33. Echo

33

Echo

B yrd's fist comes out of nowhere. Or maybe I conjured it with my wishful warning.

"Stay. The fuck . Away from him."

Gabe's head snaps to the side, and he stumbles, catching himself with a hand in the fence right before he hits the ground. The susurration of the thinning crowd washes against the periphery as my awareness tunnels, sharpens, coalescing on the sight of the berserker in the James Bond tux glowering down at my brother.

"Hi, Byrdie. Nice to see you again too." Gabe spits blood on the concrete and pulls himself back to his feet.

Byrdie ? Maybe I say it out loud because Byrd's gaze hits mine, swimming with familiar remorse. I fucking hate that look. The look that means his doubts are winning. That he thinks he took something from me that I'm too young, too demanding, too broken to give.

But I'm scared that this time he might be right.

He ignores Gabe, who's now dabbing at his mouth and examining the blood on his fingers with wicked delight. My heart pounds in my chest, a cavern of chaos between each lurching beat:

Euphoria —Byrd swinging at Gabe like an avenging hero from my boyhood comic book fantasies.

Calamity —Gabe's eyes dancing between me and my Byrd with savage glee, while his voice says words like, " You didn't tell him about us ?" and " I was his first ."

Byrd finally tears his eyes from mine.

"Stop it, Gabriel," he says, and his weary frustration torpedoes my last clinging remnants of disbelief. "How many of the people who've loved you have you hurt for having something you wanted?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Byrdie. You haven't been something I wanted for a very long time."

They know each other.

"I'm talking about Echo, you fucking piece of shit. Haven't you already done enough damage? What could you possibly gain by hurting him more?"

"How am I hurting him now? By telling him the truth? He called you his boyfriend. Shouldn't he already know you were my boyfriend first?"

They fucked each other.

Byrd's shoulders slump, his aggressive posture fading into something helpless and defeated. He shifts his gaze back to mine, his eyes an ocean of regret, and my breath strangles in my throat.

"Yes," he admits. "He should."

"Did he tell you about the guy who broke his heart in college?"

Byrd loved him before he ever loved me.

He moves as if to reach for me, and I flinch back, dimly aware of Gabe's caustic laughter beneath the roaring in my ears. My voice comes out small and pathetic .

"Why did it have to be him?"

But even as he shakes his head, the bitter symmetry clicks into place, cracking my heart in two. Why shouldn't it be Gabe who shattered him? And here we are now, two splintered souls trying to pull each other from the wreckage, one eternally apologizing and the other…

Furious .

Not at Byrd—not yet, although sparks of it flicker in the pit of my stomach—but at the absolute asshole who thinks he can trample through his pathetic life over the hearts and dreams of anyone who offers him an ounce of care.

Two Cirque lot security guards approach. One, built like a bruiser, ushers Byrd a few yards away, arguing in low, insistent tones. The other, a woman who looks almost as young as me, murmurs nervously to Gabe about cops and charges and whether he needs to see the on-site doctor.

"He doesn't need a doctor," I interrupt. "And no one is pressing charges."

Gabe arches a brow at me, a mocking mirror of the expression I've thrown a hundred times. But he doesn't argue, sending the guard away with a reassuring smile and a rueful shake of his head. His anger is gone, replaced by a cruel satisfaction that slices into my skin like retribution. Like a surgical scalpel .

He couldn't take my wings, but now he wants to take my anchor.

Like hell I'm giving him the satisfaction. Whatever past claim he had, Byrd is mine now, to punish and forgive. I've only just begun to coax him free.

"I know what you did to him."

"What I did to him ?" He feigns hurt, but his lips curl with sadistic mirth. "He was the one fucking me, little brother. And then he fucked my career over too. "

There's a story here. Another one Byrd never told me. Or maybe it's all the same story, and I know both of them well enough to guess the ending.

"Bullshit. If you're talking about that big showcase you didn't get in sophomore year, don't forget I've seen you on the silks. And I've seen him on the rope. If he's the one you whined about beating you out for that spot, it just means the judges knew what they were doing." Tears burn behind my eyes, but I clench my fists against the ache and cling to my disdain.

"We all got into the same school, you know." Gabe scowls. "Me, Byrd. You . Don't try to pretend you deserve it more than I did because Dad's been blowing smoke up your ass. Or that Byrd is some unrivaled god because you've discovered you like taking it as much as sticking it in."

