
Getting drunk is supposed to make you feel better, right?
Not that my therapist agrees, but most of my friends do. Yet, somehow, bathing my mind in beer is only making me more irritable and confused.
I lunge for the ping-pong ball, catching it on a bounce, and stand, swaying as I aim at a cup on the other side of the table. Loud dance music throbs around me, making it difficult to concentrate. I throw…and miss.
Hayden, one of the frat guys on the other team, grabs the ball and returns fire. Unfortunately, it lands in a cup on my side of the table. I fish the ball out and down the beer, wincing at the bitter taste. I pass the ball to Anita, my partner, for her turn.
“What do you think it means?” I ask Anita as she tosses the ping-pong ball neatly into one of Hayden’s cups.
I’ve just finished explaining to her about the jewelry box I found in my bag earlier in the week. Inside, nestled on a bed of velvet, was a beautiful silver pendant shaped like a shooting star. I’d almost had a panic attack when I opened it. Then I nearly cried.
Damn Tyler for getting under my skin like this.I don’t want to remember the time when we meant something to each other. It’s best left in the past.
While Hayden drinks, Anita turns to me, flicking her auburn hair away from her face. “If one of my exes gave me an expensive necklace, I’d assume he wanted me back.”
My lip curls. “That’s not it.”
He might say it is, but I know better. He’s playing games, and once again, I don’t know the rules. What I do know is that I’m returning the pendant next time I see him. There’s no way I’m holding onto it. Not when I don’t understand what he wants from me or what the consequences of keeping it might be.
Hayden’s partner Rock—real first name unknown—misses his shot. The ball bounces off the end of the table and I chase it, bending clumsily to retrieve it from the manicured lawn and apologizing when I bump into a blonde in a minidress.
We’re out in front of the Kappa Delta Psi sorority house for one of their famous Kickoff parties. No, it’s not anything sports-related, just an excuse to start the year with a lot of alcohol and indiscriminate hookups. I don’t usually go, but Anita caught me at a weak moment.
I take my turn, unsurprised when I miss again. I’m terrible at this game. Anita is the pro.
“It’s a shooting star. Did I tell you that?” My voice slurs, but no matter how carefully I try to enunciate, I can’t seem to help it. “He used to call me his shooting star because he said I was the light in his darkness.”
Anita’s plum-red lips press together and her expression melts. “Aww, that’s so sweet. He definitely wants you.”
“Well, too bad.”
Hayden sinks the ball again, and again, I have to drink.
“Why?” she asks. “Was whatever he did really so horrible?”
Emotion wells inside me, climbing up my throat and threatening to choke me. For a moment, I can hardly breathe.
“He stopped my sparkle,” I tell her. “He pulled me into the dark with him, and now I’m a black hole. Everything sucks and there’s no light to be seen.”
Her eyebrows arch. “Morbid much?”
“Echo, with the greatest respect, could you stop talking about your dating life and play properly?” Hayden calls across the table.
Anita and I both glare at him, but he just shrugs in response.
“Fine,” I huff, and pass the ball to Anita. She misses. We continue back and forth for another few minutes. I drink once more, and somehow manage to sink a ball so Rock has to drink, too.
When he sets the cup down, he surprises me by looking straight at me and saying, “If a guy gives you a gift, he’s into you, even if all he wants is sex.”
“Huh.” The word pops out of me before my brain connects to my mouth. Rock is a quiet person. Stoic, too. I’d never have guessed he was paying attention to our conversation.
We finish the game without further discussion of Tyler. We lose soundly, despite Anita’s best efforts. When we make way for the next team, Anita wraps her arm around me to steady me.
“Should we get you some water?” she asks, her forehead wrinkling with concern.
“Probably,” I admit. My vision is blurry, and my bloated stomach is screaming for relief.
“So, tell me more about your ex,” she says as we wind between groups of people, making our way across the lawn and past the Roman-style pillars at the sorority’s entrance.
“There isn’t much to tell.” It’s a lie. I’ve seen more of who Tyler Kinsey really is than anyone else. Or at least, I thought I had until he tore the rug out from beneath me.
She snorts. “Liar. What’s his name?”
