I want to nod. Yes, I understand. As much as I can. I've always known that the world is a fucking horrible place; I only wanted to take care of her.

I've been doing that for longer than I knew.

"You're awfully quiet," she says softly.

I blink at her. Take deep breaths. "L-Leo. I won't..."

I won't make it.

Look at all this motherfucking blood.

"No, I'm not done yet. I have to get this out." Her bottom lip trembles; she's cut apart and I can't reach to heal her. "I don't know what happened. I think maybe the divorce had hit me hard...I started to read about you. Follow the news. I knew this part of you that hardly anyone else did; I felt like we had this weird intimacy. And we had money, so I used...I used...I hired an investigator. I just wanted to find something to help, because they dropped the charges against you, even though they hadn't arrested anyone else. Mostly the investigator was pretty useless, but he found out that your mother paid off another family a while before."

The Fordhams.

I need her to talk faster. My eyes are watery; I'm slipping away.

"So I looked up Rachel, who was at school with you. And she was in therapy. So I went to therapy. I found her there, and we talked, and...oh, we had a lot in common." Her voice drops with bitter sarcasm. "I had to do a few things I never counted on to make her talk. She really liked me. I did what I had to. God, I'm a horrible person." More tears, blurred in my vision but just as beautiful. I wish she'd stop crying. "When I found out what you did to her, I...I was curious...I knew this other part of you again. I held on to her. She was the only part of you that I could touch."

If I could, I'd laugh. Hysterically.

Firecracker, you were so on the money. My Princess Priss is more fucked than you ever knew.

And I don't care.

"I never thought we'd meet. That you'd notice me. I didn't know what to do with myself when you did. I still don't because I'm a fucking idiot. But you...you're worse. You're poison," Leo weeps. "All the women you touch end up dead. Your mother, Rachel, Tuija. None of them asked for it—"

I growl at her.

My mother, she fucking asked for it. She may as well have dropped to her knees and begged.

"Don't bother trying to defend yourself," Leo spits. "I wised up. I took care of things. I did what I had to do. What I should have done to begin with." She puts her face back in her arms, her knees pulled tightly together. "I...I did...had...do. I'm not...like you. Not...killer."

I can barely even hear her.

Can't focus.

Can't feel.

I pull strength from some strange place inside and force out four faint words. "Do you love me?"

"I try not to," she sobs. "I try not to!"

"B-because I...I love you..."

She almost roars. Leo isn't Leo anymore, but a river weeping herself far, far away.

My vision shrinks to pin pricks. I'm vaguely aware that the cold streaks dripping from my chin are tears.

I used up my last shreds of energy just talking. Breathing. Leo has said her important things, and I have said mine.

Perhaps it's time to go. It would be easy. I could slip and slither, my belly so wet, so sore.

I could go see my firecracker. Put her up somewhere real nice.

Leo's talking again, though I can't...quite...make...

"Hello? Is that 911?"

Leo...? Are you still there...?

"Sorry...I'm a mess...oh God. I did a bad thing..."

A flash. A flutter.

The dark kneels down to greet me.

Can you hear the piano, grasshoppers? That's some rockabilly shit.

EPILOGUE

Leontine

Six months later

My therapist's office is an obstacle course of risk.

Observe the scissors left out on the cheap plywood desk at that awkward angle; anyone could grab them at any time. Stupid place to leave them. And she's meant to be smart?

Observe the blocked exit points at the window or the fire door; both the ledge and floor are piled high with boxes, files, and pot plants that are meant to help me relax. Nothing in here helps me to relax. Not even the pills she's been trying to stuff me with to get rid of the nightmares.

Good old Doctor Yao. At least she tries. Kudos to her for rocking that pixie cut, too—she's got the bone structure.

"You've come a long way since I first saw you," she says with a kind smile. "I know things were bad then, but I want you to appreciate all the progress you've made. It's quite an achievement."

"I've been doing the breathing exercises," I tell her. "They really help."

"And the night terrors? All gone?"

"For about two months, now."

Lies. I still have them; they skulk in at midnight to haunt me. I regularly wake with a whimper, hunched and spat out on the tongue of a wraith.

Rachel on the floor, her legs in a knot and half of her face just...missing.

Aeron, a knife in his hand, my skin warm and trembling beneath it.

Aeron, a slow pool of scarlet seeping from his belly. He spilled my blood; I spilled his. I'm an engineer. We like symmetry.

I background checked the fuck out of you, Miss OCD. I suppose he didn't pay too much attention to my previous addresses. I don't share my mother's surname—a nasty divorce put paid to that—but that address should have given it all away. Yet it didn't.

Serendipity dropped me in his lap, and serendipity saved me.

I smile.

"I want you to know that you can come back to me at any time," she says. There's a warmth in her eyes that makes me want to hug her. The Victim Look—it's like lubricant. It helps with so many things. "You had a very unfortunate accident, but you have to accept that it wasn't your fault."

"I know," I say quietly. "I know."

The charges were dropped.

People who have money can get away with anything.

"Now take my card, and in the nicest possible way," she adds, "I hope I never see you again."

I manage a little laugh. "Me too. Thanks, Dr Yao. You've been amazing."

"I do my best."

And she does. She sees a confident young woman with a persuasive English accent; a clever girl with a Harvard education and an unusual, impressive job. She sees an enviable future. The world at my feet. She doesn't see a silent witness...but then nobody ever does.

Outside Dr Yao's downtown office, there's a little garden where she grows lilies and peonies. They're fat with fresh petals at this time of year, baked by sunshine and still damp with dew. The scent reminds me of my Grandmother's garden back in Dorset—spring grass, potent pollen, chubby English bees. Eventually, the same sun that kissed these flowers to blooming will dry them out, and they'll falter. Wither. Die.

We must not be so hard on the flowers. All of us, we pretend we're clever, but we grow toward the things that hurt us whether we notice or not. We feel special. We might even feel safe. Reach for the stars, they tell us...yet to do that, we must reach for the dark.

You must understand that I tried not to love him. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help what I want. And his wisdom, it makes sense to me. Beautiful logic. It lends me power in a world that has failed.

Aeron always waits for me on the bench in the garden. Dr Yao was his idea when the nightmares started; he thought it wise, after the accident, that I was visibly getting help. And he was right, the way he almost always is...I do feel better. Lighter. Even if there are things that will never go away.

He tells me that he is not sorry. But I think, at least for Tuija, that he is.

"Leo." Aeron stands to greet me, brushing himself down. "Ready to go?"

Though he's made an excellent recovery, he gets tired sometimes. If you look closely, there's a slight dip on his right side when he walks too fast or runs. He'll tell you that it's all about survival of the fittest, but me? I think serendipity saved him, the same way it saved me. None of it matters when he opens his arms, pulls me against him, and bestows me with that blinder of a grin. He doesn't have dimples, he has planets—I've given up struggling in their gravitational pull.

I stand on tiptoe to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss the tip of his earlobe. "All sorted."

"Good girl," he murmurs, his mouth an inch from mine.

Tags: Lime Craven Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net