Page 50 of Beyond Hate

Before… Which meant this had happened more than once. I knew it had. Iknewbecause 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. “Iguess a part of me wonders if maybe… maybe this is my chance to make things right. Todothings 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 stillwantedto 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.

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