Hunter hops off the stool and is across the room before I can process anything that happened. He touched me. He’s offering me the world. He’s changing the game. Forget that...he touched me.

“Wait!”

Hunter glances at me over his shoulder. “What?”

What? “Really? That’s all you have to say. You offered me the chance of a lifetime, and I may or may not have accepted it, and you tell me you’re going to work on something?”

“That sums it up.”

Because I can’t control it, I smash my foot to the floor like a toddler. “Am I studying under you now?”

“That’s up to you, but what I’ll work on is that business class angle.”

I throw my hands out now, more confused.

“Only worry about that painting. We’ll discuss the details of you studying under me later.” Ending the conversation, Hunter waves his hand in the air as a goodbye then disappears down the stairs.

I release a long breath, and my palm scrubs the spot on my knee where his hand briefly made contact as if that will erase the sensation of someone other than Noah touching me. Going two years with hardly any physical contact leaves me uneasy when someone does offer such an intimate gesture. It’s especially weird when it’s from someone like Hunter.

My eyes fall to the key on the easel, and a flash of guilt hurts my soul. How do I explain this to Noah and even better, how can I explain it when I’m not sure which road I desire?

Noah

Beth sunbathes on the concrete walk next to the entrance of the pool. She’s soaking up the last remaining light of the evening in the two-piece Echo lent her. I sit on the curb and alternate between watching Isaiah tune up Echo’s car and keeping an eye on Beth. She has a habit of attracting trouble.

“What’s going on at home with her?” I ask Isaiah.

Isaiah pulls his head out from under the hood long enough to glance at Beth and switch tools. A sheen of sweat covers his forehead—the only hint that the day’s been warm. “Trent’s selling.”

Trent: Beth’s mom’s sad excuse for a boyfriend. “He’s always selling.”

Isaiah shoots me a look that raises the hair on the back of my neck. “He hasn’t sold this shit before.”

Fuck. “Beth doesn’t know?”

“If she did, she wouldn’t be here.” Isaiah yanks on something with the tool. “Do you ever feel like we’re in a PlayStation war game, man? Like someone has set the clock, and the rest of the world’s counting down the last seconds of this level yet we don’t have a clue everything is about to go to hell?”

Right now and every damn day since my parents died. “Yeah.”

Isaiah assesses Beth again. “I don’t know how to save her. Not when she’s so damned determined to redeem someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

He’s referring to Beth’s constant need to protect her mother, but the dark irony of his statement nags at me. I should tell him that Beth doesn’t want to be saved any more than her mother does, but it’d fall on deaf ears. Just as if he said the same words to her.

Possibly as if I said the same to Echo about her mom, or if Echo said the same to me about my mother’s family. Each one of us is screwed in the head.

At the other end of the building, Echo rounds the corner with her gaze stuck to the ground and a canvas in her hands. She has that lost-in-her-own-world expression again, and my insides hollow out. That painting of Aires is going to kill her then me. I jump to my feet, causing Isaiah to snap to attention. “Trouble?”

Considering what Hunter said to me, possibly. “Echo’s earlier than I thought she’d be. Will you give us a few minutes alone in the room?”

His lips turn up. “Sure.”

I punch his shoulder as I pass. “I just need to talk with her.”

“Some people are into that talking shit while they do it, man. I’m not here to judge.”

I raise a single finger in the air as a response, and Isaiah chuckles. With a wide enough start, Echo’s not in the hallway when I enter the hotel. I pull the key card out of my pocket and with a click, the colder air of the room rushes past me and into the hall.

Echo relaxes on the bed with her feet tucked underneath her, and she’s focused on the newer canvas that now sits on the floor, propped against the chair. The edges of the canvas are a blue-black. It’s foreign from anything I’ve seen her do before, especially the blank part in the middle.

Personally, I prefer the painting on the chair—the painting representing the night we made love. “S’up, baby.”

“Hey.” Echo sends me a smoldering smile, and I’ve got an instant hard-on. The door shuts, and I swear my dick moves with the sound.

“Are you ready to discuss what happened this morning?” she asks.

No. “It can wait.”

“Are we alone?”

“Yeah.” My body screams to stride over to her, wrap my arms around her waist, kiss her until she’s drunk on me and slowly remove every article of clothing on her body. Because I love Echo, and she deserves respect, I hitch my thumbs in my pockets and cock a hip against the wall. “Homework?”

She squishes her lips to the side. “No. Yes. I don’t know. If I get enough of it done in time, Hunter says he’ll enter this and ten of my sketches in his work-in-progress wall at the Denver Art Festival.”

This is where I bite back the crappy comment and prod for where she’s at on this. Echo can give me shit all she wants about what I say and do, but in the end, I’m learning fast. “Denver—is it a good thing or a carnie sideshow?”

Echo giggles, and her laughter plays along my skin, easing some of the stress built from my conversation with Hunter. “Carnie sideshow?”

“Tilt-a-whirl, Guess Your Weight, cotton candy and hot dog purging, Traumatized Goldfish Games. Carnie sideshow.”

“It’s not a carnie sideshow, but there’d be a ton less pressure on me if it was.” She gets lost in the painting again.

I walk over, rest on the bed beside her and slide my fingers along the nape of her neck. “Jesus, Echo. You’re cement blocks.”

Echo waggles her eyebrows. “Are you going to rub the tension away?”

Any room I had before in my pants vanishes. She means the tension in her neck. In her neck alone. I cup both hands over her shoulders and begin to knead out the knots. I love how she dips her head forward, and her muscles melt under my touch.