Chapter 31 Please
Please
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
— EMILY brONT?, WUTHERING HEIGHTS
We entered the house, and Lucas gripped my arms. “I know it hurts. I’m going to need you to bite through the pain, okay? We don’t have much time.”
Frazzled and scared, my voice shook. “What do you mean? Why aren’t I safe with you?”
“I need to make sure Miller is dead.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
“He was alive when those guards came. He’ll have every Hunter in this territory after us. After you.”
“Who cares? You’re not going back there.” Heat spread across my face and neck as outrage and betrayal corroded my insides. He was thinking of leaving me? After all this?
His hands on my arms tightened, and his voice went ragged. “I’m dead now. Do you understand that? There is nothing that will stop the Hunters from finding me. But if I kill Miller, then you are safe. I have to make sure he’s dead, Sophia.”
“He won’t even be there. They’ll have taken him for medical treatment—”
“I can sneak into the hospital—”
“No.” I stomped my foot. “You will stay here with me. I spent a week being tortured in his house, praying for deliverance, and whoever was listening sent me you. You are mine.” My voice rose to a hysterical shriek, and I grabbed his shirt. “You’re mine! Do you hear me? They can’t have you!”
If he decided to leave, I’d have too little strength to stop him. Love was the only power I had over Lucas Scott. I needed him to love me enough to let me save him. Shaking and crying and so scared I could barely breathe, I pressed my hand to my pounding heart.
He raised his hands, placating me. “Alright. Just breathe, sweetheart.”
“I am breathing.”
“Then do it better.” He took my hand and led me to the master bathroom, turning on the shower.
Using only his left arm, he undressed me.
His soiled T-shirt and the scarlet silk pooled at my feet.
He stared at the wounds on my back for several moments before testing the water and easing me into the stall.
The water had little pressure, but it stung, and sobs escaped my throat. He gently cleaned away the blood and dirt from my back while I scrubbed the crusty red from my hands and hair.
“Do you really think he would have lived through that?” I asked.
“He’s survived worse. The trauma surgeons on base are very good.”
I glared at the shower wall before glancing at him over my shoulder. He held his right arm against his chest.
“What happened to your arm?”
He sighed and showed me the hole in his upper sleeve where a bullet had entered. Shocked, I turned, reaching out as he stepped away. “It’s fine,” he said. “Let me take care of you first. Please.”
Staring into those pleading eyes, I nodded, letting him finish.
He helped me out and inspected my entire body.
Besides the emblem on my back, I had bruises on my throat, teeth marks on my breasts, and lacerations on my wrists.
Luke’s mouth tightened further with each injury he examined, and his normally bright eyes morphed into a flat blue.
After his thorough perusal, he met my gaze. “I can try to minimize the scarring on your back.”
I nodded.
After helping me dress in sweatpants, he disappeared into the kitchen. I eased my aching body face down on the bed, and the day replayed against my closed eyelids while tears gathered.
Lucas reappeared with a plate of food, then gathered an armful of supplies from his closet and dropped them onto the bed next to me. He placed his hands on either side of my waist, beckoning me closer. “When did Miller do this to you?”
“This morning,” I said, carefully chewing the slices of apple he’d brought.
Miller had given me so little food in the last week I was worried I’d be sick if I ate too much.
Lucas’s finger tapped on my side, and he sighed. “I think I’ll try to glue it. You’ll need to be careful with your movements.” He opened several packets of purple fluid and grabbed one of the sterile packages in front of my face. A pair of tweezers.
“This may burn.”
Starting at one end, he squeezed my skin back together and applied the purple fluid, holding it in place with the tweezers while it dried.
Sweat broke across my forehead as my nerves sparked, and I shoved the plate aside. When he squeezed a particularly tender area, I flinched, and his hands froze. He laid a hand over an unblemished portion of my back. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? Saving my life again?” Bitterness coated my voice. “Distract me. Where did you look for me?”
He went back to work. “When you didn’t show, I told myself you’d just changed your mind about us.”
My heart cracked a bit. “You believed that?”
He let out an angry snort. “No. I was lying to myself. You said you’d always come back to me. You promised, and I believed you.”
I closed my eyes, squeezing out tears.
“I searched everywhere, Sophia. I went through the prisoners waiting for Registration. I tried to find out if there’d been some sort of evacuation of Defiants.
I scoured the brothels. I had Anna searching for you, but she couldn’t find you either.
Anna’s women know everything, so when they hadn’t heard anything, I thought… ”
Questions surged through me, but he continued in a haunted, wooden voice.
“I sent a message to Harrison, and when I got a response, it only said he didn’t know where you were.
He was searching and hoped you were with me.
I sifted through the dead. I followed the lists of casualties, but never found your name.
