Page 19 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

Otto

M y vision turned the same red as the blood on London’s lips as he collapsed into my arms. I should never have let him out of my sight.

I should never have let him go anywhere alone.

I was never going to let him leave me again.

Either the person who’d tried to hit us with the car had found him, or…

“Was this the asshole you live with?”

His brows snapped together in instant reaction to my question, giving me an answer before he looked away to try to hide it. Something in me twisted, dark and furious, that he was trying to protect him… but…

London wasn’t a killer, and he probably knew me well enough from instinct alone to realize that I wouldn’t hesitate.

“Come on,” I murmured. I’d worry about the rest of it once I got him settled and looked him over.

He was favoring his ribs, and there was blood in his pretty blond hair.

I really was going to kill the asshole who did this to him as soon as I had the chance.

“Let’s get you on the bed, little rabbit. ”

For the first time, I was using the name because he was something soft, something delicate I wanted to wrap my arms around and protect.

I wasn’t sure it would end well, but I wasn’t willing to let him go… and London seemed grateful to let me carry him to the bed I’d been using. He only hesitated when he glanced down at the rumpled blankets.

“What’s wrong?” Surely it wasn’t because he could tell I’d been sleeping there. He came here after all, so at least some small part of him—

“I don’t want to get blood on your sheets. I…” His fingers clenched on my shirt as I settled him down on the mattress.

“Blood washes out. It’s fine.” He made a face like he wanted to argue with me, but it seemed like he didn’t have it in him.

London let me carefully position him on the bed, and his gaze only slightly widened when I pulled out a knife.

I rolled my eyes. “I know I’m your big bad wolf, but I promise you’re safe with me. ”

For now.

I needed to add on the words for now … but I had a feeling we both knew I was full of shit.

“You’ve been threatening me since the moment we met.

” He spoke softly, but he didn’t pull away when I slid the knife beneath his shirt and carefully cut through the fabric so he didn’t have to raise his arms. The anger in my chest welled again when I saw the bruises, dark and ugly, already forming on his soft skin.

My hand was careful when I reached out, and he only slightly winced when I started feeling along his ribcage to make sure nothing was broken.

“Yeah, maybe.” I kept my voice conversational while I silently took stock of every cut, every mottled, dark spot that was probably a punch or kick.

When I got a hold of the man who’d done this, I was going to pay him back tenfold, so I needed to remember each and every mark.

“But somewhere between the first time I kissed you and you getting on your knees for me in your apartment, I realized you were probably right when you called me a liar.”

At least he didn’t seem so injured that the blood couldn’t rush straight to his cheeks. I followed the flare of color splotching his chest, flaming across his face. He looked away from me and muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” My touch shifted to the other side of his body, still checking carefully for any injury that I didn’t know how to heal.

“You weren’t complaining when it happened.

” He managed to choke the words out this time, and it startled a laugh from me.

I think we were both surprised at how bitter it sounded, the twisted way it came out of my chest. How fucked were we both that the sound of my laugh wasn’t anything remotely natural?

The sound made my fingers spasm, and the motion made him wince.

Fuck.

Even while I was being this delicate with him, the instincts of my body—the instincts of the psychopathic mind I was in— wanted to hurt him. He was here and vulnerable. I had him in a place where I could do whatever I wanted, however I wanted… and…

I sat down on the bed instead, and carefully skimmed my fingers across the top of his pants. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

London stared at me for the span of a breath, a few beats of my heart, like he could tell there was something lurking just beneath the glassy facade of my surface. After a second, though, he shook his head.

“No. I don’t think so. I…” He frowned. “I fought back. I’ve never fought back before.”

Before… Which meant this had happened more than once. I knew it had. I knew because I’d seen the marks on his face.

It meant tenfold wasn’t enough. I wondered how long I could keep the asshole alive so I could take him apart piece by piece. At least it would give me something to focus these feelings swirling just beneath my skin on. Maybe if I drenched myself in enough blood, London’s wouldn’t be so…

Appealing.

“Otto…” He was hesitant when he raised his hand, like he was almost afraid to touch me.

Almost afraid to reach out. But he had that same soft expression he’d had on his face after I’d finally told him about our past. He looked at me like someone hadn’t tried to kill him twice since that moment, and I found myself incapable of moving as he skated his fingers along my arm, tracing gently against my skin.

“I think you’re the reason I fought back. ”

The words made me freeze. “What?”

“I…” He took a breath, deep enough that it made him wince.

I leaned in automatically, brushing my free hand across his chest, over his heart, like I could slow his breathing to make it easier on him.

“I’ve spent all this time doing my best to convince myself that you’re a liar, that you’re crazy.

” He smiled at the way my brows pulled together.

“Even when we were in that building and I watched the man completely change when they gave him that shot, I wanted to deny it.”

“London…” Speaking looked like it was painful for him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say. He kept going, though.

“Maybe it’s just that we’re both crazy… but…

” His eyes darted down, brows knitting together and an almost painful expression crossing his face as he forced himself to lift his gaze back up to meet mine.

“But after what you told me… I… fuck.” He squeezed my fingers and licked his lips, painting his tongue with blood.

