Page 148 of Echoes of Us

I tugged my phone from my pocket, opened the app, and found the playlist. It was still shared with me. I scrolled through it, reading the familiar names and feeling that ache in my chest grow stronger. Then, there were more songs. Songs I hadn’t seen before. I sat up on the bed. The list kept going. Noah hadn’t stopped adding them.

“Damn it,” I breathed and kept scrolling. Why hadn’t he stopped?

I reached the bottom of the list, the last song from a band called Chicago. He had mentioned that song at the library, how it spoke to his soul. He always said things like that, but before, it was about our love. I didn’t want to know what this song was about now. I closed the app and dropped back onto the bed, closing my eyes.

I was never going to shake him off.

A week later, finals began, and I immersed myself in the routine: exams, studying, training, and repeating the cycle. I only stopped to sleep, eat, and pack. If there was no free time, then there was no thinking and definitely no listening to any playlist.

I had a checkup for my shoulder and an appointment with the school’s sports medic to get cleared to play again. They had me waiting forever until a nice nurse guided me towards the back. While walking to the consult room, I spotted Noah running on a treadmill, shirtless, with wires connecting him to a machine. A nurse was next to him, too, saying something as he huffed a laugh, a little breathless. His back was to me. He had put on muscle weight. His back was strong, the muscles working to keep a steady pace. A new tattoo adorned his shoulder, small like the one on his hip.

“Atticus, this way,” the nurse escorting me said, pulling my attention away from the scene.

“Don’t those things monitor heart activity?” A knot of worry tightened in my stomach.

“Come on, this way,” she insisted.

I started walking again, glancing back at Noah running steadily.

I got the all-clear on my shoulder, and on my way back out, I spotted him again. Noah wasn’t running anymore. He was talking to a doctor, smiling and breathing heavily. A towel hung over his shoulder, but I could still see his abdomen. Even though it wasn’t as flat as it once was, it looked even more enticing.

He glanced up, did a double take, and his eyes grew in size.

Grabbing the towel, he pressed it more securely to his chest. My eyes fell away from him, and I kept walking, confusion gnawing at me. What was that about? Why was he getting his heart checked? In all the time we had been together, he never complained about his health. Other than being out of shape, which he was way past now, there was nothing.

Back at the apartment, I asked Colin about it and saw his shoulders tense. He told me he didn’t know anything, that it was probably just a routine checkup, but I wasn’t buying it. He avoided looking at me, and I had never seen him like that before.

The next time I saw Noah during training, I went back to watching him like a hawk. He kept his eyes trained away from me, but I couldn’t stop myself. I kept looking for something to be wrong, to be different, but I couldn’t see it. The only things different with Noah physically were the little hoop earring he wore and the fact that he had put on weight. The rest was the same.

My mind raced with possibilities, each more worrying than the last. Why were they checking his heart? There couldn’t be anything terribly wrong if he was playing on theteam. He had to be going to the gym to look like that, which meant strength training. He couldn’t do that if his heart wasn’t right.

I knew I was obsessing over this. I thought about asking him, but Noah kept avoiding me. He probably wouldn’t take kindly to me asking about his health. Plus, I didn’t want to confuse things between us. It wasn’t like I had changed my mind about being with him. I just wanted to know if something was wrong.

The last week of classes came, and still, I had no way of knowing what was going on with him. I had a second checkup for my shoulder and asked the nurse, but she told me they weren’t allowed to give medical information to non-family members. I had no idea how to figure it out before the vacations started.

Then, one day, the answer found me.

“Atticus King,” a familiar voice called. I turned to see Holly’s smiling face.

I smiled back and walked towards her. “Hey, Holly, long time no see.”

“Still looking as fine as ever,” she said.

I chuckled. “Same, Holly, same.”

“Thanks, Att.”

Then it hit me: Holly had to know. I couldn’t just ask her, but surely she knew.

“Holly—”

“Att—”

We spoke in unison, then laughed awkwardly.

“You go first,” I said.

“Are you busy now? I need to talk to you about something.” She had her serious Holly face on. I had hardly ever seen her like that.

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