A young man with long dark hair and beautiful green eyes. A taller boy with dark hair and my blue eyes. Sharper features…
He could have been my brother.
And Otto…
Fuck, I felt like I’d recognize Otto anywhere.
It was us… or… the people we used to be.
It was who he’d come looking for that first night in the alley when he’d taken me, and some small part of me seized up in fear that it would remind him of everything he’d lost, everything he was so angry about.
He took it from me with careful fingers, his eyes fixated on faces that probably danced like ghosts to a melody I would never be able to hear. I wanted to beg him to give it back, to put itbackwhere he’d found it… but…
“All the answers are in there.” My voice held the softest ache, because I wasn’t going to take this from him, even if that damn picture and everything it meant, everything itcouldmean,scared the shit out of me.
They looked like they could have been a dream of us. It was proof that everything Otto said was real, right there in his hands.
It was all the answers he’d ever wanted.
And…
“It’s not important,” he murmured, then he threw the book into the fireplace. My mouth dropped open.
“Otto, what are you doing?” When I started toward the fire and the pages that were starting to catch flame and curl at the edges, he caught me around the waist and pulled me to him.
“I said it doesn’t matter.”
“But you wanted…”
He’d wanted to kill me for a long time for those answers—he’d wanted to make me someone I wasn’t. He’d wanted a lot of things, and now he was throwing it all away when it was right there. It was somehow bigger than me killing a man to save him, more important than the dead woman at our feet.
“I wantyou, little rabbit.” His eyes flicked to the picture in his hand and his brows knit together. When he tossed it in on top of the book, I felt like my chest was breaking open. “Whoever those people were, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s better not to know. I want this… now. Us. I want a clean slate.” Otto leaned in, pressing his forehead to mine. “You’renotNikki.” The whispered words felt final, like he was letting go of something.
Like the fire burning the journal was cleansing something inside Otto too.
“No… but I am yours.” I whispered back. He nodded, leaning in and pressing his mouth to mine. The kiss was soft… warm. It was everything we’d never had before, everything I’d neverfeltbefore.
When I pulled back, Otto was looking at me like he was really seeing me for the first time… and I…
Fuck, I loved him.
“Can we go…” I paused. “I’m not sure where. I was going to say home, but I don’t know where that is.”
The corner of his mouth quirked into a soft smile and he lifted a hand, brushing his fingers along my jawline, tracing my lips like he couldn’t quite get enough of touching me. “Home is wherever you are, London. I have money. Home is wherever you want it to be. Though…” His eyes flicked to the bodies in the room with us. “I’m beginning to think it should be somewhere away from here.”
Home.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever really felt that word, if I’d ever understood it… but I did now.
Home was blood, and danger. Home was his eyes going dark when he wanted to hurt me, and the feel of his mouth when he kissed away that pain. Home was the man standing in front of me. Home had found me when it should have been impossible—past death, beyond hate. It was here.
Home wasOtto.
Chapter 32
Otto - Six Months Later
Ithadbeensixmonths, and sometimes London still woke up with nightmares. He dreamed of Hudson attacking him, and he dreamed of the police officer he’d killed whose only crime had been trusting the wrong woman.
