Noah’s saying words. Words I should listen to, but the emotions running through me are too strong. “Did you know that Aires felt trapped at home?”
Just like Noah must feel like I’m trapping him. Noah was a different person when we met. He changed, and I liked how he changed, and I liked how he dreams of college and how he wants to build me a house and to buy me a small fluffy dog, but what if all of that is to please me and he’ll feel trapped and then he’ll disappear just like...
“Aires said that joining the Marines was his dream, but was it his dream? I mean, did he join because he felt like there was no other way out? And what happens when you feel trapped? What happens to you? To us? I can’t lose someone like that again. I can’t...”
“You aren’t.” Noah cuts me off. “I’m not trapped. Going to college. Being with you. Those are my choices. Not choices to prove something to you. If it was, I’d be on my knees begging you to take me back, and I’d be telling you that I’ll stay with you in Colorado, but I can’t. I need Kentucky, just like you need here, but, baby, I still want us together. Hear me, Echo. Hear what I’m saying. I’m not trapped. I’m exactly who I want to be...who I want to become. I wasn’t chasing her last night, I was chasing you.”
“Aires also said he’d never leave!” The air leaves my body faster than I’m taking it in. “He lied to me! The one person who never lied to me, lied to me! And I know you never lie so what does that mean? I’ll tell you. It means that this is all going to hell.”
Noah’s face contorts as if I’m gutting him open. “I get it.”
“You don’t.”
He slams his palm over his chest, over his heart. “They left me, too!”
Tears prick my eyes. “What if we’ll always be broken? What if we can never be fixed? What if this is it, for the rest of our lives? Regardless of whether we’re together or not? What if our past will always haunt us and makes us miserable? What if we’ll never shed our baggage and weights, and we’ll never be set free?”
The truth of my words is too heavy to wait for a response because I’ll drown from the answer. Noah and I are trapped in a black hole. A terrible, consuming black hole.
A black hole.
I suck in a breath like I’m waking up. I slip my shoes on my feet and snatch my key card off the dresser.
“Echo...” Noah rapidly moves for me, his hand outstretched.
“It’s a black hole,” I tell him. “The constellation, the one I’m painting...it contains a black hole. The answers I’ve been searching for...the painting...I know what I need to do.”
“Okay. That’s good, but you need to sit—”
“No!” I desperately attempt to rein in my emotions. “No. I need to do this now. I’m going to the gallery and you stay here, and then I’ll be back.”
“I’ll take you there.”
“I’ll be fine—”
“If it’s not me, then I’ll wake Isaiah, but I’ve only seen you like this once before, and I’ll be damned if I let you walk out that door without someone keeping an eye on you. Kick me in the damned nuts. Break up with me a hundred times, but I’m walking you to that fucking gallery. Got it?”
Because there’s no arguing with him when his eyes turn solid with determination, I grab the canvas and walk out the door with Noah.
*
I try the back door, and I have to fight the urge to punch it when, like the front door, it’s locked. Hunter gave me a key, and I forgot it. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me. I know what I need to do for this painting, and I’ll go mad if I don’t finish it. I step back from the door and assess the second story. Is there a freaking way to scale the wall?
“You’ve got paint in the room,” says Noah. “Can you finish it there?”
“I don’t have what I need there,” I answer. There’s a tree near the corner, but it would be a heck of a jump, and who knows if the windows are unlocked.
A sharp pain on my scalp. “Hey!” Did Noah yank out my hair?
Noah flattens out a bobby pin and leans into the door. His head swivels like an owl’s up and down the back alley. “Are you sure you’re allowed in here?”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you in. I see the look on your face. You need this. So, I’m asking again. Do you have permission to be here?”
Calmer than I was in the hotel, I glance at Noah. “Do you think I’m the breaking-and-entering sort?”
With his shoulder against the door, Noah sticks the pin into the lock and begins this weird jiggling movement. “Yes.”
“I can’t believe you’d think that.”
“If you think about it...” Noah halfheartedly offers his wicked grin. It doesn’t quite touch his eyes, but the small attempt at playfulness does cause me to smile...a little. “You’re the one who broke into a therapist’s office.”