Page 23 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

London

I was definitely going to Hell, because I felt lighter than I had in years. It wasn’t because I’d been worried about Hudson hurting me. It wasn’t because there’d been some part of me weighed down by knowing he was still alive.

It was because of the way Otto looked at me—the way his mouth had felt pressed against mine… the way he murmured softly when he thought I was asleep that he wanted to keep me.

It was the way, even though it was fucked up, that Otto calling me his while he’d killed Hudson made me feel safer than I’d felt my entire life.

Some part of me was realizing all the ache and longing, the reason I’d been so lost for as long as I could remember, was because a piece of me had been missing… and it was him.

It was Otto.

It didn’t have to make sense—maybe it was a trauma response to being kidnapped, or maybe it really was fate and past lives. I just knew what I felt… and I’d spent too long not feeling it to question it now that I had it.

For some reason, I trusted Otto. He’d had every chance to hurt me, and all he’d done was hurt other people instead.

So yeah, maybe I was fucked up… but if it meant I got to keep Otto and the way his twisted obsession with me made me feel, I was ready to stay fucked up.

Speaking of Otto, I knew he was probably going to show up at work tonight.

I was under no illusion that leaving him handcuffed in that room would keep him there and waiting for me.

Since Til was surprised I’d shown up at all after what had happened, he didn’t question it when I suggested I refrain from dealing with any private clients for the foreseeable future.

I wasn’t going to have any more innocent blood on my hands, and I was under no illusion that Otto wouldn’t repeat what had happened the last time if he saw me with someone else.

The thought shouldn’t have made something in my stomach feel tight.

I was silently questioning myself as I stepped into the dressing room and started going through my outfits, and I was still doing it when I heard the door open and close behind me.

“Do you think I should wear pink or blue tonight?” It was a gamble depending on who’d come into the room. I knew Til was fond of pink, but Gem would probably tell me to wear something mesh and…

“You’re going to die.”

I froze. I didn’t recognize the voice, and I was starting to think I really was God’s least favorite person, because it was almost comical that this was happening.

Again.

I was almost numb as I turned around, my fingers closing around one of the makeup brushes I kept in my locker like it would actually do me any good.

“What do you want?” I sounded fragile when I asked, and I hated the way that fragility made me feel. Otto talked about who I’d been in the past like I was some force to be reckoned with, like I’d been dangerous.

Now I was cowering against my locker and clutching a makeup brush to my chest while some grungy looking guy who was a foot taller than me towered over me.

Useless.

Pathetic.

And I’d left the man who usually saved me handcuffed to the bed.

The man didn’t answer my question. I guess I wasn’t lucky enough to get some long-winded villain monologue so I could figure out what was going on. Instead, he just stepped toward me.

“Don’t.” I tried to sound tough, but it just pulled a smirk across his face as he backhanded me, the power behind it snapping my head to the side and making my ears ring.

Fuck.

Fuck , why did everyone want to fucking hurt me? I was apparently a universal punching bag for every man who wanted to act like an asshole.

“I’m here to send a message.” It sounded like the threat I knew it was, even though it took me a few seconds longer than it should have to process what he was saying because of the pain ringing through my jaw.

“I didn’t do anything.” I wasn’t sure how many times I had to tell people that. It was on the tip of my tongue to beg him not to hurt me, but…

God, I was so tired of being afraid.

Dirty fingers reached into the pocket of an old coat and I reacted out of instinct more than knowledge of what I was actually doing… My fingers were shaking where they still held the plastic end of the brush, and the scream that tore from the man as he dropped what he’d grabbed for left me shaking.

I’d heard Otto force people to make those sounds.

But with the end of the brush sticking out of the guy’s side, and my trembling hands twisting it, I was the one causing the sounds now.

“London?”

Til’s voice coming from a distance finally made me suck in enough air to scream, and that more than the plastic brush sticking out of his side seemed to startle the man into motion. He scrambled back, his hand yanking the plastic out and throwing it to the ground before he took off at a run.

If I’d been better at all of this, I might have tried to stop him. As it was, he darted into the back of the locker room, and the sound of a door opening and slamming shut told me he knew the location well enough to know that there was an employee entrance and exit back there.

Fuck, had he been watching me too?

But no… he said he was here to send a message.

The white paper on the floor… what he’d been reaching for when I attacked him.

The familiar dark writing was the same as the letter that had been pinned to my apartment door.

I was staring at it like it might bite me when the door flew open and I was met with Gem’s bright hazel eyes and Til’s concerned expression.

“London? London… Are you okay?” Gem’s question was soft, but I couldn’t quite find my voice.

I reached forward instead of answering, picking up the note, wet with a small streak of blood.

Almost like I was on a cloud, I picked up the makeup brush too.

The clear plastic was coated in red… and when Otto pushed into the room a few minutes later while Til was on the phone with the police, I was still holding it.

It hadn’t taken him long to get out of the cuffs, had it? The thought brought a humorless laugh bubbling up from my chest, and I realized my eyes were burning with tears as I looked up at him.

“He got blood on my makeup brush,” I offered, lifting the plastic as if showing it to him would explain what had happened.

He dropped to his knees beside me, and the second his hand slipped across my burning jaw and his thumb found the spot at the corner of my mouth that tasted like copper, the tears blurring my vision started to fall.