I zip my lips. I don’t want to tell her when she and Cassie have already gossiped about how hot the hockey-playing transfer student is. If she knows it’s him, she’ll keep digging until I give her at least some of the juicy details. Unlike Cassie, whose favorite topic is herself, Anita loves knowing everything there is to know about everyone else.
“Nope. I won’t tell you.” I raise my chin to demonstrate my determination, but the effect is lost when I stumble, and she has to catch me.
“Come on. We’re nearly there.” She leads me into the kitchen, where a couple of guys are standing beside the fridge, drinking beer from the bottle.
She finds a clean glass in the cupboards, then fills it from the tap and offers it to me. I sip from it as she steps around the guys and selects a red vodka drink from the fridge. She cracks the top and slings her arm around me again.
We walk down the pink-and-white hallway to the living room, which is crowded and overly warm despite the open window.
“Just give me a name,” she pleads, guiding me to a spot by the wall near the door.
I send her a look of disbelief.
“Just a name, I swear.” She grins and takes a drink. “No need to be so suspicious.”
“No names. But he was someone from high school.”
“I figured.” She releases me and leans against the wall. “Unless you’ve been seeing someone in secret.”
We drink in silence for a few minutes, and slowly, Anita’s pretty green eyes light with unholy glee.
“What?” I ask, uneasy.
“Your ex…” Her eyes are fixed somewhere behind me. “Does he happen to be a hot blonde hockey center?”
My breathing stutters. I follow her gaze to find Tyler staring at us from the sofa on the other side of the room.
“We need to go,” I say, straightening. The water has sobered me a little, and I manage not to trip over my own feet.
Anita is only a step behind me. “What’s wrong?”
I shift closer to her and lower my voice. “He really hurt me, okay? I can’t be here when he is.”
She nods, and relief makes my knees weak.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she says. “Let’s head there first and then we can go.”
“Can’t you hold it until we get home?” I ask. Anita and I live in the same dorm. “It’s only a fifteen-minute walk.”
Surely, I should be the one with the overactive bladder after everything I’ve drunk.
“Trust me, no. It’s not a number one.” She takes my hand and leads me back down the hall to a door with a poster of Marilyn Monroe in a white dress attached to the front. “Wait here. I’ll be a few minutes.”
I rest my back against the wall and turn toward the end of the hall, where people are entering through the foyer. A group of laughing jocks split in two, with half heading for the living room and the other half going to the kitchen.
A moment later, one of them—a solidly built guy with dark hair and a beer bottle in his hand—reemerges. He glances my way, then does a double take. A cocky grin tugs at the corners of his lips and he saunters toward me in that dude bro way I really hate.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing all alone?” he asks, getting way too close into my space. His beer breath wafts over me and his pupils are pinpricks. Is he on something?
I jab my thumb toward the bathroom door. “I’m waiting for a friend.”
He shuffles closer, caging me between his forearms. “I could keep you busy while you wait.”
“I’m not interested.” I draw in a shallow breath. The air between our bodies seems to press in on me, heavy as lead.
He chuckles. “Sure, you aren’t.”
He grips my hip tightly enough to bruise and flattens himself against my front. Black spots dance in front of my eyes. My thoughts go fuzzy, and I sense myself beginning to detach from my body. I fight to stay in the present, but memories are snatching at me with clawed hands, dragging me back to the past.
TYLER
Echo is drunk.
She never used to get drunk. Is this because of me, or am I giving myself too much credit? It’s been three years since I saw her. She could have changed during that time.
It’s been a couple of minutes since she left the room with her red-headed friend. Anita Wagnor, twenty-one years old, training to become an elementary school teacher. I made a point to look up both of the female friends Echo had been in the coffee shop with the first time I spotted her. I want to know who she’s surrounding herself with these days.
I get up from the sofa I’ve been lounging on, discard my beer bottle even though it’s barely been touched, and head for the hall. Several people reach for me, but I dodge their hands and pretend not to notice. For some goddamn reason, the students here seem fascinated by me.
I guess that’s what happens when you’re a rich hockey god who turns up in senior year and doesn’t like to talk about the past.
“Kinsey!” one of my teammates calls out.
I nod to him but don’t stop. I need to set eyes on Echo again, just so I know she’s okay. It’s obvious she wasn’t expecting to see me here.
