I didn’t know if they were safe. I didn’t know what their orders were for London.
And Ineededto get London out of this building.
“Why did you… why?” he hissed, his voice a hitched sob, but he still clung to me as I dragged him past the bodies and to the door they’d been trying to open.
“They saw you. They know who you are. They know what happened here.” I lowered my gun long enough to pull keys from my pocket so I could open the door they’d been struggling with.
I had keys toallthe doors in and out of this place. And right now, I wantedout.
It wasn’t perfect, but it got us around the sound of gunfire that had finally reached our floor. It gothimaway from danger… at least, some of the danger.
The real danger had its arms around him… Every shot ricochetted through my mind like a spike of agony. With London so close and clinging to me, I could almostseethe past playing behind my lids.
His eyes. Nikki’s eyes.
A gun to the back of my head.
Death… death, death, death, and Nikki looking at me.
Nikki telling me to look at him.
Death, and lifetimes after, searching him out to get revenge. To try to understand why…
Death… and London’s lips pressing to mine while he called me a liar.
I was half dragging him by the time we made it out the door, and I didn’t stop until we were far enough away from the building that I couldn’t hear gunshots anymore.
They were still echoing in my head. Still spelling out a truth I couldn’t seem to ignore.
Things were different because he was different. And he was only different because I wasn’tchangingthat. I was lost in a strange mixture of past and present,confused…because I didn’t know what I wanted.
I wanted to kill Nikki—I wanted to break London.
I wantedmore time.
In my arms, London was trembling. His expression was terrified and broken as he looked up at me when we finally stopped moving… and I realized I had no excuses left.
I should kill him. I should have put the needles I had in my bag into his neck and then killed him.
Instead, I shoved him away from me.
“Otto… I… what?” His breath was coming too fast, his eyes too wide and panicked… and I realized I wasn’t done.
I wasn’t done withthis.
I wasn’t done with him.
But my blood was singing, and my mind was a cacophony of gunfire and memories ofkilling pretty men like him. That’s what the body I was in had done, over and over. The adrenaline pulsing through me brought those memories to the surface now, and I was nearlydrowningin the urge to follow through with it.
“Go home, London.” I said it carefully. Calmly. I didn’t betray the swirling emotions trying to claw their way through the wall of ice that was the mind of this body.
“What?” He almost looked… hurt… when he realized what I’d said.
“Go home.” I couldn’t resist when I leaned in, brushing my gun along his jawline. “I’ll find you later.”
And maybe it was the cruelest thing I’d done to him so far, because I took a step back.
And then another.