“Rabbit,” he murmured, the nickname that had been so vicious before a soft balm to the ends of my frayed nerves now. “Whoever the fuck it was, I’ll—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off, and when his dark brows snapped together in frustration, I flicked my gaze to Gem still standing in the room behind us, wringing his hands and glancing between me and Otto like he wasn’t sure if I was safe or not.

My eyes drifted past him to Til who was on the phone with the police. “I’m not even sure you should be here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” The venom in the words made my skin tingle, and I shook my head slowly.

“Til called the police.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my lips to his ear so my next words were for him and him alone. “If everything you’ve told me is true, you don’t need to be here when they get here. Just… wait for me. Please?”

Maybe it was the way my voice trembled on the word please, but he pulled back and looked me over… really looked me over.

“Did you stab him with a makeup brush?” The almost incredulous tone of the question forced a giggle from my chest that cracked through the tension I was feeling.

“Yeah. Didn’t know what else to do.” I wanted to tell him it had worked, but I was pretty sure it had actually been the realization that people were coming to the locker room more than the little stab that made him run.

“When you get home, I’m going to show you how to actually kill someone, London.” He lifted his hand and carefully brushed my hair back from my forehead.

“Go on.” I took a shaking breath and pressed my hand into his.

The instant the paper of the note touched his palm, his expression blanked slightly.

At least I’d had the forethought to give it to him.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell the police so they could handle it, but I had a feeling Otto was going to do whatever was necessary to take care of the situation himself.

Which meant that I had to do whatever I could to protect him.

Apparently, that meant hiding evidence.

His fingers closed around the paper and he nodded, leaning in to press his lips softly to the cut at the corner of my mouth.

“I’ll see you soon.”

I could see the reluctance in his gaze when he looked back at me, but the sound of sirens approaching in the distance was enough to push him forward.

I was right about this. If he’d been a killer, and whoever he’d been before had left any evidence behind, the last thing he needed to do was come face to face with police officers.

Especially when I kept getting into trouble.

Gem waited until Otto was gone before he helped me stand and gently pulled the bloody brush from my hands.

“Uh, your boyfriend is a little scary, London.” His sweet voice was tinged with concern. “He looked like he wanted to put you over his shoulder and take you out of here with him.”

“He probably did,” I answered, aware that the soft warmth blossoming through my chest at the thought still wasn’t normal . But fuck, the thought of Otto wrapping me up and just… kidnapping me again…

Shit, it was kind of nice.

How fucked up was it that being trapped in a facility was better than being out in the real world?

There wasn’t much for me to tell the police when they finally arrived.

Officer Renn was in the lead, and he was looking at me like he was actually kind of tired of seeing me.

I understood—I was getting a little tired of having to see the police myself.

In a smaller town like ours, it made sense that the same face showing up more than once would be enough to earn a glare or two.

At least there wasn’t much to tell. I wrote it off as a client who was probably a little obsessed with me.

“That seems to happen a lot with you, doesn’t it?” Renn’s voice was only a little full of accusation.

“It’s nothing I do on purpose,” I offered, and then held up the makeup brush I’d used as a weapon. “I stabbed him with this… I’m not really good at self-defense, but maybe you can… I don’t know… use his blood or something to figure out who it was.”

I’d seen that kind of stuff on the television enough times to assume they could do that… even if I knew the TV wasn’t exactly real life. Since my entire world was based on past lives and a really weird mystery revenge plot at the moment, I wasn’t going to worry too much about reality.

“You stabbed him with a makeup brush?” It was kind of funny that he sounded just as incredulous as Otto had, even as he bagged the clear plastic and handed it off to his partner.

“I’m not very good at self-defense, okay? At least he left.” I sounded as defensive as I felt, and my brows snapped together when he pressed.

“Did he say anything?”

“That he thought I was pretty,” I lied. Shit, I was getting too good at that. “And he wanted me to go with him. When he reached for me, I stabbed him. When he heard Til and Gem coming, he ran.”

Renn looked me over like he could tell I was full of shit, but it was mostly true—true enough that he couldn’t question it. True enough that I knew the only evidence that could refute it was the note I’d given to Otto.

For all I knew, he was already halfway to finding the man who’d been in here, halfway to killing him. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted…

“Can I go now?” I wanted to go home, and it wasn’t hard to realize that home wasn’t a place.

Renn looked me over one more time, but honestly…

there was no one here. No one was pressing charges.

Maybe it looked bad in relation to the dead man they’d found earlier, but if anything, I had to believe it made my story more credible…

After all, this was the second man who’d assaulted me while at work…

and I was really shit at defending myself.

So.

I guess being kind of helpless could be useful sometimes.

“Don’t leave the area.” He finally relented, and I let out a little snort.

“Where else would I go?”

Anywhere . I wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t here. But for now, I’d settle on going back to my damn hotel room and trying to forget this ever happened.

I was freshly showered and beneath the sheets when I heard the door open.

I should have been tense, maybe jumped out of bed.

I should have grabbed the knife I’d picked up from a convenience store on the way home and clutched it to my chest…

but instinct drove me to lie still as the sheets whispered and someone slid in behind me.

Otto’s arm was warm when it slipped around my waist and moved me so he curled protectively against my back, and I felt something inside me settle.

Maybe I couldn’t remember the past, and maybe the fact that we’d been brothers once should bother me…

but when he pressed his lips to my hair, I couldn’t find it in me to care.

I guess there were some things that imprinted on your soul and followed you through every life—lying like this with Otto was apparently one of them.