36. Echo

36

Echo

B yrd sits on the edge of the bed in a pair of gray sleep pants that should be illegal, watching me pace the bedroom with his hands folded in his lap. Even pulled into one of its casual knots, his damp hair spills the occasional droplet onto his bare shoulders, and why the fuck does he have to look so good when he's about to break my fucking heart?

I know he thinks he needs to tell me everything, even if I don't want to hear it. Maybe I'm the pervy priest and he's the altar boy, and my punishment for his seduction is to hear his confession and absolve him of his sins.

But I'm not a priest; I'm Echo .

And it hurts .

More so because Byrd has never really hurt me before today. He's always been the one filling the cracks.

I stalk the plush room, resenting the romantic glow of the gilded lamps as the story spills out in his low voice and sparing words. Gabe as the new guy at Cici and Reggie's warnings. The slow seduction and Byrd's naiveté. And then the inevitable decay, colored in shades of narcissism I know regrettably well. A showcase Gabe wanted. A teacher who convinced Byrd to audition against him. Jealousy and gaslighting and vindictive betrayal, ultimately leaving Gabe pettily unscathed and Byrd a cautious, ever-careful supplicant when he should have been a god.

"I hope Reggie busted you with the biggest ‘I told you so,'" I mutter when he finally runs dry, turning from the city skyscape at the massive window.

"Not until later," he admits. "At first, she was too busy picking up the pieces."

"You loved him." I hate this .

"I was infatuated with him. At the time, it felt like the same thing. Now I know better." His eyes beg understanding, even as his shoulders slump with the expectation of rejection. My feet carry me across the room until my fingers can tangle in his hair and tilt his face to meet my gaze.

"Ask me anything," he says. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

I already know too much.

"How could you fall for his shit?" The question bursts out of me, layered with the roots of betrayal and the creeping sprouts of my own self-doubts. "How could you let him , of all people, hurt you like that?"

He circles my wrist with one hand and rubs a thumb over my fallen angel's wings.

"How could you?" he asks softly.

The question sinks into my scars and clogs my throat with bitter irony.

"I was twenty-one," he sighs, relenting. "Like I said, I didn't know any better."

Fucking ouch.

I release his head with more force than probably necessary and stalk back to the window .

"Right. Because twenty-one-year-olds don't know shit about their own feelings." I round on him, tendrils of fury spiraling over my skin. "That's why you didn't believe me when I said I loved you. Why you kept trying to reject me for my ‘own good.' Because I'm just a fucking child to you. No wonder you felt so guilty about wanting to stick your dick in me."

"I never thought of you as a child." He stands and moves as if to come to me but stops when I shake my head in warning. "Understand something, Echo. I wasn't like you at your age. I wasn't out and confident in my sexuality. I didn't draw attention as effortlessly as breathing. I was barely figuring out what my attraction to men meant."

My heart lurches at the unexpected compliment buried in the confession, but he barrels on. "Gabriel was the first man to ever return that attraction. It was addictive, overwhelming. And he was…" He trails off, scrubbing a hand through his hair, and a bitter sound escapes him as his fingers tangle in the hair tie.

"What? What was he?" Why am I asking ? Do I really want to hear about Gabe's fucking charms?

"He was magnetic. Needy and unattainable in this contradictory way. You couldn't not want his attention. And when you had it…" He pulls the elastic from his ruined bun with an impatient shake of his head. "He made me feel special."

I'm crumbling, a devastating slide into shattered pieces that ache for the fragile dream of lost potential.

"You are special."

This time, when he closes the space between us, I don't retreat, letting his arms come around me and resting my forehead in the crook of his neck. He smells like floral hotel shampoo and starlit skies.

He smells like Byrd .

"I'm not perfect, Echo. I never was. You put me on a pedestal I couldn't possibly live up to."

"Fuck you," I mumble into his skin. "I never put you on a pedestal, and I never asked you to be perfect." My hands come up to push him away but curl into his waistband instead. "You were always perfect for me ."