“I guess a part of me wonders if maybe… maybe this is my chance to make things right. To do things right.” His eyes darted down again, like he couldn’t quite finish what he was trying to say while looking at me.

“You know… with you. It’s the only reason I can think of, for why I’m here when I know any normal person would have run by now. ”

A chance to do things right? To make things right?

My mind drifted—back to when Nikki and I had first met, to the first time we’d kissed, the first time his mouth had traced gentle lines along every curve of my body. He’d kissed each muscle until I was a trembling, panting mess. I was suddenly drowning in the way I used to feel so safe in his arms.

The way I’d still wanted to reach out to him, even in those last minutes.

Even when I knew it was his fault.

“That’s fucked up, London,” I finally managed, but my eyes were searching his face, wondering if there was something to what he was saying. Some truth…

“I know… I just…”

“This body I’m in belonged to a serial killer before I took it over, you know?” I interrupted him before he could talk himself out of his little revelation. The confession brought him up short, and his gaze darted to mine in shock.

“What?”

“Before I was in this body, this man was watching you. From what Nathaniel West could find, he’d killed at least five other men…” I didn’t think his eyes could go wider, but they did when I added the rest of the confession. “They all looked like you.”

The silence spanned between us for so long that I wondered if I’d broken his confession before it even had time to sink into his lungs, but he wasn’t pulling his hand away. He wasn’t trying to run. He just stared at me.

“But that’s him… not you. You’re not…”

“That’s what our mother wanted me to be, though.

A killer. Someone who could do her dirty work.

And I think after… what happened…” It was the first time I didn’t throw the fact that he’d killed me into his face, and I think he noticed.

“Every life after, this body has looked for you. Multiple lifetimes of killing you and boys who look just like you.” He was so still while I said it, so soft and confused.

I wasn’t sure if he understood what I was trying to say.

Shit, I wasn’t even sure that I knew what I was trying to say.

“I… Otto, I don’t…”

“It’s enough to make me wonder if sometimes things just get…

misaligned.” I was the one who looked away this time.

“Whoever this body was, he was hunting for Nikki on instinct alone… and I…” I glanced up at him through my dark curls, to his bruised and bleeding face, to his bare chest littered in welts.

“And I think I’ve known from the first time I held you that you’re… you.”

A chance to do things differently.

We couldn’t rewrite the past—I was never going to be able to erase the pain and hatred warring in my chest—but when I looked at London, there was something beyond all that.

There was…

Him.

Even when I thought about my past and all the ways Nikki had made me feel, he’d never made me feel…

Protective.

Bathed in light.

“I’ve always been me, Otto.” He’d been telling me all along, even when he didn’t believe what I was saying could be true. My fingers came up and my thumb carefully wiped a smear of blood away from the corner of his mouth when I nodded once. Slowly.

“Yeah… yeah, I know.”

And knowing that…

Fuck, knowing that made everything feel different.

It made us different . It made this life, what it could mean…

Different.

We were caught there, staring at one another as if the weight of the sudden knowledge was enough to drown us both.

Thankfully, my mind had belonged to a man with no feelings before I’d crawled into it, so I managed to push myself back from the bed instead of falling into the lost, confused expression trying to draw me under.

“Where are you going?”

He sounded… scared. Unsure.

“To the bathroom. I’m going to get the first aid kit so we can patch you up.”

He’d settled back onto the pillows by the time I came out of the bathroom, his eyes closed and his fingers carefully brushing across the cut on his lip, trailing up to the blood on his brow.

He really was getting my comforter filthy, but I’d worry about that later.

I was silent as I made my way across the room, dropping my bag onto the ground beside the bed.

And he didn’t open his eyes when I carefully brushed his cheek.

London just dropped his hand to the side, as though his little confession had made some kind of bubble of safety between us. It was sweet…

Innocent.

Na?ve. I’d told him what kind of a man this body was, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t grasped the full weight of it.

Those instincts were still running through my veins.

That ambivalence paired with the anger and betrayal I’d felt before I’d died lived and breathed beneath my skin.

I could still feel it, was still breathing in the toxic air of that fury.

But…

My hands were careful when I cleaned the cut on his brow, gentle when I taped it closed and moved to wipe the streak of crimson from his split lip. London was a mess, and I was fairly certain he was going to feel exactly how much of one he was after he slept and his body had time to catch up.

He was still as I cleaned up his face, still as I smoothed my fingers along his ribs one more time and peeled him out of his jeans…

and he was still when I pulled back the sheets and carefully climbed into the bed beside him, clicking off the lamp so we were surrounded by the cool relief of darkness.

Second chances—another life where crawling into bed like this didn’t have to mean one of us would end up dead.

I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Everything inside me wanted to wrap my hands around his throat in the dark and choke the life from his body.

But when he turned in my arms and buried his face against my neck, and I felt his shoulders gently start to shake with silent tears…

my arms tightened around him automatically.

I’d never believed in second chances, but with London’s warmth trying to melt the ice in my chest and his body slowly relaxing as exhaustion overtook him, soft sniffles still occasionally making him nuzzle closer… I realized for the first time, I wanted to.

Believing in Nikki had gotten me killed before… but a part of me wondered if trusting London could be the thing that saved us both.