Echo (Black Lotus #2)(80)

Her breathing is rigid as I watch her, and eventually, she drops her arms and allows me to take the gun from her hand before falling to her knees. I release the hammer and set the gun down along with my own. As I start unbuttoning my shirt, I kneel down next to her and drape it over her back to cover her up. She keeps her chin tucked down, and I noticed her slashed wrists covered in blood when I take her hand in mine.

“It’s going to be okay.”

She remains silent as I sit with her. I want to do so much, but all I can manage is to simply observe. Her once-beautiful red hair is dirty, matted in blood. She’s a fraction of herself, and I find it painful to look at, but I look anyway. And as sick as it sounds, I’ve never felt more bonded to her than I do now. Both of us exposed for the evil we are. Killers with mangled souls. No longer can I blame her for my sins because I just murdered of my own free will without her persuasion or seduction. She may have birthed this malignity inside of me, but I’m the one who now embraces it.

“He killed your mom,” she says again, and I can barely hear her faint voice when she adds, “He’s the reason my dad is dead too.”

“Who is he?” I ask in utter confusion to this situation.

“Richard Brooks. He was Bennett’s business partner,” she answers and then goes on to explain how our fathers worked for him and the hit he put out on her dad. I sit and listen to everything she tells me, the whole time keeping her eyes downcast, almost cowering as if she’s afraid of me. But it’s when she says, “Cal is in jail,” that her eyes finally lift to mine.

“Did Bennett know?”

“No. He thought he was running an honest business. Richard and Cal used him.”

Every muscle in my body in tensed up because I know at any minute, I’m liable to break completely. As I ask questions to piece the puzzle together, my heart and mind remain with my mum. The f*cker’s blood that killed her at point blank pools under my loafers, and I have to swallow down the bile that threatens. I have to get out of here.

“Come on,” I say, urging her to stand. “Let’s go.”

She coils away from me, pulling against my hold on her. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

She looks up at me, tears filling her eyes, blood smeared across her face, and says, “I can’t keep pretending that . . . that we . . . ”

“Just come home.”

“I don’t have a home.”

Looking past the ugliness, deep into her eyes, into the depths of what’s hidden beneath, my heart beats a beat I’ve never felt before. It comforts all the fears and doubts I have about her and assures me that she’s where I belong.

“I know life hasn’t been good to you, and I know you’ve lost a lot, but you haven’t lost everything,” I tell her. “I still want what I told you back in Chicago; I want to give you a home you can feel safe in. I want us to have a chance to make that happen.”

“But . . . you hate me.”

“You’re right,” I confirm. “I do hate you, but I love you and that’s not going away.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“No,” I answer, shaking my head.

“Are you done punishing me?”

“No.”

She drops her head, and I immediately cup her cheeks, angling her back to me when I explain, “I don’t know if I’m ever going to get over this—if I’m ever going to get to the point where I don’t want to punish you for what you’ve done. But I need you to understand something; I need you to know that even though you may feel pain, I will never hurt you. I will do everything to give you what was taken from you. I’m going to make you feel safe, I promise you that. No one will ever lay a hand on you again.”

She never allows the tears to fall as I watch her struggle against her emotions, and I know it’s a defense mechanism she uses to protect herself from pain, but she needs to feel it.

“Stop fighting yourself,” I tell her as I hold her in my hands. “I want to see you cry. Don’t hide from me anymore.”

“I’m not a person you should love.”

“Neither am I, but you do, don’t you?”

Nodding her head, she let’s go and weeps, “So much.”

“And I love you,” I say and then gather her in my arms. I hold on to her, listening to her broken breaths before making my selfish request. “Cry, Elizabeth. I want to hear you cry and know that it’s for me.”

She tucks her head into the crook of my neck, and when I feel the wetness of her warm tears dripping onto my skin, I’m satisfied. She’s quiet in her sadness, and her release comforts me. I like knowing that she can hand it over to me and I’m the one getting to soothe her. I know she’s right in that fact that she shouldn’t be loved. Neither of us deserves it, but I can’t help myself when it comes to her. I’ve never been able to curb my addiction to her, even when I thought she was a married woman. I wanted her regardless, and I want her still.

“McKinnon,” Lachlan’s voice hollers out.

“In here,” I shout as I keep a tight hold on Elizabeth.

When he eventually finds his way to us, his voice is disjointed as he takes in the scene before him, uttering, “Holy f*ck.”

“Tell me I can trust you,” I say to him, and without a second of hesitation, he responds loyally, “You can trust me.”