6. Echo

6

Echo

B y the time we climb the steep, winding driveway, faded light creeping through the dripping redwood canopy, I'm fucking high on Byrd Baardwijk.

I can't stop checking him out, and I can't stop flirting with him—not when he keeps responding in his adorably reluctant way. Like he can't help himself either. Like I'm still irresistible in spite of everything.

I keep catching his eyes on my mouth or flickering down to my crotch, and remembering the way he said "cock" like it didn't scare him, the bare traces of his Dutch accent making my toes curl. He smokes two of my cigarettes, the filter pinched between his thumb and fingertips, and I fantasize about sucking the nicotine off his tongue.

He parks in front of a two-car garage and grabs my duffel from the back seat, slinging the strap over his shoulder while I'm still taking in the three stories of glass and timber carved into the rugged hillside. He leads me past the deck wrapped around the lower level, up a long flight of wooden stairs, and I stare at his ass and think about ripping his hair free of its messy man-bun and seeing what it feels like between my fingers—or draped over my dick.

"…old two-seater in the garage if you want to run to town. It's about thirty-five minutes to Mendocino if you're not trying to kill yourself, but there's a general store a few miles back down the…" He trails off when he turns at the top landing to find me only inches behind him.

"I can carry this myself," I tell him, sliding two fingers under the strap across his chest and giving it a light tug. "I'm an a dult ."

His sharp inhale traps my knuckles against his chest, and I'm close enough to watch his pupils blow in the dying light.

Please. Please …

"Good to know." His half smile is amused, ironic.

I want to press into him. I want to feel his cock harden against my thigh. I want—

He opens the door and turns away.

I want to be someone else.

He gives me a quick tour while I gather the shreds of my vanity. The house is three split levels of high ceilings and half walls, rich and somehow cozy with its dark, exposed beams and tall windows. Byrd's obvious pride in his home is an eager, charming thing, and it's hard to feel resentful of his rejection watching him. Instead of diluting his immediacy, the space only enhances it until I'm drowning in everything Byrd.

"I've got a twenty-four-foot outdoor rig," he tells me. "We should be able to set it up in a couple of weeks when the ground dries out. In the meantime…" He gestures to the rope hanging in the center of the living room over a four-by-six gym mat. "This is what I usually use when I'm here."

I walk up to the rope and wrap my hand around it, my pulse rocketing in my ears .

"How's the recovery going?" he asks, his tone careful and agonizingly gentle.

"Brilliantly. My doc says I'm ahead of the curve and waxes poetic about the joys of youth." I fight to keep my voice light, to keep the bitter mockery from seeping through. Byrd remains silent, and I tighten my fingers until my knuckles whiten and my bones ache. "Apparently, athletes make the best patients, always so diligent about their PT." I let my hand drop and throw him a smirk.

It's all true, and he didn't ask about my soul.

"Good," he says, with a genuine smile that instantly makes me feel like an asshole. "We'll start easy tomorrow anyway. Ready for some food?"

"You cook?" I ask, following him back up the steps to the kitchen. His chuckle curls around the base of my spine, low and luscious.

"They don't have DoorDash out here. Plus, my mom was Italian; cooking is practically a prerequisite."

"I love Italian. Wine and carbs."

"Am I allowed to let you drink wine?" he teases, turning to face me with a wink and walking backward up the last few stairs.

"At your own risk." I push past him, taking the excuse to bump him with my hip as I move toward the butcher block island at the center of the kitchen.

"Not going to tell me you're an ‘old soul'?"

I lean against a barstool and roll my eyes. "Fuck no. Who have you been hanging out with? Twinks like me cherish our youth. Besides, it keeps all the pervy old men panting and eager to please."

"Good thing I'm not a pervy old man."

Fuck, he looks good in a smirk .

"My loss." I shrug, and we stare at each other as the air between us blisters. He breaks first, shoving up the sleeves of his Henley and turning to the fridge.

"You like anchovies?"

"What?" Forearms are absolutely clutch for an aerialist, and his have caused all the blood to abandon my brain.

"Anchovies? Puttanesca?" He glances back over his shoulder. "Carbs?"

"Yes. Sure." Anything you want. "Can I help?"

"Grab the big pot from the lazy Susan." He jerks his head toward the cupboard in the corner of the counter and goes back to rummaging in the fridge. "Fill it up from the tap and throw in some salt."

"So you're saying you trust me to boil water?"

"Too much for you?" His eyes sparkle with challenge.

While I know he's watching, I strip my hoodie off over my head, flashing my abs and flexing a little. I have ripped forearms too, after all.

"I think I can handle it."

I should probably be insulted that it's all he lets me do, but my culinary skills begin and end with scrambled eggs and boxed mac and cheese, so I wander around the loftlike kitchen as he starts pulling stuff out of the fridge.

"Exactly how old are you?" I taunt, spotting a current wall calendar hanging beside the pantry door. Like I don't already know.