"Back to that shit?" I run my tongue over my own unbloodied lip and flip him off. "Get out of here, Gabe, or I'll be the next one to lay you out. You wanna call the cops if I break your nose with my bionic hand and watch how fast our rich daddy bails me out?"

"Looks like it's two rich daddies now." He smirks. "Byrd always was a sucker for a pretty little asshole."

Before I dissolve into pure, unhinged violence, my snarky mouth comes to my rescue. I can hit where it hurts, too, brother .

"Yep. Two men who love me more than they ever loved you." Please, god, let it be true . "One is a lawyer who could probably get me off even if I put you in the hospital, and the other is waiting to take me back to our hotel so we can get each other off and forget you ever existed."

Unfortunately, Gabe's mouth comes from the same stock as mine .

"You sure about that last?" he asks, glancing at where Byrd is arguing quietly with the burly security guard, his fists shoved in his pockets, looking anywhere but at me.

"Yes," I lie. "Byrd chose me."

"He chose me first."

It's a knife in the ribs, but I got good at faking functional after the last time he wrecked me.

"And look where that got him. He's spent his whole adult life afraid to reach for what he wants because you taught him he's not worth it when he does. But he is worth it. He's worth everything , so you can fuck all the way off now and leave us the hell alone." I keep my gaze steady and my trembling hands shoved in my pockets and pray he doesn't call my bluff.

"Sure thing, baby brother. Have fun with my leftovers." He pushes off the fence and finally saunters away, leaving me alone in the ashes of my trust.

Byrd, now free of looming authority figures in uniform, watches him go and sighs when I step up beside him.

"I'm so sorry, Echo. I never wanted you to find out that way."

It's too many revelations for one day, and weary exhaustion laps at the frenetic tension keeping me afloat. I've barely had time to process the first betrayal, and now I'm caught in this tenuous space between sympathy and rage, the urge to lick his wounds warring with the need to inflict them.

"Can we go back to the hotel?" I ask. His gaze snaps to mine, surprise and relief written in the widening of his eyes and softening of his jaw.

What would he be like now if I'd found him first?

"Yes." His hand hovers at my back as I lead him toward the nearest exit, but he never actually touches me, and I keep my own hands to myself.

For the first time since he found me in the rain at the Santa Rosa airport, I don't obsessively ogle him while he drives. The streetlights are just starting to come on, winking bravely against the deepening shadows of the sunken streets.

"Have I ever actually been Echo to you? Or have I always only been Gabe's little brother?" I think it comes out pretty casual, but the 4-Runner lurches as Byrd's foot hits the brake a little too hard, and he lets out a heavy breath before easing out of the parking lot.

"Jesus, Echo. How can you ask me that?"

"Seems like a fair question." There are a million more on the tip of my tongue, but I force myself to wait and pretend my patchwork soul doesn't hang on his answer.

"Both," he admits, after enough time has passed that I'm seriously considering abandoning him here while we sit at a stoplight. "You were Gabriel's brother, and then you were Echo. And then you were everything." He rests his forehead on the steering wheel as we wait for the light to change. "I was going to tell you."

"Sure. When? I wanted to think maybe you didn't know I was his brother, at first. But Wash isn't that common of a last name, and I talked about him the first night while you were making puttanesca…" And a dozen times after. So many chances to tell me the truth. If I'm really your everything.

"Yesterday. This afternoon. I meant to come clean a hundred times over the last few months."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"Because I'm leaving in three weeks anyway." The last time I broke, it was blurred, drugged edges. Denial and the ache of loss and slow-mending bones. This breaking is sharp with the glass edge of betrayal. Agony rushing in after the smooth parting of skin.

He turns his head without raising it from the wheel, and a lock of hair that's escaped from his topknot falls over his cheek. My fingers twitch with the urge to brush it away, but I refuse to let myself be lured.

"At first, I told myself it didn't matter," he says. "Because I wasn't going to let myself keep you. And then I didn't say anything because I'm a coward, and I didn't want you to leave."

"How uncharacteristically selfish of you."

