Fourteen
I ’d passed Lowell’s closed door several times, trying to think of some reason to be there, some reason to use the spare key I held in my hand. It was a huge violation of his privacy, but of course I had multiple keys for locks. It was part of being obsessively organised, and prepared for everything, but I hadn’t been prepared for this. I’d ended up with my ear pressed against the door, when I realised I could hear a woman’s voice. He was speaking to someone on speaker, and she sounded worried about him. Did he have a girlfriend out there somewhere, or a wife? My god, was I trying to seduce another woman’s man? She didn’t call him by his name, but it didn’t sound like she was calling him Psycho either, which was the only other pseudonym I knew of that he’d used.
He sounded distraught though, and that was the part that worried me. He’d sounded like he was sobbing at one point… had he just received bad news? He sounded like he needed me, but he’d also run there and closed himself off from me, and I didn’t understand why. Was it jealousy over Reaper? He knew I didn’t want anything to do with him, but weren’t men inherently possessive when they liked a woman? And was that even what was happening?
Now a man’s voice was practically yelling in the room, and that definitely wasn’t Lowell, and when I heard my Lowell yell words about killing himself, I couldn’t help it. I violated his privacy after all, and burst into the room.
Lowell ended the other voice with a slam of his fingers, and lurched up from the bed, dragging his forearm across his face, to try and hide the traces of his despair. The poor man looked completely broken, and all I wanted was to fix him once more.
“Kill yourself? Please, Lowell, whatever bad news you received, I’ll help you through it. Please, please don’t leave me.” I sounded pathetic, but I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t meant to steal his light from this world, and I’d do anything I could to keep him alive.
“Soph… Jesus, you weren’t meant to… how much did you hear?” He looked horrified, panicked, all emotions I never wanted to see on his face, and unbidden, I approached him again, my arms outstretched.
“Soph, stop! Don’t touch me. Just… what did you hear? Please!” I hesitated, a mere few steps away from him, and drew my arms back, trying to wrap them around me, letting out a gasp of pain as I put pressure on my sprained wrist.
“Shit! Be careful, babe, we need to get ice back on that.” Lowell practically marched me back out of his room, pulling the door firmly closed, and set me up in the living room, with my arm elevated on a pile of cushions, and an ice pack/aka those poor almost frozen peas, draped over it. Then he fussed over me, bringing me tea, and a bowl of cereal, after I refused to let him cook for me.
“Please talk to me, please don’t hide behind looking after me. I’m so afraid, Lowell.”
He sat across from me, that tortured look still in his eyes.
“Of me?”
“You saw the message?”
His gaze dropped and he nodded. “You don’t need to fear me, but others do, and that’s because I was a fucking monster. I feel like…” he trailed off, but I didn’t interrupt him for fear of him shutting down again, “I feel like the man you brought back isn’t the same one who tried to die out there that day.”
Tried to die? I thought he’d been attacked! I opened my mouth, but he wasn’t done.
“Kinda feel like maybe a version of me did die out there, like the worst of me is still out there, gone forever, but what’s left is broken, incomplete. I’m not… I sound like such a fucking psycho, but I think there was still a little good left inside me, and that’s what you saved. The little that was left.” A tear trickled down his grizzled cheek, and I ached to brush it away, to hide the evidence of his pain, but maybe he needed to feel it, and let it out, so he could move on.
“My god, Lowell-”
“I can never undo the things I did, and I can never make amends, but maybe there’s… maybe there’s a chance that I can still do the right thing.”
I gasped, sliding out of my seat and reaching for his hand.
“Are you talking about suicide, Lowell? That’s not the answer, I promise. You can only make amends by putting effort in with the people you think you wronged. Who were you talking to in your room?”
He squeezed my hand, his eyes staying firmly down and away from mine.
“My… uh… my sister, or half-sister, I dunno. Her and her husband. Didn’t even know she existed until, fuck , I can’t tell you this stuff, but if I did, at least you’d know I’m not worthy of your kindness. I was never worthy of it, Soph, never.”
He had family out there, and maybe they’d believed him to be dead all this time, although from how he spoke, it’s almost like he believed they’d have been hoping for that.
“The man I met, the man I know , from spending weeks living here with him, is gentle, kind, supportive, and protective, and makes me desperate for him. He’s smart, resourceful, and willing to put himself at risk for me. He-”
“Babe, that’s not who I was-”
“But it’s who you are now. Why should you judge yourself based on past actions, if you’re not like that now? If you’re a different man now, should you still be punished for your perceived wrongdoing?”
He barked with laughter, a sharp, agitated sound.
“Perceived wrongdoing… if you fucking knew the things I did back then, you’d throw me out, run from me, hide, call the cops… and you should. Some change in my fucking nature now is too little too late, and it doesn’t erase the past. Nothing will. I should have died, but I didn’t. Someday soon I will die for what I did, but you’re right. It shouldn’t be by my hand. That’s the coward’s way out. I’d be stealing their retribution from them. They deserve to finish me, because I hurt people, Soph… I killed . People need me to pay for that.”
He lurched up from his seat, while I was still reeling from that one word; killed. He killed someone? He was heading for my landline, and I shot up from my seat, catching his arm as he reached for it.
“Stop! Whatever you’re doing, Lowell, you need to stop and talk to me!”
“I did, and thanks, babe, it helped me figure out that I can end this right now with one call.”
“To these people you think want to kill you?”
“The cops. Let them come and take me away, and if I’m meant to die for this, they’ll get to me in prison. Either way, I don’t deserve this freedom you gifted me with, but I want to thank you.” He grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me softly.
“I’ll always be grateful for what you’ve done for me, Soph. You saved me, and you put me on the right path. Justice. Retribution. Whatever comes for me, I’m ready for it.”
I couldn’t stop myself. As soon as he released me, I slapped him across the face as hard as I could, and the wounded look on his face, as he cupped his stinging cheek, broke my heart, but his eyes seemed to have cleared a little, like he’d shaken free of that mindset he’d been in.
“Soph?” He whispered, his eyes wide and shocked, as he lowered his hand and hovered it in the air, like he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Don’t you fucking dare do this to me now, Lowell. Don’t you dare! You’ve become so important to me, and now you just want to leave me alone? You want me to try and manage like this,” I lifted my swollen, bruised wrist, “after all I did for you?” It was manipulative, but I was desperate, and terrified that I’d lose him when we were so close to being together.
“Babe-”
“Don’t fucking use that word unless you mean it, because I’m here right in front of you, offering you everything in me, and you’re trying to throw yourself everywhere but toward me, so if you don’t want me, then be man enough to admit that. You were going to help me, you promised to save me from the Rogues, but I guess that was never as important as throwing yourself on your fucking sword.”
Lowell’s face dropped, and he turned away from the phone. He stared at me for a long moment, then his lips twitched.
“Are you horny, babe? You’re after my… uh… sword?”
“Dammit, Lowell-”
“Call me Micro, babe, that’s the real me… I think.”