But I did expect perfection from him—when I asked him to fix me. When I dumped all my useless, broken pieces in his lap and used them to blackmail him into loving me back. I made him want me , when all he really wanted was to help.

" You're the perfect one," he murmurs. "You let me explore my own power without ever giving up any of your own, and it showed me a kind of love I never knew was possible." He buries his face in my hair and clutches me desperately tight. " But I lose myself in you. I can't think straight when we're in bed together, and—"

"I don't want you thinking when we're in bed together. Especially not straight ."

He laughs, a breathless, hopeless rush of air across my skin.

"I never wanted to be another person who disappointed you," he whispers, tracing subtle patterns along my spine. "Everyone you've ever looked up to has let you down. Including me."

Not him. Not really.

Not yet .

"So that's why you didn't tell me about Gabe? You didn't want to let me down?"

"I tried to tell you this afternoon, but you were already so hurt and angry, and I…" He shifts back when I stiffen, creating reluctant space between us. "I wanted to pretend I was the man you saw in me for one more night."

"So you decided to let me fuck you as what, some kind of favor because you felt sorry for me? Or to appease your fucking guilt?" This time, I do push him, with all my strength, until he staggers and the distance between us crystallizes into something real.

"No. God, no. I wanted this. For you, yes, but also for me. It was…"

"Stupid of us." Denial is a flimsy shield. Foolish of me to rely on it, when he's never let me hide behind any of my other defenses.

" Important ." His voice rasps over the raw edges of our anguish.

"Important. Because it was the first time or because it was the last?"

He covers his face with his hands, and I sink to my knees beneath the sudden weight of awful understanding. I can't even pretend it's not my fault we ended up here.

How many lines have I forced him to cross while convincing myself it was what he wanted?

Take , I told him, eroding his resolve and his choices with the torrent of my need.

How am I any different from his other lovers—despite my grand declarations—when I make him compromise himself again and again? I was so sure I was better than them, but I've been the selfish one, endangering his career and his relationships to mend my own fractured soul.

Selfish enough that I still don't want to let him go.

"Look at me," I beg. "I crushed the most important audition of my life today because of you. I found out my own brother tried to ruin my life and he had you first, and it fucking sucked, but I didn't let it break me. I defended you . And then you let me have you the way no one else ever has and think everything was gonna be okay. That we'd get through this, because we're Echo and Byrd . And now, after all of that, you're breaking up with me?"

"That's not what I'm doing," he says, dropping to join me on the carpet. His hair is curling along his jaw as it dries, and I could reach out and touch him if he wasn't so fucking far away.

"It feels like you are."

"I may have held back the truth about Gabriel, but I never lied about anything else. I wasn't lying when I said I love you."

"Then what is this shit? Why are you looking at me like you're saying goodbye?"

"Everything that happened today—with your father, with Gabe, and with me—it's all been there the whole time, underneath the rest. Just because we've been pretending—"

" Who was fucking pretending ? I never was. Don't try and tell me you were either. I fucking know you, Byrd Baardwijk. You don't do anything you don't mean. You would have fucked me the first week without giving a shit if you were that kind of guy."

"I wasn't pretending to love you. I was pretending I could keep you."

"Why can't you?"

"Because I can't . And you know this. Think about it, Echo. Think about your future and what you really want."

"I want you more than I want school."

" Don't say that . You know where that choice got me. Seven years drowning in a resentful marriage that was never going to work. I won't do that to you."

"I'd never resent you." But I can tell I'm losing the battle. He's been warning me the whole time that this has to end. Did I really think I could change our fate by offering to give up my own future? So that every time he looks at me, he's haunted by the ghosts of his past failings .

Or worse, by asking him to follow me across the world the way Lara did?

"Don't you understand?" he begs, cupping my face to brush away my tears. "If you don't do something incredible with your life, Gabriel wins. We can't let him win."

I crumple forward and smear my useless misery into his lap. His hands are achingly gentle in my hair.

I need this day to be over. I need it to never end.

"Take me to bed, Coen. Please?"