Pushing the Limits - McGarry Katie (лучшие бесплатные книги TXT) 📗

Reluctantly, I let go of her hand and pushed a couple dollars into the coin machine.

“My mom was obsessed with Greek myths. I’m named after the mountain nymph, Echo.”

Aires’ name suddenly made sense, too. I plunked two quarters into the table and the balls rumbled out of the slot. Echo immediately tossed them onto the table. “Eight or nine ball?”

“Eight.” Nine was more complicated. I already planned on playing at sixty percent capacity, hoping she’d have a good time. “What’s the myth?”

She set the balls into the rack and flipped the triangle away. “There are several, actually. You break.”

I’d met several girls like her; terrified to break because they couldn’t hit more than a few balls off the group. Better she break and get one in than nothing at all. “Ladies first.” I couldn’t wait for this game to be over so I could teach her how to break properly. Images of her body pressed against mine, bending over the table, caused my jeans to get tighter.

“Your funeral,” she sang and my lips turned up at her flash of confidence. Echo twirled her pool cue like a warrior going into battle, never once taking her eyes off the cue ball. She leaned over the table. I focused on her tight ass. My siren ate me alive with every movement. As she took aim, she no longer resembled the fragile girl at school, but a sniper.

The quick and thunderous cracking of balls caught me off guard. The balls fell into the pockets in such rapid succession, I lost count. Echo rounded the table, once again twirling the cue, studying the remaining balls like a four-star general would a map.

Damn—the girl knew how to play.

“Stripes,” she called. Echo bent over the table to make her second shot. Her beautiful breasts were right there for me to see, but I wanted to do more than observe, I wanted to …

“You should put your tongue back in your mouth. You’ll get all cotton-mouthed if it dries out.” She sank two stripes with one shot.

“I can’t help it you’re hot.” I loved it when she dished it out. “The myth?”

After sinking two more shots she finally missed. Now it was my turn. Sixty percent capacity wouldn’t cut it with her. Hell, one hundred percent may not even be enough.

I worked the table while Echo settled onto a stool. “Zeus enjoyed affairs with nymphs on earth and his wife, Hera, didn’t quite approve of his extracurricular activities. So he sent Echo, a beautiful wood nymph, to distract and entertain Hera while he did a little entertaining of his own. Hera finally figured it out and punished Echo by taking her voice, cursing her to only repeat what others said.

“After this happened, Echo fell in love with a jerk who didn’t love her back. Echo wandered the woods, heartbroken, crying until there was nothing left to her but her voice, which still haunts the earth.”

Some of us were named after Bible personalities, others from a dart thrown at a baby book. Echo was named after a psychotic Greek myth. I sank two balls into the right pocket. “She didn’t like the names from normal fairy tales?”

Echo laughed. “Those were my fairy tales. I grew up understanding the story behind every constellation. What Greek god was mad at whom. Love, lust, anger, revenge. I slept with the light on for a long time.”

I missed my shot and swallowed the curse. Echo pranced to the table with a wicked grin on her lips. I craved nothing more than to kiss that pretty little smirk off her face. Instead, I yanked one of her silky red curls. Her laughter tickled my skin.

“Your turn to answer a question,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“Why do you want to see your file?” She aimed for the eight ball and sank the shot.

No one, except Keesha or Mrs. Collins, had asked me a question that personal in years. I placed two more quarters into the table. “Are you going to tell me why you want to see yours?”

Echo arranged the balls again. “You already know most of it. You break this time.”

Feeling off balance, I leaned on the pool stick. “I have two younger brothers. Jacob’s eight and Tyler’s four. We were separated after my parents died. They’re in a shitty home. I want to prove it and hopefully win custody of them after I graduate. That file lists where they live. If I can catch these bastards hurting my brothers, then I can get them out, and make us a family again.”

I broke the balls with more strength than I’d intended. I couldn’t get the picture of Tyler’s bruised face out of my head. My brothers wouldn’t become victims like Beth or turn into hard-asses like me. The cue ball bounced several times after hitting the group of balls. “Solids. Your turn to answer.”

“My mom hurt me and I don’t remember it.”

She sounded detached, but I knew she wanted in her file as much as I wanted in mine. I’d told her my story, I wanted hers. “Tell me what you do know.”

Echo rolled the pool cue in her hand. “I don’t know you well enough.”

How the hell would I get her to trust me? On some level, she did. But not like I wanted her to. My reputation with girls at school preceded me like cheerleaders in front of a marching band. Shit, what if she did trust me? What would I do with it?

I rested my hip against the pool table. “What if we only have one shot at those files? I’m not telling you my personal shit because I’m into group therapy, I’m telling you because if you have the opportunity to get into the files, I need you to find my brothers’ foster parents’ information. Last name, address and phone number. If I get a crack at yours, what am I looking for?”

Damn if she didn’t turn into a vampire. Absolutely no blood remained in her gorgeous face. “Swear you won’t tell anyone.”

What could be worse than being called a cutter? “Whatever it is …”

“Swear it,” she hissed. The tilt of her head, the way her eyes flashed a deep green and narrowed like a savage animal’s warned me that a joke may not be the smartest move.

“I swear.”

Echo left her pool stick against the wall and walked to the table. It appeared all games were over for the night. She picked up the cue ball. “My mom is bipolar. You know, manic depressive. There are two types of bipolar and my mom is number one. Not like one is the bottom, one as in Category 5 hurricane, 10.0 earthquake. She was misdiagnosed for years and then when I was six …”

Echo rolled the cue ball onto the table, hitting multiple balls. “She had a major breakdown and got help. My mother was great when she stayed on her meds.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared down at the table. Her foot tapped against the floor. “I only know what little my dad and my friends told me. She came off her meds, went into a manic episode, I went to her apartment and she tried to kill me.”

I was terrified to move, breathe, exist in this moment. On TV, teenagers were portrayed as happy, carefree. Echo and I would never know such a life. My parents died. I got screwed by a system supposedly in place to protect me. Echo … Echo was betrayed by the person who should have laid down her life to protect her.

She raised her hand like a claw to her forehead. “Do you know what it’s like to not remember something? My mother loved me. She wouldn’t hurt me. Do you know what it’s like to have horrifying nightmares night after night? I go to bed one night, my life perfect, and then wake up in agony two days later in a hospital and my whole world is torn apart. I need to know. If I know, maybe I’ll feel whole again. Maybe …”

Echo reminded me of the statue of a saint my mother had once placed in her flower garden. Arms outstretched, seeking an answer from a God that hated us both. “Maybe I’ll find normal again.”

“Tell me about Aires.” I grasped for any straw to help.

By pure miracle, my statement snapped her out of misery. She blinked, coming back to the beeping and ringing of the video arcade. “Aires loved cars. He salvaged this 1965 Corvette and spent years working on it. That’s why I’m tutoring you. I need to make money to finish fixing it up.”