Isaiah leaves a foot between us when he sinks beside me with his legs kicked out. “What crawled up Noah’s ass and laid eggs?”

The burst of bitter laughter surprises me, but the burn in my eyes doesn’t. “Hunter—the art guy I’ve been working with here?”

“The fucked-up stalker? Noah mentioned him.”

Of course Noah informed his friends of his side of the story alone. “He’s not a stalker. He’s this awesome art guy who everyone admires, and he likes my paintings.”

Isaiah tilts his head for the and-what-else part because it’s not enough to redeem Hunter in his eyes. My hand slams to my chest. “My paintings. Mine. He sees my talent.”

Nothing from Isaiah.

“Imagine you spend weeks on a car and the best car person in the world walks up to you and says, ‘Isaiah, that’s awesome. Come work at my shop, and you’ll have the possibility to do this for life and make a lot of money doing it.’”

Isaiah pulls on the bottom hoop earring of his double row. “How much money?”

I toss my hands in the air. “Why do I try?”

“Chill. I get what you’re saying. So this Hunter guy offered you a position?”

“He offered to let me study with him for the year...here in Colorado.”

Isaiah scrubs both of his hands over his face, and the tiger tattooed on his arm ripples with the motion. “Noah sees you as his family, you know?”

“His brothers are his family. As are you and Beth. I’m just his girlfriend.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“Is it?” I ask, as anger, in the form of tiny daggers, floods my bloodstream. “Because if I was his family I highly doubt he’d be walking away from me like he just did. He’d want to talk to me, fight with me, tell me we’ll figure it out or beg me to go home with him.”

“Is that what you want?” Isaiah slowly studies me, and it’s like how a panther must stalk an enemy from the bushes. I shiver with the gaze. “Him to decide for you?”

What pinches is my internal pause. “No.” I want to decide...I think.

“Are you looking for Noah’s approval?”

Yes. Even though I don’t verbalize an answer, Isaiah shakes his head in disgust as if I had spoken. “You think Noah’s going to leave you because you chase your dreams?”

At the very center of my being, the answer is a firm no, but there’s this doubt, this lingering doubt... “I’ve been left before.”

“He’s not like that,” Isaiah snaps.

“You thought he was when you found out he was searching for his mother’s family.”

A muscle ticks near Isaiah’s eye. “I told you that was my shit. Not his and not yours.”

I shrug. I should say I’m sorry for throwing it in his face, but I’m not because it’s true.

“You’ve gotta admit,” continues Isaiah, as though the last few sentences were never uttered, “what you threw at him is a lot to swallow.”

He has a point.

“Give Noah space tonight. Let him blow off some steam, and I’m sure he’ll get his shit straight. This relationship thing, it’s new to him. Don’t leave him behind because he’s human.”

In the distance people yell as if encouraging someone to do something. I nod in agreement with Isaiah’s words, but it leaves an emptiness in my stomach. A car parks beside us, and we remain quiet as five people pile out of a four-door sedan.

One girl stops laughing the moment she notices Isaiah, and then she smiles again when she surveys me like I’m about to flirt with her boyfriend, and she knows I don’t have a shot.

Isaiah stiffens. Crap, he senses a threat.

The group continues to the party and when they’re far enough away I say, “What was that?”

“What?”

I gesture to the group. “That. She looked at us strange, and then you got all tight.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He does, but he’s not spilling. “You should go find Beth.”

Isaiah hooks an arm around my neck, reminding me a lot of how Aires used to treat me. “You’re hanging with me and Beth tonight.”

“You said I should give Noah space.”

Isaiah leads me away from the crowd. “He knows some people from work. Besides, Noah’s always found someone to hang with at parties. Me and you, we’ll have a couple of beers and babysit Beth after she gets high. It’ll be fun.”

I snort. “Lots of fun.”

“Two beers in, and you’ll find a happy place. Besides, Noah will be shit-faced drunk in an hour and will be pathetic and will grovel on his knees because he was an ass.”

A part of me aches because he won’t. Another part of me wishes with all my soul that it happens.

Noah

I raise the plastic cup to my mouth and glance at Echo from the corner of my eye. She cradles a matching red cup in her hands, and it’s the same one she’s nursed since she settled near the bonfire. If she’s concerned about me, she sure as hell keeps it locked tight.

Occasionally, Isaiah makes her laugh. Beth causes her to drop her head, but she stays interested in that damn fire.

We’ve been here an hour, and I should be trashed. I should be numb, carried away by alcohol or the pot offered to me multiple times. Instead, nausea eats at my gut. No matter how many times I consider slinking back into my old life, my eyes drift to Echo, and I can’t cross the line. She deserves better than me, but I guess she knows it.

She’s going to leave me.

For a year.

Then forever.

Echo finally looks up and inches her gaze my way. Angling away from her, I return my attention to the group of people I work with at the Malt and Burger. Someone tells the punch line to their dirty joke, and I’m the only one who doesn’t laugh. My insides shred into nothing.

Echo once said that it was easier to go back than to go forward. She’s right. Anger is a hell of a lot better than pain.

“The redhead. That’s your good girl, isn’t it?” Mia slides up beside me like a snake in tall grass.

“She came.”

“And she’s not hanging out with you.” Mia’s eyes are glazed over, and she stumbles into me with a gust of wind. “I remembered your tattooed friend. I almost told her that we fucked each other’s brains out last summer because I bet you didn’t. Twenty dollars the truth would end this doomed relationship.”