4. Echo

4

Echo

" I 'm not going."

"Jericho." My father is losing patience.

"Echo." My mom's voice is softer, pleading. "You already agreed to it. You've known since December that this was coming."

"I was still on drugs in December."

That's a lie. I flushed the painkillers three days after getting home from the hospital, on the day I should have been flying to Amsterdam. It was that or down the whole bottle.

Instead, I got way too drunk with my friend Asha until it seemed like a good idea to go through the NCC student social accounts and pick out all the guys I would've fucked if I'd actually been there.

I should have taken the fucking Percocet.

When Regina Blake herself called my dad before Christmas to lay out the conditions of her offer, of course I said yes, even though I despised the idea. It felt like auditioning all over again, only this time, I wasn't confident about passing. My father was so smug that the school was willing to pay for four months of personal training to make sure I passed the evaluation. It proved they were invested in me and had faith in my full recovery. All I had to do was show up and do what I always did—be perfect. Be Echo.

I'm starting to hate my fucking name.

The cast was two months gone at that point—two months of occupational therapy to get me back to the point where I could close my fingers tight enough to feel the fiber core of the rope through the canvas sheath—and Regina gave me until the end of March to get ready. To build back the corded strength in my forearm and remember all the ways I could fly.

I haven't been back to the Center. I'm still too much of a liability for their insurance. It's also full of people who've never seen me falter, and I can't fucking face it. Can't bear to see myself rendered small and ordinary where I've always been larger than life. My dad bought a new mat, four inches thicker and twice as wide as the one I cursed with my calamity, and tossed me back in my studio, careless with all the confidence I no longer possess.

Start small.

Start safe.

Start over.

It's been fucking torture.

Basic movements I haven't had to think about for years make me sweat and tremble. My hand, my right hand— the thoughtless foundation of my whole identity—cramps and slips and terrifies me. Everything feels intangible, a new barrier claiming space between my body and my brain, making me clumsy and aberrant in my own skin.

After the first month, I fled to Audrey's to cover my scars.

"It's way too soon," she tells me, fingering the tender grooves where the skin is beginning to fade from ugly red to underbelly pink.

"It's been almost six months."

"I should make you wait at least nine, probably a year."

"Fuck that, Audrey. Since when have we followed the rules?"

"It's gonna hurt like a bitch."

"It always hurts. You're the one who says that's part of the fun."

"I'm a masochist. You're a hedonist. Trust me when I say this is not your kink."

"Maybe my kinks have changed."

Audrey gives me a steady look, and Asha snorts from her perch at the piercing counter. I throw a grin at my friend like it hasn't been weeks since I've seen her. Like I haven't been shutting her down every time she wants to come to the studio, unwilling to face the humiliation of watching her move effortlessly through the tricks we used to do together. Knowing I have nothing to throw at her now to trigger the competitive envy she thrives on.

Yeah, I'm a coward, but ours is a complicated friendship, forged over years of chasing each other up and down the rope even before puberty and grace solidified my advantage. At the Center, Asha is the queen bee to my king cock, and I'm not letting myself wonder how she likes ruling alone.

She's also Audrey's little sister and the reason I've been able to ink myself since three years before it was legal. Audrey started tattooing me in their basement when she was barely an apprentice with borrowed gear, and she's the only one I've ever let mark my body. She's every bit the badass bitch she needs to be as the only female artist in a shop that caters mostly to bikers and bangers, but she loves me. Possibly more than Asha does. Audrey calls me her passion project, even though ninety percent of what I've let her do is simple words and numbers. She likes the story they tell and how her ink and needles make her a part of it. She charges me half what her time is worth, even though she knows I can afford to pay, and in return, I tag her in all my shirtless Insta posts.

"You've been dying to get your hands on my right arm for years," I remind her. "This might be your last chance."

"Aren't you training? Asha says you're still heading off to school in the fall."

"Mostly conditioning," I admit with a shrug, glancing over at Asha. I wish she'd fuck off and stay out of my shit today. "No one-arm stuff with a wrap. No release moves." I keep the words casual. Audrey may or may not understand the implications, but Asha definitely will. "I've got another month before I'm allowed to get serious enough to fuck up the tat." Lies. Cowardly, stupid lies.

Audrey is caving, moving around the space and gathering her tools. I sink gratefully into her chair and hook the armrest stand toward me with my foot.

