Page 18 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

London

M y heart was a violent, thundering beat in my chest even after I rounded the corner. If it had just been the car nearly hitting us, I probably could have breathed through it, probably could have found some kind of center and grounded myself…

But it wasn’t just that.

It was Otto.

It was the way he’d looked at me and it felt like he wasn’t trying to see my past for the first time.

It was the way he kissed me and everything in my world seemed to completely slide away.

It was the story he told, the way he’d been hurt… and the fact that I could understand why he hated me.

It was Otto… and it seemed like it had always been Otto, and I just didn’t know it until now, even though every second we’d been together had made it painfully obvious. I just wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with that information.

He told me where he was staying, and I knew what house he was talking about, but there was no way I was going there.

I was going to go check my apartment and make sure Hudson was at work, and I was going to get some clothes and grab a hotel like I’d planned on doing all along.

I needed a few days to breathe, a few days to think.

I’d call Til and let him know I was taking some time off.

After someone had been killed in front of me, I was more than certain he’d be fine with it.

I just…

My entire world felt like it had been flipped upside down. It was terrible, because something in my chest wanted me to turn around, to go right back to where I’d been.

To put my hand back in the hand of the man who’d kidnapped me. Who’d tortured me. And… the man who seemed to actually realize for the first time today that he’d done it without reason.

I should have caught the first bus I saw and left town…

But I couldn’t. I told him as much—he knew as much.

I couldn’t leave him, and I couldn’t get the expression on his face when he was telling me what happened to him out of my head. It was like a lifetime of pain locked behind a wall of ice. It was there, just beneath the surface, and I wanted to reach out and touch it.

I wanted to take it.

I wanted to erase it.

So maybe past lives really were a thing, and maybe I’d always known him. Maybe Otto finding me was something I’d been destined for all along, and there was no use in fighting it anymore.

Whatever the answer was, I needed a few days to figure it out… and until I did, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

As much as I wanted to go to my apartment and grab all of my things so I could get the worst part over with, I knew better.

I needed to give Hudson time to leave, and I needed a place to dump everything once I did grab it.

I turned at the last minute and started walking in the opposite direction from my apartment and my job.

I didn’t want to be near Hudson, and I wasn’t about to get a place right next to Otto. I needed to breathe… and maybe process the fact that someone had just tried to run me over.

It would be just my luck that I’d finally get him to admit that I wasn’t some demon from his past and then we’d get hit by a car and have to start all over in our next life.

“Fuck.” I drew in a sharp breath at the thought.

Our next life. How many times had Otto and I known one another?

Twenty minutes later, I’d booked a hotel room for a few weeks. Even though it was eating into my savings, I felt better knowing I had somewhere to go, somewhere to land on my feet if I needed. I had to have a space that was just mine if I was going to figure all of this out.

Fuck, it felt like everything around me was creeping in, and if I closed my eyes, something was going to give and I’d drown.

I had to figure out if I wanted to drown before I took the plunge.

And before I did that, I needed to get my shit back from Hudson so I could close that chapter of my life for good.

When I got to the apartment building, I made sure to glance around the parking lot. Hudson’s car wasn’t there, and a quick peek through our window didn’t show any light shining through.

I’d be worried if I thought I was going to take a long time getting my things… but I had plans to be in and out as quickly as I could. It wasn’t like I had much that really mattered to me.

A few clothes. Maybe some of my books, my birth certificate. That was about it.

It was sad when I thought about it. Nothing in my life had really mattered to me all that much. I didn’t have mementos from my family—I’d been in the foster system most of my life. I’d had so many families, and none of them had wanted to keep me.

Everything had been transitional. It didn’t matter. Nothing in the apartment was important, and if I didn’t have some of my outfits for work hanging in the closet, I wouldn’t have bothered going back at all.

I took another few seconds to glance around and make sure I couldn’t see any sign of Hudson, then I let myself into the building and made my way down the hall.

The white piece of paper taped to my door brought me up short—I didn’t think our rent was past due, so there was no reason for the landlord to leave a message. And it honestly didn’t matter… I was going to get my stuff, and then it was Hudson’s shit to deal with. If he hadn’t paid, that was on him.

I stepped closer, and something felt off . The writing on the paper was in bold, dark letters. It didn’t look like a notice.

It looked ominous.

I tore it from the door and stepped inside, locking the handle behind me as I did.

I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. You can’t get away with the lives you’ve destroyed.

I had to read it three times to make it make sense. The only person who’d ever accused me of anything was Otto, and it’d be weird for him to leave a cryptic letter on my door now, especially after he’d been so bold about… well, everything he’d done to get revenge.

He hadn’t mentioned anyone else I’d wronged in my past, though if he was out there running around like some living, breathing version of karma, maybe there were more people.

How many people had I hurt after I’d gotten him killed?

How many people had I broken in my past lives?

How could I deserve happiness now if I’d caused so much pain before?

