“I don’t understand why any of you want me,” Leo whispers, looking down at her feet. “I’m so fucking broken…” She shakesher head, crossing her arms against her chest. “It’s not just that, there’s so much… that night wasn’t the only time I’ve been in a life or death situation, and I’ve lied to you for so long about it I started to believe it. I believed my own bullshit so I didn’t have to deal with the reality of what my life actually was before I met you and while I know Justine told you what I shared a little while ago, I just… I’m a coward and I don’t deserve the life I convinced myself I could have years ago, or the one I desperately want to believe could be mine now.”
“It’s ok to be scared, princess,” I say as my heart starts beating wildly in my chest. “We’ve all been fucking scared but the most important thing is remembering we were all able to walk away from that night, and we can be together now in spite?—”
“Of what?” She snaps. “In spite of that sociopath hacking me to pieces? Lucky walking in on that and nearly getting himself killed? The three of you ruining your lives for a piece of shit like me?”
Mark clenches his jaw and stares Leo down. “Stop saying that.”
Leonor raises her hands in defeat but laughs again, the sarcastic empty one that means she’s about to get nasty again. “Fine, fine. You got it, Markus. All of that aside, and I’m still a piece of shit. You know why?”
Leo looks each of us in the eye, taking one step back toward the doors. She pulls on the shorts, reaches toward the dresser to grab her phone, then almost seems to hesitate before dropping what’s going to be a bomb on us.
Almost.
“My biological father hated me so much that after he killed my mother, he left me for dead, covered in her blood and screaming in my crib. I wasn’t even two years old and that’s the first memory I have, clear as fucking day, my mother’s rottingbody laying close enough for me to touch through the bars.” Leo aggressively wipes her eyes as her hands start to shake. “Things didn’t get any better from there, either. Foster care was basically a cover for some sex trafficking bullshit, everyone within the Parish I grew up in keeping it hushed so they could make money. My siblings—you’re shocked right, finding that out? Well, my brother, sister, and I were put in the system together but by the time I was eight, we were separated and I figured they were both dead. And you know what? I fucking envied them for that because I would have rather died than have grown ass fucking men take advantage of me until I grew the balls to fight back.”
Lucky clears his throat from behind me, the sadness he’s feeling rolling off of him in waves. “Leo, baby, you don’t have to keep?—”
“See? Piece of shit, right? Unwanted, abused, fuckingtainted.”
“Leonor,” Norm says as he sways on his feet. “You really?—”
“Wait. Wait, wait. Here’s the best part.” She gives us the most evil, most hollow smile I’ve ever seen grace her beautiful face, and that’s how I know this is it. “When Hastings was killing me, stabbing me over and over,raping mebecause it was the only way he’d ever have me, he fucked me up so badly that even if I could get past all thatbaggageandtrauma,and just be with the four of you the way I want to, it wouldn’t work.”
“Leo, please, calm down and lets—” Mark says but she cuts him off.
“I can’t have kids. He ruined that, ruined me, and because I know the four of you better than you know yourselves, that’s a fucking deal breaker. Each of you want so badly to be a father for one reason or another, and you will be amazing when you get there.” She reaches behind her and grabs the handle of the door, all of us too fucking shocked to even move. “But it won’t be with me.Thatis what Franc knows, and he was right when he cameto me three years ago. I’m a curse, I ruin everything I touch, but I can’t keep doing that to you, I love you too much.”
Then she’s fucking gone.
Running out the door and through the yard, sobbing her way to where, I don’t fucking know.
And because this wasn’t how any of us expected things to go after the five of us finally got together, we just stand there in stunned silence.
Our girl is gone.
And we may never get her back after all that.
31
LEONOR
Ican’t believe I just did that.
Slamming the heel of my left hand into the steering wheel, I aggressively swipe at my never ending tears with the other, trying to clear my vision as I drive the black beast through the backroads of NOLA like a maniac.
It isn’t working, though.
I just keep crying.
Nothing seems to be working.
Yelling at the boys and telling them my secrets, that didn’t help. Especially since I used all of that as a weapon to make them want to leave me instead of telling them the way they deserve because they won’t. Those four won’t ever leave me, I know it right down to my bones.
Taking off like a bat out of hell isn’t doing anything for me. Nothing but putting distance between me and Justine’s house, between me and the only people in the entire world who love me. If anything that makes me feel sick to my stomach.
And crying so many goddamn tears I might end up dehydrated isn’t fucking helping but I can’t seem to stop. Not after what I said to the four men who make up my heart andsoul, and not after dredging up old wounds that will never heal but were scabbed enough to forget about until I wanted everyone to hurt.
I ruined my entire life in a matter of minutes, again, and the list of reasons why it shouldn’t be repaired is definitely growing by the second.