At the other end of the building, Echo rounds the corner with her gaze stuck to the ground and a canvas in her hands. She has that lost-in-her-own-world expression again, and my insides hollow out. That painting of Aires is going to kill her then me. I jump to my feet, causing Isaiah to snap to attention. “Trouble?”
Considering what Hunter said to me, possibly. “Echo’s earlier than I thought she’d be. Will you give us a few minutes alone in the room?”
His lips turn up. “Sure.”
I punch his shoulder as I pass. “I just need to talk with her.”
“Some people are into that talking shit while they do it, man. I’m not here to judge.”
I raise a single finger in the air as a response, and Isaiah chuckles. With a wide enough start, Echo’s not in the hallway when I enter the hotel. I pull the key card out of my pocket and with a click, the colder air of the room rushes past me and into the hall.
Echo relaxes on the bed with her feet tucked underneath her, and she’s focused on the newer canvas that now sits on the floor, propped against the chair. The edges of the canvas are a blue-black. It’s foreign from anything I’ve seen her do before, especially the blank part in the middle.
Personally, I prefer the painting on the chair—the painting representing the night we made love. “S’up, baby.”
“Hey.” Echo sends me a smoldering smile, and I’ve got an instant hard-on. The door shuts, and I swear my dick moves with the sound.
“Are you ready to discuss what happened this morning?” she asks.
No. “It can wait.”
“Are we alone?”
“Yeah.” My body screams to stride over to her, wrap my arms around her waist, kiss her until she’s drunk on me and slowly remove every article of clothing on her body. Because I love Echo, and she deserves respect, I hitch my thumbs in my pockets and cock a hip against the wall. “Homework?”
She squishes her lips to the side. “No. Yes. I don’t know. If I get enough of it done in time, Hunter says he’ll enter this and ten of my sketches in his work-in-progress wall at the Denver Art Festival.”
This is where I bite back the crappy comment and prod for where she’s at on this. Echo can give me shit all she wants about what I say and do, but in the end, I’m learning fast. “Denver—is it a good thing or a carnie sideshow?”
Echo giggles, and her laughter plays along my skin, easing some of the stress built from my conversation with Hunter. “Carnie sideshow?”
“Tilt-a-whirl, Guess Your Weight, cotton candy and hot dog purging, Traumatized Goldfish Games. Carnie sideshow.”
“It’s not a carnie sideshow, but there’d be a ton less pressure on me if it was.” She gets lost in the painting again.
I walk over, rest on the bed beside her and slide my fingers along the nape of her neck. “Jesus, Echo. You’re cement blocks.”
Echo waggles her eyebrows. “Are you going to rub the tension away?”
Any room I had before in my pants vanishes. She means the tension in her neck. In her neck alone. I cup both hands over her shoulders and begin to knead out the knots. I love how she dips her head forward, and her muscles melt under my touch.
A soft moan leaves her lips, and screw me, that sound vibrates to my toes. I clear my throat. “Denver’s a good thing, then?”
Any ground I’d gained with her muscles I lost with the question, but I keep massaging her shoulders. It’s not a sacrifice to have an excuse to touch her smooth skin.
“It’s a good thing,” she replies. “He wants to put up the sketches I did of your hands.”
My fingers still. “My hands?”
“Uh...yeah... I...um...” Heat radiates from her neck, and red splotches develop. “Sometimes, after we made out and stuff, you’d fall asleep, and I’d sketch your hands because...well...” The blush spreads from her neck to her face. “I...uh...liked how you touched me so I wanted to draw your hands.”
When Echo used to draw, I saw the picture on the paper. Being with her this summer, seeing her create, experiencing the same day together, I understand now that there’s a meaning in what she chooses to draw. Echo wasn’t drawing my hands, she was drawing us.
“You can draw my hands anytime you want.” A surge of pride wells deep within me. Unable to contain it, I let the hands in question glide down her arms. I press my lips to the spot below her ear, and she leans back into me.
My hands sneak around her waist, and she links our fingers together. I pull her tight to me, and Echo admires the canvas again.
“When’s the art show?” I ask.
“The end of next week.”
Next week. Thursday or Friday. The time we need to leave so I can attend Jacob’s last game. My teeth click together.
“If he puts my work in the show, I’d like to be there,” she says quietly.
I’d miss my brother play ball. He asked me to come. I told him I’d try. “I don’t know.”