The instant I enter the hall, I stop abruptly. Echo is here, all right, but she isn’t okay. A guy twice her size is towering over her, with one of his hands on her hip while the other rests against the wall, a beer bottle dangling from his fingers. She’s cringing away from him, making herself as small as she possibly can.
I see red.
Why the hell does that asshole think it’s acceptable for him to put his hands on her?
She’s obviously freaking the fuck out. Her chest rises and falls rapidly as she sucks in breaths, as if she can’t get enough oxygen, and her eyes are squeezed shut.
I storm up the hall, grab his hand, and tear it off her. I shove him. He stumbles back, opening up more space between him and Echo. She drops to the floor, her arms covering her head as she curls into a ball.
“What the hell?” he shouts, too loud for the confined space.
I get up in his face and shove him again. “She clearly didn’t want you anywhere near her,” I snap. “If you touch her again, I’ll rip your fucking arm off and club you with it.”
He holds his hands out, palms toward me defensively. “Is she your girlfriend or something?”
I stare at him, hoping he can read the scorn in my expression. “No, but does that even fucking matter? You were scaring her. That’s unacceptable.”
His eyebrows furrow in a way that tells me he doesn’t get it. “She’s all yours. Too much drama anyway.”
He pushes past me and stalks away, muttering under his breath. I kneel in front of Echo. She’s rocking back and forth, clasping her head. I shift position, trying to put myself in her line of sight, but her eyes are glazed and unseeing.
“Echo,” I say hesitantly. “Baby, you’re safe.”
My gut twists. It feels like barbed wire is tangled in there, drawing tighter with every passing second.
I’ve never seen her like this.
Even when things got bad for her at school—as they inevitably did after she made a serious accusation against one of the undisputed kings of the senior class that ended with him in prison—she’d never shut down so completely. At least, not that I’d seen.
She whimpers, and helplessness swamps me. What am I supposed to do? How do I help her fight something that lives inside her mind?
Shit, how much have I missed over the past three years?
I thought I’d been keeping a good eye on her. I believed I knew what I was dealing with, but this… I’m not prepared for this.
Her eyes snap to mine. “Go away.”
Even having her pissed off at me is a relief, because at least in this moment, she’s mentally present.
“I can’t leave you,” I tell her.“Not like this.”
Trembles wrack her body.
“We need to warm you up.” I try one of the bedroom doors, but it’s locked. The one next to it is open. “Come on.”
When she doesn’t move, I wrap my arm around her. She flinches and buries her face in her knees. I let go, horrified by her reaction to my touch.
“Let me get you warm,” I say. “Please, baby.”
This time, she allows me to guide her to the bedroom. She lowers herself onto the bed. I lift the end of the bedspread and fold it over her. She’s not looking at me again, and her breathing is still too fast.
“Breathe with me,” I urge. “In.” I draw in a deep breath, counting to four before releasing it. “And out.” Inhale. “In.” Exhale. “Out.”
At first, she can hardly hold air in her lungs, but after several breaths, the pressure seems to ease, and she mimics my breathing pattern more easily. She’s still despondent, and self-loathing curdles inside me. I’m partly to blame for why she’s like this. I wish I could fool myself into believing otherwise, but that would be a lie.
She loved me, and I helped to break her.
“What are you doing?”
My head snaps up. Anita is standing in the doorway, scowling.
“Did you hurt her?” she demands, rushing to the bed and pushing me aside. “Echo. Honey. What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I say. “Some asshole was coming onto her pretty aggressively and it scared her. I chased him away, but we need to get her out of here.”
She glances at me, her eyes tight at the corners. I don’t know if she believes me. From the suspicion painted across her face, Echo must have said something to her about our shared past.
“I’ll get her home,” she says, then turns back to Echo. “Can you stand up, honey?”
To my surprise, Echo complies, wriggling out from beneath the bedspread and getting to her feet. Her movements are sluggish, and she keeps herself angled away from me.
“Can I come with you?” I ask. “I need to make sure she’s okay.”
Anita purses her lips. “No. Maybe you really did help her, but all I know for sure is that she didn’t want to see you and now you’re here and she’s upset.”
I slump. I get it. She’s being a good friend and looking out for Echo. If only she knew I’d slice my veins open before I hurt Echo again.