He's no less beautiful, but it hurts to look at him, and I still can't help wondering how much of Gabe he sees when he looks back. I lean my head against the cold window and watch the moon rise over the skyscrapers like a ghost in the lavender sky.

I taught Byrd to be selfish, and he taught me to be afraid of being in love.

What an ironic fucking coup.

It doesn't make it stop, though—the loving part. After ten minutes of pretending I don't notice him shifting miserably in his seat as he navigates the early evening traffic, my runaway mouth can't take it anymore .

"You better be squirming like a guilty toddler because you kept the mother of all secrets from me and not because you punched my asshole brother."

He throws me a startled look, and even in the halogen glow of the city sunset, I can see the flush creep up his neck.

"That's not—umm…neither. I…" He shifts again. "I'm wearing a plug." The last comes out a rushed and almost apologetic whisper, and all of my tortured thoughts stutter to a halt beneath the onslaught of blood racing south. My stupid dick doesn't care that he fucked Gabe or that my heart is in shreds. It wants me to tug that toy out of Byrd's virgin ass with my teeth.

This is not a healthy way to handle my shit.

Byrd's called me out a million times for chasing my body's distraction when I don't want to face the cracks it hides, and even I can't fool myself into thinking sex is gonna fix anything this time.

But he's supposed to be the fucking grown-up, and he's been keeping secrets the whole time. Why should I try to be mature when it would be so much easier—and feel so much better—to punish him with my cock?

Because that's the whole point of a relationship, asshole. You're supposed to be making each other stronger, not enabling the same old crap.

We've almost reached the hotel, and the silence is thick with edgy tension and laced with treacherous lust.

Maybe for a little while, we can pretend the rest of this day never happened—that I never went to lunch with my dad or stumbled onto the mother-of-all-assholes on the lot.

Fuck all these revelations. Fuck being strong.

I'll take denial and Byrd's perfect ass, please .

"I can't believe you hit Gabe while wearing a plug to prep your ass to take my dick," I say as we climb from the truck in the shadowed parking garage. "Have you been wearing it all night?"

"Only since intermission. And I wasn't planning on punching anyone tonight."

"The punching part was actually really hot," I confess. "Assuming it was a knight-in-shining-armor thing and not a shut-up-before-you-out-me-as-a-lying-bastard thing."

"Echo." His fingers brush my arm, but I keep walking. "It was a blind rage, get-the-fuck-away-from-the-man-I-love thing," he finishes, so soft I might be dreaming.

Goddamn fucking butterflies.

He doesn't get to be romantic right now.

"So you seriously inserted a butt plug in a Cirque lot port-a-john? That doesn't sound very sexy. Or sanitary." The snort that escapes me is halfway between derisive and hysterical, and he gives me a guarded glance, holding the elevator door so I can slide past.

"Jean let me use one of the trailers. And no, I didn't tell her what I was doing."

"How does it feel?" Even in the harsh fluorescents of the elevator, he's stunning—loose tendrils of his chestnut hair framing the lines of his jaw and tickling his throat. His jacket is slung over one forearm, and he leans against the wall, watching me with his hands in his pockets, a study in wary affection tinged with tentative relief.

"Better now that I'm not driving. Or dealing with lot security."

I step across the enclosed space and grip the handrail at his hips, caging him in.

"Don't think this lets you off the hook," I tell him. He shakes his head.

"I don' t expect that. I don't want it. You deserve—"

"He was the last guy you fucked, wasn't he? Before me?"

"Yes."

"But you never let him top you." I don't even think Gabe is vers, and Byrd said he'd never bottomed, but I have to be sure.

"No."

"And you did this"—I slide my hand around to cup his ass and press lightly on the end of the plug with my middle finger—"for me. Because you didn't want me to hurt you?"

"I didn't want you to have to be careful. I wanted to make it good for you."

"Fuck you, Byrd. You know that's my job tonight, right?"

"Are you sure you still want to?"

The elevator dings, sliding open on the executive level before I can answer. I let him go and walk out first, because of course I still fucking want to. But I also want to hurt him right now—at least a little—and it's making me reckless.

"It's probably a bad idea," I confess, leaning against the wall while he uses the electronic key card to open the door to our suite. He nods, his Adam's apple bobbing, and doesn't look at me. "But I'm gonna do it anyway."

I can forgive him. That's what love is, right?

"Okay."