Chapter 18
Elijah
Ishould leave.
That’s the first thought that claws at me as I stand in the doorway, watching Lottie fold herself into her father’s arms like she’s been waiting two years just to breathe again.
My chest aches, a hollow kind of ache, because I’ve never once seen her look at me like that. Not even when she was Scarlett and alive and burning too bright for this ugly world.
She clings to Peter like he’s the answer to every broken piece inside her. And maybe he is. He’s her blood. Her father. The man who should have been there when the worst of it happened, when my father touched her, destroyed her, left her mute because silence was safer than speaking.
I should hate Peter. Part of me does. He was too high, too weak, too gone to protect her when she needed him most. And yet here he is, alive, breathing, holding her, and she lets him.
She lets him.
I want to rip her out of his arms.
She pulls him toward the couch, her voice soft but trembling, and they sit together, shoulders not quite touching.
I see it—the hesitation, the distance she puts between them even while her heart is breaking.
That distance is the only reason I can breathe.
Because if she trusted him fully, if she loved him without question, she wouldn’t need anyone else.
She wouldn’t need me.
But she does.
My hands flex at my sides, a twitch I can’t control. She looks too small pressed against him, too fragile, too—mine. Always mine. Even if she doesn’t see it yet.
I force myself to stand still. To watch. To swallow the jealousy that tastes like blood in the back of my throat. Because this isn’t about me. Not right now.
Not yet.
I stand there, long after Peter leaves to go to his motel.
Lottie wanted him to stay, but even I know that would be too much for Will right now.
He sees everything—us—as a threat to Lottie, and having another one that he perceives to be a danger to her living under his roof.
Well… I think it would be enough to break him.
Roman insists on watching a movie in the living room, forcing me and Crew to drag him from his ‘bed rest’ to the sofa where he sprawls out, wincing as he does. Lottie settles between Archer and Oscar, hands moving in a silent conversation.
I pick up bits and pieces, or that Oscar has made her laugh when her head tilts back and she smiles at him like he’s the only thing that matters to her in that moment.
Because when she looks up, her eyes catch mine across the room. And for once, she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t flinch.
Her lips part. “You… you put him in rehab, didn’t you?”
The words aren’t accusing. They’re grateful.
And it hits me like a blade sliding under my ribs.
She knows.
My throat tightens, but I nod slowly. “Yeah.” My voice comes out rougher than I want, betraying the storm inside me. “I did.”
Her eyes soften. Just slightly. Enough to make my pulse slam.
“Thank you,” she says. Quiet. Fragile. Like those two words cost her something.
It’s the first time she’s ever thanked me for anything.
And I swear to God, it feels like being absolved.
I drag a breath into my lungs, fighting for control, because this is the moment. This is the opening I’ve been waiting for. The chance to tell her everything, to lay it all out before someone else twists it against me.
“Lottie,” I start, my voice breaking before I can stop it.
Everyone’s eyes shift toward me—Archer stiffens like he already knows I’m about to ruin everything, Roman lounges back, but his gaze sharpens, Oscar frowns, Crew stays unreadable.
But none of them matter. Not when she’s watching me. “I need… I need a chance to explain.”
Her brow furrows, guarded but curious. “Explain what?”
“Everything.” The word is a rasp. A plea. “Please.”
For a moment, silence stretches, heavy and suffocating. Then she nods once, slow.
Because she thinks she owes me.
She doesn’t. But I’ll take it. I’ll take anything she’ll give me.
“My dad,” I begin, the word sticking in my throat like poison, “did things no father should ever do. Not to his own son. Not to anyone. But what he did to you…” My voice cracks, rage and shame tangling until I can barely breathe.
“I didn’t know. Not at first. When I found out, I wanted to rip my own skin off because it was my blood that hurt you.
My family. My name. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. ”
Her shoulders stiffen, her jaw trembling.
“I put a bullet in him,” I continue, my voice low and steady. “Not because it fixed anything, but because he didn’t deserve another breath after touching you. He begged, and I didn’t care. I wanted him gone, and I made it happen.”
Her breath hitches, eyes wide and wet. She doesn’t say anything else, but I continue before someone can stop me.
“I owed you that,” I say, desperate now, needing her to understand.
