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"Wickham and the others call her that," he bit out. "But I never did." His voice became level. "I've never been the one to use nicknames."

And yet he called her Pippi.

The thought had her wanting to cry in sheer despair.Stop fooling yourself. Stop trying to make excuses for him. Just stop!

"I just need you to listen to me."

The words were met with stoic silence, and he knew it was her way of shutting him out.

"Amelia and I go a long way back."

Not a single flicker of emotion in her blank blue eyes, but he saw past this, too. The silence was to mask the pain, and because he knew he was the cause of it, Acheron forced himself to do the one thing that he had once sworn he would never admit.

"She saved me...from being..." He tried to say it. But he couldn't. And when he heard her gasp, and saw her eyes starting to water, he realized that she already knew.

"I'm so sorry, Acheron."

She was no longer silent, no longer blank, but even though this was what he wanted, a part of him already wanted to erase the words.

Just saying them out loud made Acheron want to throw up in remembered fear.

People who liked to play the victim card were the people who had never been one.

You only had to be a victim once, and you would never be able to forget how it was, no matter how much you tried.

You only had to feel powerless once, and you would never wish to speak it again.

Once was all it took.

Just once.

And even the vaguest memories of it would be enough to kill you—-

"Please. Stop. It's enough. Please."

A whisper yanked him out of the darkness, and he heard himself gasp and open eyes that he hadn't even remembered closing.

Pippi watched Acheron turn his gaze to hers, and the haunted look in them nearly destroyed her.

"Have I told you...everything?"

The controlled tightness of his voice said so, so much, and Pippi bit her lip hard. "You did." Her tone shook, and her heart proved to be just as unwieldy, having lost so many pieces to Acheron's pain that it could no longer remember the proper way to beat.

He remained kneeling before her, her very own beautiful Greek god, but for once she was blind to his perfection. For once, she couldn't see him. Her mind was still drowning in the abyss of his past, and all she could see was a motherless fifteen-year-old boy, holding a knife under his pillow, because the monsters were real, and every night, there was that one chance they could get him for good.

"Don't look at me like that." Acheron's tone was savage. "I don't want your pity, dammit."

"Good." Pippi fought hard to keep her tone steady, knowing that anything less would be misconstrued. "Because you don't have it."

"I only needed you to understand why I can't turn Amelia away."

"I know."

Relief had Acheron breathing hard.

"And I can't thank her enough—-"

His head jerked up, his stunned gaze flying to hers.