"And you're one hundred percent sure about the design?" she asks, hesitating next to her stool. "I appreciate the tragic symmetry, Echo, but do you really want me to immortalize your broken wings?"

I almost laugh. My wrist is held together with surgical screws and a steel plate. Long after my tattooed skin and the bones it covers have decayed to dust, that metal will be the last immortal part of me, buried treasure at the bottom of my coffin.

"It's part of the story, Audrey." Truth . "Can't call it art if you chicken out at the hard parts."

Maybe it's the words or the smile I give her—rueful, with just the right touch of conspiracy—but she stops trying to talk me out of it and gets to work.

She starts at the edges, letting me sink into the familiar buzz and drag before laying into the scar. It doesn't help.

The first bite of the needle through the virgin flesh is way, way worse than I'm prepared for, and I'm sweating and cursing within seconds. Audrey only grips my hand tighter and doesn't stop, but I can read anger in her tightly furrowed, pierced brows and the bitter line of her plum-painted lips.

I want to say I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if she's mad at my ruined wrist or at me for making her add a new layer to my misery.

By the time she's done, the anger is gone, poured into my skin, and when she wipes the last of the blood away, there's a dreadful wonder in her expression.

What the hell are tattoos, anyway, but a torrid affair between art and pain?

And we've just consummated a masterpiece.

I keep it covered at home. I'm supposed to wear the arm warmer anyway, and I don't need my morbid new tattoo to make my mother start crying again. I don't know what my dad would think. He's always liked my ink and what it represents, in that way that arrogant fathers are secretly proud of their sons' little rebellions. The alpha wolf grooming his favorite pup to take over the pack someday—as long as the pup picks his battles wisely.

But I'm pretending I'm unbroken, so my wrist stays covered, and I hide in the studio and run laps around the walls while my rope hangs limp and idle. I do squats and sit-ups and C-shaping drills until my muscles ache and I can emerge breathless and exhausted. I tell my parents that yes, it's going great, and yes, I can't wait to get back in a real gym, and yes, yes , of course I still want my place in Tilburg.

So they're understandably confused by my current change of heart.

"I was still on drugs in December."

"Enough." My father, less than amused by my flippant comment, slaps his hand down on the kitchen counter hard enough to rattle the decorative bowl of oranges against the marble. "You spoke to Regina yourself last week. You're committed."

"Echo," my mother tries again, resting a manicured hand on his sleeve. "You told us you were ready. What's happened in the last six days to change your mind?"

I drop my head onto my folded arms with a groan. I'm not ready. I was just willing to fake it and hope that somehow, magically, my confidence might reemerge if I got the fuck away from the scene of the crime. But something has changed.

Byrd fucking Baardwijk.

Regina "Call me Reggie" Blake, lord and master of my precarious future, was so excited to tell me who she'd recruited to handle my evaluation.

"He's been one of the top talent scouts for Cirque du Soleil for the past six years, and he's an old friend of mine and a Cici alumnus. He has a private studio in Mendocino where you can focus on your training without any distractions."

Except, when I look him up online, I discover that my new "coach" is definitely going to be a serious fucking distraction.

His headshot on the Cirque website isn't so bad—wavy chestnut hair pulled back from a face a little too fine to be called rugged, even with the short beard clinging to the strong line of his jaw. Full lips, curved up at one corner like the photographer caught him halfway to forgetting the professional setting, with the faintest crinkles tickling the corners of his clear hazel eyes. Almost devastating. Not quite dangerous. Sexy but approachable.

Thirty-two years old. Probably straight. Totally not my type.

But his bio says he performed on the rope for three years with Zircus Weber out of Germany, and since it's the twenty-first century, I go internet stalking. There isn't much from his touring days, but I find an old promo reel in the bowels of YouTube.

Byrd Baardwijk, shirtless on the rope in black and white, with wavy hair falling in his eyes and muscles coiling across his shoulders and along his back, dancing through the ether above a dark stage.

I jack off to it twice, and then another half-dozen times over the next few days, and nowhere in my filthy fantasies is the shattered, useless version of myself I now inhabit .

So I tell my parents no, but I lose that skirmish too, of course.

One week later, I'm standing in a cold drizzle next to a Charlie Brown statue outside the smallest airport I've ever seen, waiting to go to battle with the last of my pride.