He glances at me, and then at the calendar, clearly amused.

"A local youth theater group sells them," he explains, grabbing a sauté pan from a hanging rack. Yes, I know what a sauté pan is. They're the ones you use to scramble eggs. "They're a nonprofit, and it's one of their yearly fundraisers."

Well, that's fucking adorable .

I trace a finger over today's date.

"Jericho Wash—Alaskan Airlines 3:49 p.m." written in neat red script. My name in his handwriting makes my dick hard.

I flip through the next few pages while he chops garlic and the smell of frying onions fills the house. Alice in Wonderland. Toy Story. Charlotte's Web. Peter Pan . The last one makes me smile. I raise the next page— Willy Wonka ?—and more red writing stops me cold.

August 1: "Jericho Wash—Evaluation due"

And two days later: "Alaskan Airlines 8:25 a.m."

It's not like I didn't know I had a deadline. It shouldn't make my hand shake and my head ring with panic—four months is plenty of time. Except I've already had twice that and I'm still waiting on my miracle.

Unless I've finally found it.

My eyes rake over the man currently rooting around in one of the cabinets, the hem of his shirt riding up to expose a strip of tantalizingly tan skin above his low-hanging jeans. Maybe he won't be a cure for my busted brain, but my body is one hundred percent willing to let him try. To prove I'm still something more than an expiration date on a glossy page.

The red Sharpie hanging from a thumbtack on a string catches my eye, and I snatch it up. Pulling the cap off with my teeth, I gather the tenuous remnants of my will to scrawl "Echo Was Here" across pubescent Willy Wonka.

I'm here . I'm trying. Maybe I can remember how to be Echo again too.

August is a long way off, I tell myself, settling back onto my stool. Focus on the dreamboat making you dinner.

It works. Before long, I'm having way too much fun watching him cook to give a shit about the eval. The quick, sure movements of his hands on the knife, the way he swipes a rogue lock of hair out of his eyes with the back of his arm or sucks on a fingertip to taste the sauce—it all has me half-hard, helpless, and hungry .

"How'd you find circus?" he asks. Not the way everyone else does, curious and over-awed by its novelty, but like we're sharing a secret, and he's glad of the company.

"My brother. He—" A pan clatters against the stove, and Byrd yanks his hand back with a hiss. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. Fine. Handle was hot." He rolls his shoulders without turning around. "Go on."

"Gabe's actually my half brother. He's a lot older and generally an asshole, but he did silks for years. When I was about six, my dad took me to see one of his performances, and I fucking loved it. Not just Gabe, even though I was still young enough to think he was the shit back then, but all of it. The stage, the spectacle. Kids not that much older than me doing things I'd never imagined. It felt like—" Destiny. But I can't say that out loud without feeling like an idiot.

"Recognition?" Byrd has turned around to look at me, leaning against the stove, his hands curled around the oven handle at his hips. His Henley is stretched tight across his chest and his eyes are sober, and if I don't look away, my whole body will fall into his gravity.

Recognition .

"Yes." I look away. "My mom was pissed. She always hated it when my dad gave Gabe attention. His mom was the college sweetheart, right? The first love. Mine was the midlife crisis trophy wife, and I was her favorite weapon." I pause, suddenly guilty. "I mean, she loves me. She's not a bad mom. She just…" My hands flex on the cool concrete island top, and I watch the skin stretch over my scars. "When Gabe flamed out, and then I got accepted to NCC…I guess I feel sorry for Detta sometimes. Gabe's mom."

"But not for Gabe?"

"No." I meet his gaze but don't elaborate. That story leads to clouded places I'm not ready to go. Byrd doesn't press me.

"I was married until recently," he says instead, as if he needs to share some sordid piece of his own history after my confessions.

"Aren't you a little young for a midlife crisis?" I ask, wanting to make him smile.

"The split was her idea." The smile is bitter.

"Oh." He had a wife. A wife who left him. "She sounds like an idiot." This earns me a real smile.

"No. Just unhappy. She wanted things I couldn't give her."

"Like what?"

"More pieces of myself." Now it's his turn to look away. "She's the reason I stopped touring and took the job at Cirque. Did you know I used to perform?"

I nod and shove away the images of his promo reel. The Byrd in front of me is real , absurdly, unfairly forsaken, and the urge to touch him rages wretched in my chest.

"She wanted me close to home, not out on the road, surrounded by other performers. ‘The beautiful freaks,' she called them. I knew she was jealous and threatened, but I understood—what kind of wife would want their husband gone for months at a time?"

There are a lot of ways I could answer that, but instead, I shake my head and say, "Wives aren't really my specialty."

He huffs a short laugh. "Or mine, apparently."

"So she got what she wanted, but it wasn't enough?" I know plenty of people like that. LA is full of them, infinite vacuums of insecure need. Gabe is one of them .

"No." Byrd shoves away from the stove and busies himself draining the pasta. "It was never enough."