His name is Hunter, and he’s the owner of not one but three galleries. While that’s amazingly cool, Noah is amazingly hot, and not in the sexy way. As Noah stalks back through the door and Hunter walks down the hallway to the exit, I desperately search for the right words to explain why I did what I just did—why I agreed to meet with Hunter.
Noah pulls a shirt over his head and pushes his arms through the holes with so much force it could rip the material. I lean against the door, and it clicks shut behind me. “What he said made sense.”
He shoots me a glare that could freeze lava. “Sense? He fucking followed you, Echo, then turned up on your doorstep at nine in the morning. He thought you were alone.”
True. He obviously wasn’t prepared to find Noah fuming at the door, but I understood that look in Hunter’s eye. The feeling that something you’ve worked on for so long isn’t right, and that if you don’t fix it you’ll go insane.
That painting means something to him, and art means something to me.
“You heard what he said. He tried to catch up with me after we talked, but when he saw me enter the room he thought he should wait until this morning. He just wants to discuss the painting. I get that.”
“I get that he was staring at your tits.”
A shockwave of anger bounces throughout my cells. Don’t kill the boy you love. “I had my arms crossed over my chest. I was wearing a sweater yesterday so he was probably staring at my scars. Exactly like you did when you first saw them. It’s what people do!”
Noah clasps his fingers to the back of his neck as if that will keep him from throttling me. “Tits. Not your goddamned scars. You’re the one that obsesses over them, not the rest of the world. Trust me, he wants to talk to you because he liked what he saw, and I don’t care for it.”
My mouth pops open, and all the air rushes out, leaving me speechless. Shocked, hurt, pissed, just freaking frustrated. “You...that was...”
“What? It was what, Echo?”
“Sometimes people like to discuss things. Sometimes people might see me as a person with talent! He didn’t see the scars yesterday so it was a shock today. He showed not because of my—” and I wildly gesture at my top area “—stuff. He and I had an actual conversation, and he showed here because he wanted to have another conversation involving art! Not everyone is interested in sex!”
A muscle in Noah’s jaw ticks, and a small part of me immediately regrets the words, but there’s no way I’m taking them back. Not until he apologizes to me.
“Tell me that you didn’t mean what you said to him,” says Noah. “Tell me that you were trying to get him to leave without me having to intervene and that you have no intention of meeting with a guy that stalked you.”
There’s a pleading expression on Noah’s face—his forehead wrinkled, his dark eyes a bit shadowed. I’ve only seen that type of desperation when Noah used to mention his need to be with his brothers, and it slightly kills a part of my soul that he’s wearing it for me.
Even worse? That he’s wearing it for me, and I can’t grant him what he craves. Not without compromising my dreams. “He owns three galleries, and I’ve heard of him before from multiple people. He can open doors for me. I believe him when he says he wants to talk. I’m going to meet with him.”
Noah throws out his arms. “He’s psychotic!”
“I’m meeting him at a coffee shop! It’ll be a little obvious to the staff if he tries to chop me into pieces!”
“We’ll find another gallery. Someone else!”
“No!” I scream.
“Why?” he yells back.
“Because!” My voice breaks. “Because I understand what it’s like when someone sees something in your work. Not just the beauty, but the message. I saw something in his painting, and he knows it. He wants to improve it, and I want to help. I need this. I need to belong to something bigger than me. Something...” My eyes flash to my arms. “Something more than me.”
Noah pivots away, and nausea hits my stomach. This is all we’ve done for days now—fight. We’re at odds with each other, and I hate it. I want us to go back to one week ago, two weeks ago, any time after graduation and before this—free from the world, free from arguing. “I don’t like fighting with you.”
“Neither do I,” he says so quietly that I’m not sure if he said it.
Someone knocks on the door, and I lower my head. How can we repair us when we keep pressing Rewind on the same parts of the same tired movie?
The knock becomes persistent, and when Noah says nothing, I open the door. I blink with the first glimpse and blink again because there is no way this is happening. Black T-shirt, ripped jeans, a backpack hanging on one shoulder, and her long black hair tumbles over the strap of the pack as she looks over my outfit. It’s Noah’s sister by choice, Beth, and my every nightmare come true.
A wide grin spreads across her face that spells eight layers of trouble for me. “I’m assuming your outfit means that Isaiah and I are interrupting this morning’s extracurricular activities. If so, hurry it up. I need to use the bathroom.”