Echo (Black Lotus #2)(42)

I begin to lose myself, bucking my hips to meet each of his thrusts. I can feel his cock growing thicker, harder, hotter. His hold on my wrists tightens, but it only makes me feel safer.

“Open your eyes,” I hear him say, and the moment before I do, I smell it—stale cigarettes and piss.

My body locks up when my eyes open and it’s Carl looking down at me, f*cking me with his disgusting dick and breathing his putrid breath all over me.



JOLTING AWAKE, MY eyes pop open to be greeted by another snow-filled night. Another bad dream possesses my subconscious. This is the third nightmare I’ve woken from tonight. Gone are the nights of exploring with Carnegie, my caterpillar friend. He’s been replaced by morphed scenes of Declan loving me and by dank basements, urine-stenched closets, and the visions of Carl jerking himself off as he watches me.

I take my time to quiet my rapid-beating heart before I lie back down. I focus on the snow that collects on the window. Some of it melts, tuning into trickling rivers that slowly make their way down the glass. I burrow down into the blankets, trying to warm myself, and when I roll over from the moonlit snow, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.

It’s after I blink a few times that I see him, and I hold my breath, wondering if I’m imagining this—imagining him.





HE SITS ON the chair a few feet from the bed I’m lying in, leaning over with his elbows propped on his knees. I know he’s really here when he lifts his head and looks at me, the moon illuminating his green eyes. My head remains resting on the pillow, and I breathe in deeply.

Why is he here?

Neither one of us moves or speaks; we simply watch each other in the dark silence. I want to move though. My body begs to crawl onto his lap, to have him dominate every one of my senses. The dream I just woke from felt so real. It’s all I want, to be in a place where we can have moments like that together. But the dream turned to a nightmare so quickly, and I know it’s because of Declan that it did.

How can I crave this man who now torments me? What is it about him that makes me want to forgive him so easily, to not even question him?

I notice the creases that line his forehead and his brows that cinch in the despair we both feel.

“What are we doing?” His voice, a quiet rasp filled with oppression.

Sitting up, I never take my eyes off of him, but I don’t know what to say. I wish I had an answer for him, but I’m just as confused. He has my emotions bouncing all over the place and colliding in a war inside of me.

I lose the contact when he drops his head down into the palms of his hands, and his voice is a soft murmur, “What’ve I done?” and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or simply to himself, but I remain quiet as he continues. “What’ve you done? I don’t know what’s going on here . . . what this is between us . . . what this is inside of me.”

“It’s a battle between heart and mind,” I whisper, and when I do, he looks up at me.

I watch his face tighten in grief, the feeling thickens the room, and it takes him a while to speak again, but when he does, the words are drenched in shame. “Are you all right?”

When I don’t answer him, he exhausts on a breath, “That’s a stupid question.”

“Declan . . . ”

“I’m sorry. What I did . . . That wasn’t . . . ”

“Stop,” I tell him when his voice begins to crack.

“What happened to you as a child . . . ” His hands clench as he fights with his building emotions. “It f*cking breaks me.”

“Don’t do this.”

But he doesn’t even acknowledge my words as he goes on, “And then what I did to you . . . I don’t know how I lost control like that. Seeing you in that room . . . That was supposed to be ours. You don’t know how badly I wanted that. How much I wanted to take you away from the husband I thought was . . . ”

He lets his words drift, and I want to cry, but I don’t. I know he doesn’t want to see my tears, so I keep myself focused, but I’m dying on the inside. To sit here and listen to his words that are masking cries of his own is awful. This is a man of abundant discipline and authority, so to hear him so broken down, so weak, it destroys me.

“How do I get past a deceit of this magnitude?” he eventually questions.

“I wish I knew. I wish I could go back. But I can’t. I don’t even really know how to explain this all. I want to be honest. I want you to know the real me, to know the truth, but it’s so hard. Because the truth is so gross and twisted, you probably wouldn’t even believe it, because people don’t want to believe that life can be that horrifying. I’m a f*cked-up human; I know this. I don’t know what it is to be a rational person, but you make me want to learn. You make me want to try.”

“His eyes were open,” he says out of the blue, and I’m confused as to what he’s referring to, but then he adds, “After I shot him. I saw photos of you on his desk. I gathered them up along with the file, and when I looked down at Bennett’s bloody body, his eyes were still open.”

He says this and I remember that Pike’s eyes were the same. I’ll never forget how haunting they looked.

“He knew who you were.”

“I know,” I say. “I heard him in the hospital. He was having me followed; he knew you and I were together.”