It was the last question that twisted in my chest, because I was having a hard time pretending I didn’t know who I wanted happiness from, even though it seemed impossible. It didn’t make sense, and maybe it didn’t have to make sense.

Maybe the only kind of happiness I could have was in hands that were better suited to breaking me than holding me together.

I just knew nothing had felt right before I’d met Otto. Nothing had made sense. It still didn’t, but for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was just drifting. I felt like I belonged somewhere…

And the letter in my hand was like living proof that I was every bit the monster he’d said I was, so being wrapped up in the arms of a man like Otto was exactly where I belonged.

My eyes were so focused on the letter in my hands that I didn’t realize there was a sound behind me until pain lanced through my body. There was a brief second where I thought it was whoever had left the note, but the snarl of irritation behind me was familiar.

Hudson.

Hudson, who grabbed me by the shoulder after the punch to my ribs and whirled me around.

Hudson, whose fist landed across my jaw in a violent motion that made my ears ring. The entire room was a haze of high-pitched ringing and blurred white, where I was faintly aware that he connected another blow to my stomach.

Where I was faintly aware that he was saying something about teaching me a lesson.

About making sure I never left him again.

Shit, if I was going to die, why did it have to be at the hands of someone like Hudson? And why did it have to be now, when the world was finally starting to make sense?

When I’d finally found…

“Otto.” I muttered his name even though I knew it was a mistake. He wasn’t actually something I could summon with the word alone, and hearing it just seemed to incense Hudson further.

The next blow took me across the face again, and the feel of my cheek shredding against my teeth was chased by the taste of blood flooding my mouth.

Hudson wasn’t just going to teach me a lesson.

He was going to kill me.

And for the first time, I knew I had to fight.

I wasn’t even fighting for me, and that was the strangest part. If it had been for me, I would have done this a long time ago. If it had been for me, I probably would have hit him when I ran out of the apartment the night that Otto found me.

But it wasn’t for me.

The thought twisted in my stomach. Dark knowledge that I really was completely ruined…

but it didn’t matter. Otto could ruin me, but he wouldn’t be able to do that if Hudson beat me to a pulp on the floor.

I took a shaking breath and kicked out as hard as I could, feeling my stomach roll in displeasure at the loud cracking sound when my foot connected with Hudson’s knee.

My vision was blurry from the blows he’d landed, and some small part of me told me I needed to get a weapon. I needed to finish the job.

I didn’t think I could finish the job.

I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to run.

“London, don’t fucking move. I’m going to—” I scrambled back as fast as I could on my hands and knees, and felt an odd sense of satisfaction in knowing that Hudson couldn’t push himself to standing. His knee looked all wrong.

Maybe years of dancing and the lean muscles on my legs had finally paid off.

I darted forward before I had a chance to think, snatching his wallet off the counter. He’d stolen more than enough money from me. I took his keys too—not because I planned on taking his car, but because I wanted to make sure he couldn’t follow me.

Hell, there was every chance he’d been the one who left the note on the door to distract me. That he’d been the one who tried to hit me while I was standing there on the street.

I didn’t have answers, and I wasn’t going to give him a chance to come up with any.

“Fuck you, Hudson.” I swayed where I stood, aware that there was blood pooling from my brow and obscuring my vision.

“I never want to see you again. Leave me alone .” I made a point to open the door and throw his keys down the hall so he could see that I’d done it.

With the way his knee was angled, it would probably take him a while to find them.

I fished in his wallet, pulling out the cash he had, then dropped the rest of it to the ground.

By the time I turned and stumbled out of the apartment, my heart was racing and my vision was coming and going in spots. I was hurt.

I was probably hurt worse than I realized, and it was adrenaline alone that carried me forward and kept me on my feet. I had to figure out where I was going to go.

I had to figure out what I was going to do.

Even as I thought it, it wasn’t hard to realize that there was really only one answer. I was just glad Otto told me where he was staying, so I didn’t have to stumble around until he found me. I was glad I lived so close to work.

I was barely able to pull myself up the stairs to the blue house by the time I made it there, and my fingers were numb when I knocked on the door.

What if he wasn’t here? What if he was out?

What if…

The door opened, and I didn’t realize there were tears in my eyes until the vision of him in front of me started swimming.

It didn’t matter, though. One look at his face told me I was going to see the side of Otto that scared me—the side of him that had tortured people in front of me with a smile on his face.

I just… couldn’t bring myself to care.

“London, what happened?”

I took a step forward, and the second his hand wrapped around my waist, all the adrenaline, all the fight that had gotten me here, seemed to leave my body. It was ridiculous, but that touch…

That touch made me safe. I swayed in his arms, and he picked me up before I had a chance to fall. I looked up at him, finally aware how much it hurt to smile, how it pulled at my split lip.

“Didn’t really know where else to go. Guess you win after all.”

Before he had a chance to ask more questions, I let my head fall forward against his shoulder and gave myself over to the darkness that had been eating away at the edge of my vision since Hudson had landed that first blow.

Otto’s arms around me meant it was safe to close my eyes… safe to just… exist.