“Because you were supposed to be dead. I wanted you to get everything you should have before. So I did the only thing I could think of. I made sure your dad had a chance to live. To get clean. To be the father you deserved. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. ”
Her lips part, trembling. “Why?”
Because I love you.
Because you’re mine.
Because I can’t breathe without you.
I swallow it all down and force the truth that will sound less insane. “Because I owed you. Because if I couldn’t give you back what was taken, I had to give you something even if you were dead.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t know whether to cry or scream.
And I know this is the moment. The one I’ve been holding like a live wire, waiting for it to burn me.
“There’s something else,” I say, quieter now. My hands shake, and I ball them into fists to hide it. “Something you need to know.”
They’re all watching me now.
Archer’s body is a coiled thing, practically vibrating with a fury he can’t shove down.
Roman sits back like he’s got a front-row ticket to whatever mess I’m about to make of myself.
Oscar’s face is pinched in the way it gets when he’s trying to put new facts into an old, broken map.
Crew has gone quiet, elbows on his knees, the math already running behind his eyes—what this means, how it fractures alliances, what advantage it might hand someone.
But I look only at her.
Lottie sits with her hands folded in her lap, thumb and forefinger worrying the seam of her jeans. Her face is pale, the kind of white that isn’t just from shock. There’s exhaustion under it, and something raw, like a stitched wound that someone keeps picking at.
When I tell her what I did, I’m not asking for absolution. I don’t expect a gold star. I expect the room to break me open and for everyone to see the parts they already assumed were ugly.
I expect Archer to want blood.
Still.
She looks at me, and for a second, I forget the rest of the world. That look—part question, part accusation, part helpless child—cuts me through the gut in a way nothing else ever has.
“When you died or when we thought you died, there wasn’t a body,” I say.
My voice is rough with sleep deprivation and whatever I’ve been swallowing for the last two years.
“They found your shoes, your backpack. Nothing else. They said it looked like you’d been taken by the sea.
They said you were gone, but I couldn’t let you be nothing.
I couldn’t let the world file you away, put a number on your death, and carry on.
You deserved more. You deserved a name… a place to rest. I wanted to be someone who would make sure that you didn’t get buried like you didn’t matter.
I know I’ve said all of this before, but the idea that you…
that all that would have been left of you was some waterlogged belongings… it drove me mad.”
She goes still. A desert still. Her mouth opens and closes without sound. “Elijah…”
That’s when I drop it. The thing that has been a lead weight in my chest for two years.
“So I married you.” I finally say, and it’s as if the room holds its breath.
“Legally. I signed the papers. I paid someone to forge yours. Dates were filled out from before you died. I filed the forms. You were my wife, on paper. It gave me the power of next of kin. It gave me the right to decide how you were buried.”
Silence hits like a physical thing. Archer’s body snaps upright as if my words were a slap.
Roman’s lips press together; there’s calculation in his expression now, like he’s tasting the advantage.
Oscar looks like he’s going to kill me once Archer finishes signing everything I’ve just said.
Crew doesn’t move; he never does until he’s figured out where he stands.
“You what?” Archer snaps. “You married her? Without—what the hell, Elijah?”
“She was mine,” I say before I can stop myself. Possessive, ugly, the word tastes like something between prayer and confession. “She is mine. Even when she was gone, she was mine.”
“Bullshit,” Archer stands, and the room tilts. He steps toward me like he’s going to kill me. “You’re going to divorce her, and then stay the hell away from her.”
Roman cuts in, his voice sharp as a knife.
“Hold up. Think for a second, Archer. Hear him out. Lorenzo’s not sentimental.
He doesn’t want a wife because he loves her.
He wants to own her… he wants an heir. If Lottie is married—legally married—he has something standing in the way of all of that. It protects her.”
Archer’s face twists. “So you want to gamble with her life on a legal technicality?” He growls, fists tight at his sides. “And you’d rather her be chained to him?” He jabs a finger toward me like I’m filth. “The son of the man who raped her?”
“I’m not him,” I bite out, my voice raw. “I killed him for her. I bled for her. I’ve done nothing but try to give her back pieces of her life.” My chest heaves, the words tearing free. “And I’ll keep doing it, whether you like it or not.”