Page 16 of Unlocked Dive
“Mmm. You like me distracting.” The words are playful, but his tone is acerbic, and his eyes spit fire. “Better than watching me fake it on the rope.”
“So stop faking it.” I jab my finger into one of the tattoos at his hip, and for once, I don’t tremble at the contact. “‘Unlocked dive.’ You’ve been doing this trick since you were twelve. You could probably slow it down and land it with your left alone. What the hell is stopping you right now? Because I don’t believe it’s only your hand.” There. I finally said it.Please let me in.
“Maybe I’m just done?” He shrugs like it’s that easy. Like I won’t know better.
“Fuck that.” I want to shake him. “It doesn’t just go away, this thing you have. It nearly killed me to walk away, and I never had a fraction of your talent.” I’ve never admitted that to anyonebefore. When he doesn’t react, I yank my phone from my pocket and stab angrily until I’m back on his IG feed. I’ve studied it so many times, it only takes a second to find the right video.
“See this?” I ask, shoving the phone in his face. “This is a flawless unlocked dive.” I swipe once. “This? An unlocked double-back salto. That shit is terrifying, and you’relaughing.” Another swipe. “What about this? Four pirouette switches. Practically impossible.” I shake the phone at him, all the fury and frustration of the last three weeks vibrating in my skin. “Where the fuck isthisEcho?He’sthe Echo I want to see.”
He’s gone ashen, his eyes wide and panicked, and I reel back from the slap of his pain.
“That Echo?” He laughs, edging toward hysteria. “The Echo in that video?He ruined my fucking life.”
Before I can force my staggering lungs to draw breath, he’s gone, storming through the glass doors and taking the deck stairs two at a time. Guilt and anger war at my insides, hot in my chest and cold in my gut. I realize, too late, that I can still feel the burn of his skin on my finger, and that I might have inadvertently shattered the last lifeline of a beautiful, broken boy.
Or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit.
Typical Byrd, thinking you’re enough to heal the missing pieces for everyone in your life.
I want to chase after him, but I pace the room, uncertain. Is it the selfish Byrd’s desire? Or the Byrd who needs to fix everyone around him, regardless of the cost in flesh?What the fuck do I want from him? Why do I care if he throws himself away? He’s not mine. I can’t have him in the ways I refuse to admit I want, so what the hell am I doing here?
I’ve been dodging Reggie’s calls for weeks, scared and unwilling to answer the questions I know she’ll ask, but maybe it’stime to suck it up. Confess my sins and let her handle the fallout. That would be the responsible move.
Instead, I go after Echo.
I catch him at the bottom of the driveway. No longer running, he leans against the crossbeam gate with his chin on his chest and his hands in his hair. My heart cracks wide at the sight, and I’m out of the truck almost before I can throw it in park.
“Echo.” I reach for his wrists to tug his hands down and make him look at me, but I catch myself and let my hands fall after a bare brush against his skin. For a brief, brutal second, his fingers clutch tighter in his hair, and then he drops his arms in defeat. The face he lifts to meet mine is ghostly, lost behind the bruised blue of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, uselessly, reaching again—inevitably—to touch his tragic beauty. This time, he’s the one who jerks back.
“Don’t bother.” He spits the words like bitter poison. “I’m not the Echo you want.”
My heart is a void, collapsing under his weight.
All the warring pieces of myself dissolve and scatter, and there’s no thought, no decision made, just my hands in his hair and his mouth under mine like there was never meant to be space between us.
He gasps against me, his hands coming up to rest against my ribs. Maybe he means to push me away, but now his lips are parted, and I let myself inside. He’s nothing but silk and craving—his hair between my fingers, the curve of his neck when I drop a hand to tug him closer, the lethal heat of his fierce, eager mouth. He sucks at my tongue, his own bold and teasing, every cocky promise made real in wet flesh.
His fingers curl at my waist, hooking my jeans to pull me into him. My cock is painfully hard, and if I don’t stop now, I’ll be taking him against the gate post, five feet from the damn road.
I lurch back with a groan, dragging myself free until my fingers on his throat are all that’s left of the kiss. He lets me go, trailing his hand down over the bulge in my jeans before palming his own erection, unashamed. With his other hand, he rubs a thumb across his swollen lips, and his eyes are a cobalt sea of raw desire.
“Echo,” I try again. Those eyes flash.
“Don’tsay you’re sorry. Don’t try to explain.”
I can only shake my head. “Will you get in the car?”
“That depends.” He tilts his head, and I’m struck again by that aura of unreality, like he’s drawn from pixels and dark fantasy. “Are you taking me to bed or back to the rope?”
“Neither,” I say. “We’re going for a ride.”
9
Echo
Driving with Byrd has become one of my new favorite things. Even if it still takes forty minutes to get anywhere, it’s not like driving in LA. There are no eight-lane highways up here. No strip malls or stop lights or bumper-to-bumper traffic. Only trees and fog trying to reclaim the blacktop, and on the coast, the vast expanse of the Pacific falling away from the edge of the world.
