Page 14 of Beyond Hate

“Otto, please…” In the dark, when I couldn’t see him, when the ghost of those blue eyes wasn’t taunting me. I didn’t recognize the voice.

I didn’t, and I did.

Because it wasn’t Nikki… but fuck me if he didn’t sound like every perfect moment I’d ever longed for and never had a chance to keep.

I hadn’t had a chance to keep it because I’d died.

“You might not remember now, London. But you will.” I leaned in, brushing my lips against his again, caught up in the way they were salty and wet from his tears. It was almost intoxicating.

“What do you mean?”

“This place? These people? They have a way to bring past lives to the forefront. They have a way to make you who you were.” He froze under my touch, still like a statue except for the way his breath came in a sharp, terrified intake. “They brought me back to life afteryoukilled me. Or, well…” I leaned closer. “Maybe notyou, but the person you were. That’s who they’ll eventually bring back.”

The silence that met me was deafening, and his fingers on my chest twitched nervously, clenching and unclenching until he finally drew in a breath to speak.

“What happens to me when they do?”

My eyes slid shut, the answer coming out before I could stop it. “You won’t exist anymore.”

“I…” Another beat of silence, and then tears. Soft at first, a hiccupping sob that he tried to hide. But then I heard it again. And again.

When I pulled him to my chest, he only struggled for a second before going limp in my arms. London was still as my fingers smoothed soothingly up and down his back, but he shivered when I carefully started to thread them through his hair.

Like he couldn’t fight it anymore, his head dropped to my shoulder. It took him three tries before he managed to catch his breath so he could speak.

“I don’t want to die.” He said it like a revelation, like it was news to him too. What had happened to him his entire life that he just now realized he wanted to live? I’d read a file on him, but the wordsorphanandfoster systemmeant nothing. I needed to hear it from him.

What made LondonLondon.

I wanted to know.

Ineededto know.

And I couldn’t know, because what I’d said was the truth. When they injected him, London wouldn’t exist anymore. He’d go to whatever place the personality that existed in this body went to. To sleep? To death? To some dormant state, waiting for their turn again?

No matter the answer, he’d be gone, and Nikki would be here… and I…

“Otto, please… I don’t want to die.”

“Shh, London.” I pressed my lips to the warmth of his hair, inhaling the soft scent of sweat and fear and some undercurrent that was almost saccharine. “I didn’t want to die either, you know?”

And even though he should have pushed me away—even though I should have gotten up and left—he finally gave in completely, wrapping his arms around me and giving himself over to tears.

It was kind of fucked up that he was so starved for comfort that he was going to take it from the man who threatened to kill him. But shit… hadn’t I done the same? Even though I knew Nikki had betrayed me, I’d wanted his arms until the very end. I’d fallen into his eyes in those final moments and let myself remember when it had beengoodas our mother shot me.

Fate was a fucked-up bitch.

Chapter 5

London

OttowasgonewhenI woke up, and I lay there on the bed with my hand on the space beside me—the warmth where he’d obviously just been slowly fading away as I wondered what in the fuck was wrong with me.

He’dtoldme he was going to kill me. He’d laid it out with perfect clarity that he was going to give me some drug and… what? Bring back the person who he thought had hurt him? It was all impossible, completely ridiculous… but it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to drug me up with something so he could live out his fucked-up revenge delusion.

I wasn’tNikki.

I didn’t know Otto.

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