Chapter 19
Lottie
The second the door shuts behind us, my knees almost give out.
Everything in me is shaking, like my body can’t hold the weight of it all anymore.
Elijah’s words. Lorenzo. My dad being alive.
The fact that I was married on paper to someone I never agreed to, buried as someone’s wife without ever knowing.
It’s too much.
Oscar doesn’t let me fall apart. His hand stays locked with mine, steady, grounding like he’s the only thing keeping me tethered right now.
“Breathe with me,” he signs, his hands calm and sure in a way that makes me want to sob.
His chest rises, slow and even. I drag in a ragged breath, then another, trying to match him, but my lungs feel like they’re made of broken glass.
He guides me to the bed and crouches in front of me, making himself small. His thumb brushes over my knuckles carefully, like he knows I’ll shatter if he presses too hard.
“You don’t have to hold it in,” he tells me. “Today has been a lot… You don’t even need to talk about it. Just let yourself have a moment to breathe.”
“I don’t even know what I feel right now.” I sign back because words feel like too much right now, and if I say it out loud, it makes it all real.
My dad’s alive.
I’m married… to Elijah.
“I’ve got you, Lottie. I’ve always got you. I’ll carry whatever you can’t.”
And that… breaks something in me.
The knot in my chest loosens, just a little, and I press the heel of my hand to my eyes, but the tears still spill through my fingers. My whole body is trembling, but Oscar doesn’t move. He just stays there, keeping me anchored when I feel like I could float away.
He sits on the bed and shifts slightly, guiding me to lean against him. My trembling slows, the room no longer tilting quite so violently. “You’ve handled more today than most people handle in a year,” he says. “Right now, it’s okay to just sit. Just breathe. Let your mind catch up.”
After a while, I move my hands slowly, shaking out the numbness in them, then sign, “Do I have to go back in there? Do I have to see him again?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “No. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Not now. Not ever. But if you want to. If you want answers, then you go back on your terms. You call the shots. And the second it feels wrong, you stop. You walk away. You’re in charge, baby. No one else.”
The words sink in like fire under my skin, curling around my ribs.
Control.
Choice.
All the things I’ve fought for, all the things I thought I’d lost—handed back to me without question.
When I step back into the room, all conversation halts.
Roman hasn’t moved from the sofa, bandaged and pale, his hand pressed against his side, watching the storm like it’s some grim theatre show he got stuck in the front row for. Crew leans against the far wall, arms folded, silent, until his eyes cut to me.
Archer is pacing, vibrating with fury he hasn’t spent yet.
And Elijah… he’s still there. Bloody, bruised, and staring at me like the room could collapse and he wouldn’t blink.
His voice is rough when it breaks the silence. “Lottie… Come with me, just for a little while. I swear I won’t hurt you….” he chuckles to himself, then says. “I swear on my wife’s life.”
Crew snorts before anyone else can respond. “God, I think that’s the first time you’ve actually tried to be funny. Probably not the time to try cracking a joke for the first time in your life, though.”
Roman groans from the sofa, dragging his hand down his face. “Jesus. Someone shoot me again so I can go back to sleep and escape this. It’s painful.”
But Archer—Archer doesn’t laugh. He turns on Elijah with murder in his eyes, fists clenched, teeth grinding like he’s one second from going again.
Oscar shifts closer to me instead, his steady presence brushing against mine, quiet as always but grounding. He doesn’t need to say anything to keep me upright; he just knows how to.
And me? My heart is a wild, broken thing, rattling in my chest. Because Elijah’s words should repulse me, they should make me run.
Instead, they dig into me, twisting up things I don’t want twisted.
“I’ll go,” I whisper before I can stop myself. The words tremble, but they’re clear. “But only on my terms. Not yours.”
Elijah’s chest rises, something desperate sparking in his eyes. Like I just threw him a lifeline.
Archer’s jaw locks, fury sharp enough to carve me open. “Lottie—”
“I need to hear him out,” I say quickly, before he can drown me out. “If I don’t, I’ll probably regret it. I’m not saying I forgive him, but there are conversations two people should have in private.”
Archer stalks closer, low and dangerous, but when he speaks, it’s soft enough to cut me deeper than if he’d yelled.
“Then hear me out first. You don’t owe him this.
Not your time, not your trust, not your goddamn presence.
He forged your name on a marriage certificate and called it devotion.
If you walk out that door with him, it’s because you choose it, not because he’s earned it.
And if he so much as breathes wrong in your direction, I’ll tear him apart. Do you understand me?”
My throat burns. I nod, voice shaking. “I understand.”
Archer exhales sharply, then presses a kiss to my forehead, like it might be the last safe thing he can do before letting me go. “I love you,” he whispers.
He then forces himself to step back, fists clenched at his sides, as if holding himself in place is the only thing stopping him from tearing Elijah apart.
Then Oscar steps in front of me, “Today’s been too much, baby.
Too many truths, too much pain. Don’t let him pressure you into more.
You don’t have to be ready right now. Not with us here.
” He glances once at Elijah, then back to me, his jaw tight.
“But if you decide this is what you want, then hear me when I tell you that I trust you. Always. But trusting you isn’t the same as trusting him.
If you give your husband a chance, then fine, give him that.
Just don’t let him off easy. Don’t forget what he’s done.
Make him pay for it, step by step, until you decide he’s worthy of being in your life again. ”
The words sink into me like stones into water, heavy, unavoidable. My eyes sting, my chest tightens, and all I can do is nod. “I love you both,” I mouth to them both.
Crew’s face flashes over Oscar’s shoulder, and he approaches me timidly, like I might tell him to fuck off. “I know I’m not forgiven yet, and you best believe I’m not rooting for him after everything, but I need you to know that whatever you choose. Whether it’s to divorce him…”
Elijah growls.
“Or… if you choose to hear him out even after everything that’s happened. I’ll support it. You are the one in control, Lottie. Not us.”
“Who’s going with you?” Oscar asks me, and for a moment, I forgot that we would need someone to tag along. A voice from behind me has me spinning around.
“I am,” Claire says, arms crossed, eyes narrowed dangerously on Elijah.
For a second, nobody breathes. Elijah blinks at her, caught off guard. I see the flicker of panic in his eyes, panic that she’ll never let him near me, panic that she’s about to gut him in front of everyone.
He’s not wrong to be afraid.
“Mom.” Archer starts, but she silences him with a single raised hand.
“You’ll do as she says, Elijah,” Claire continues, her voice colder than I’ve ever heard it. “You don’t touch her unless she tells you to. You don’t raise your voice, you don’t so much as breathe wrong. If you do, I’ll bury you myself, and no one in this room will stop me. Do you understand me?”
Elijah swallows hard, his voice a rasp. “I understand.”
Claire doesn’t look satisfied. She steps forward until she’s a hair’s breadth from him and drops her voice so only we can hear. “One wrong move, and I won’t give you fingers to count regrets, and I’ll make sure you beg for the mercy my husband never gives. Capisce?”
I swallow hard, look from Claire’s steel to Oscar’s steadiness to Archer’s fire. “One hour,” I say at last. My voice is steadier than I expect. “Coffee. That’s it. No more.”
Claire’s expression softens for just a heartbeat as she steps closer and cups my cheek in her palm. “Then one hour it is. But if I don’t like what I see, Lottie, I’ll make good on my promise. No hesitation.”