43. Echo

43

Echo

" H ow come all you have in your fridge is Nutella and beer?"

"Those are Tilburg college staples."

Guys in their thirties are supposed to be tired after mind-blowing sex, right? But Byrd is walking around my apartment—his apartment?—in nothing but his faded jeans, grumbling about my lack of groceries. Not that I haven't missed his cooking, surviving mainly on takeout as I currently do. And I've seriously missed watching him cook for me, punctuating his efficient movements with stories about how he learned to make a certain dish or where he found the elusive ingredient starring in the evening's culinary adventure.

Tomorrow, we should definitely hit the Jumbo.

If he's still here.

Today…

"We can order a pizza."

He closes my pathetic fridge and comes to lean against the door to the living room.

"Pizza? "

"They have this thing where they deliver it right to your house."

"I'm vaguely aware of the concept." He's so infuriatingly relaxed .

"You want mushrooms?" I scan the floor for my forgotten phone, determined to match his casual tone. "They only have the regular kind. Not that gourmet shit you like."

"You look good."

So do you.

"Yeah?" There's my phone. How'd it end up half under the couch ? "You could have seen me more than once in the last two months, you know." I wave my retrieved phone at him. "This does more than text." Okay, so maybe I'm not feeling exactly casual. But he shows up on my doorstep with no warning, completely rocks my world, and now he's just going to act like it's all normal?

"I was trying to give you space." He has the nerve to look mildly amused, dropping his arms from the doorframe to cross them over his chest.

"Yep. Good job." My sarcastic gesture takes in the—admittedly small—apartment. "Lots of space."

"Are you sorry I'm here?" His brow creases with confusion.

"Of course not."

"Then what—?"

" Why are you here, Coen?" The way his eyes glow when I use his real name resurrects all those damn butterflies. "You didn't come all the way here to find out about Thor. You were already on my fucking doorstep when I sent the stupid text."

"I was at the train station, actually. I don't have my EU SIM card yet, so I lost service when I left the Wi-Fi. "

"Stop it. You know what I'm trying to say. What does this mean ?" My hand flutters vaguely between us, woefully inadequate to harness the immensity of the question.

"It means I'm here." He takes a step toward me and frowns when I back away. "It means I'm staying."

"Until when?"

"Until forever."

Forever?

Don't fucking pass out, Echo.

"What about your job and the cabin and your life?"

"I quit my job and rented out the cabin."

"What? No. You're not supposed to do that shit anymore. You're not allowed to sacrifice things for the people you—" Love . The word sticks in my throat, bitter with the names of everyone who came before me. "—For me."

"Are you telling me to leave?"

Fucking hell. Is he being deliberately obtuse?

Whirling from his earnest confusion, I stalk back into the bedroom. If I'm doing this now, I need him to put on a fucking shirt. He follows me—because this is what he does now, apparently. Like all the pain he put me through since I left him in SF was pointless, and everything I did to him… was exactly what he expected.

"Are you mad at me?" he asks, startling when I throw one of my shirts at him. Not that it will fit his massive caveman chest. "I thought—"

"Shut up." I scrub my hands through my hair as he slowly tugs my shirt over his head and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. "Okay, look. I know the last time we really talked, I gave you a lot of shit about not knowing me. I was fucking hurt that you hadn't told me about your past, and that you didn't trust me to know my own heart and what was best for it .

"But…I get it—even if I don't want to. Because I told you I was broken and then made my weaknesses your responsibility. And I didn't just dump all the work of fixing me onto you, I decided what that looked like and made up my own rules—the same way everyone else in your life always has."

No more greedy, childish Echo.

It's my turn to confess.

The worn carpet chafes my knees when I sink to the floor, and the late-afternoon sunlight is a brand across my bare shoulders and a halo in his hair.

" I was the selfish one, Coen. I constantly demanded things you weren't ready to give, without ever stopping to consider what it might cost you.

"So yeah, maybe you should have told me about Gabe before you said you loved me. But not trusting me to make decisions about our future? Your future? That was more than fucking fair. Please don't make any more choices you'll regret for me. I won't survive it. I'd rather live off a hundred video calls than think I was anything like…them."

"Are you done?"

"I—yes." And maybe I fucked it all up, but it feels weirdly liberating, coming clean. Letting myself fall without any expectation that he'll catch me, even though he's right here.

"Okay, good. Thank you for saying all of that, baby, but it's bullshit."

I start to shake my head, but he slides from the bed to straddle my lap and tilts my face to look at him, fingers laced behind my neck and thumbs pressed to my galloping pulse.

"Yes it is. I should have trusted everything about you, because even at your most vulnerable, you were a thousand times stronger than me. You didn't just see something you wanted and go after it fearlessly, you saw something in me that deserved you. You knew exactly what I needed but was too afraid to reach for, and you refused to accept my cowardice or my excuses. You gave yourself to me without restraint or compromise again and again, and all you ever asked in return was for me to be as brave as you.

"There's nothing selfish or petty or small about that. No one's ever been as generous with their heart or their body or their soul as you've been since the day I met you. I'll chase you to the ends of the earth if you'll let me, Jericho Wash, and the only thing I'll be leaving behind is my fear."

"Wow," I breathe. Or try to—there's no space left behind my ribs with my heart overflowing into all the cracked and empty spaces. "That was…really fucking romantic." My hands relinquish their death grip on his thighs to snake around his waist. "But maybe no one needs to do any more chasing. Maybe we just keep each other now, and that means I'll never let you make yourself small again, and you'll never let me fall. And where we go next, we choose together."

"I think that sounds like a perfect life."

There's no choice left but to kiss him then—not like the world is ending but like it's beginning.

Like we're breaking the surface, with nothing in front of us but sky.