You never came to Registration, so I thought you must have died, that maybe you’d been left behind, or dumped in a mass grave.
” He paused for a moment, and his voice lowered.
“I couldn’t give up, though. Not until I knew for sure. ”
He went silent.
“Lucas?”
“I thought I’d send you to the House. Anna would have taken care of you until I got there. But then I saw how much they wanted you, and I thought if I could get them to play for you, I could win you fairly. I could have gotten you out without anyone knowing. It was the safest way.”
“And then Blake won.”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Nauseated, I let him finish my back, then slid on a loose shirt. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“I gambled with your life,” he said, sitting next to me. “Don’t thank me.”
“I’m alive. You saved me. Again.”
He shook his head, a jerky, irritated gesture.
With no energy to argue, I reached for his arm. “Let me help you now.”
He hesitated only a moment before removing his shirt.
The variety of wounds there had my stomach aching with worry—a long slash over his side, bruises darkening his ribs, a puncture wound in his shoulder.
The small bullet hole in his upper arm seemed inconsequential in comparison.
I examined that one first and sighed my relief when I found an exit wound.
He glared at his arm. “It’ll heal. I’ve been shot like this before. He missed the vital parts.”
With no small relief, I marched him to the bathroom, and he showered away the blood just like I had. After he dried off, I took my time gluing him back together, piece by piece. He submitted to my ministrations with only small hisses of pain. When it was done, we sat on the bed side by side.
“What now?” I asked.
He hesitated for a long moment, then fetched his dirty pants to pull out the Jeep key. “Now’s the painful part.”
“Lucas—”
“You have to leave.”
My hand closed around the key. “Leave?”
“Go home, Sophia. Make them keep you safe.”
My heart bounced around my ribcage as I stared—then glared—into his face. “I’m not leaving you.”
He took my hand. “My cover is blown, and I have nowhere to go. I’m now an enemy to both sides. You stay with me, you die.”
“I’m not leaving without you,” I snapped.
He remained calm, which only stoked my ire. “We both knew this day was coming. It’s time to be brave and accept it.”
I gripped his hand. “You’re all I have left, Lucas, and I won’t lose you without a fight.”
“You have fought, sweetheart. You’ve fought and lost. This isn’t a debate.”
My muscles tensed at his supercilious tone. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
He sighed. “If you would just listen—”
“I am!”
“You’re not. I’ve never been good for you, and now I’m putting you in danger.” He grabbed my shoulders almost as if he wanted to shake sense into me. “I just want you to be safe.”
“Then you shouldn’t have let me fall in love with you.”
That killed all semblance of his calm. “Let you? Let you? I don’t let you do anything.
You do whatever the fuck you want to do whenever you want to do it.
” He raked his fingers through his dark waves, his composure cracking.
“You were just supposed to be a contact! You’ve fucked up every plan I ever had.
You clawed your way in and won’t let go. Why can’t you see we’ve lost?”
“We haven’t lost til we’re dead.” I had nothing but him, and I’d fight for him until my dying breath. “You saved my life today. We haven’t lost yet.”
“Your stubbornness is going to get you killed.”
“No, it’s going to keep you alive.”
He scrubbed his face hard with his hands. “Please don’t do this. Please let me get you out. I can’t go back. I can’t go with you. Staying together will kill us both.”
“Then we die together, Lucas. There’s no life I want to live without you in it. You said I could ask you for anything. I’m asking you for this. All I want is you.”
Exhausted, desperate and grief-stricken, he squeezed my hand. “Please. Please, Sophia,” he whispered. “Please don’t do this. Just go.”
I met those aquamarine eyes, and tried to picture leaving him, letting him face death alone, but I just… I couldn’t do it. I leaned closer, holding his anguished gaze. “Would you?”
“What?”
“If our positions were reversed, would you leave me alone to go off and face a traitor’s death?”
“Yes.” The word was quick, breathless. Full of hope.
“Wow,” I said under my breath. “No wonder you don’t lie. You’re terrible at it.”
The amber flecks in his eyes glimmered, warming, but he straightened, and his expression became impassive again.
When he spoke, his voice had cooled. “What’s your plan then?
Do we hide? Do we run? Where do we go? Who would take us in?
We have a car with half a tank of gas, a single loaded gun, and two armies chasing us. Tell me how we survive, Sophia.”
I turned toward him and took his face in my hands. “You just killed five Blood Colonels to save a Defiant. You’ve been feeding information to the Defiance for months. You’re the reason the tides of the war have shifted. If people on my side knew—”
His eyes widened. “You’re kidding—”
“I can take you to Theo, Lucas. He already knows you’ve turned. He’ll grant you clemency.”
I thought of the signed paper in my sleeping quarters back home, the one granting Lucas immunity from his crimes.
Then I thought of the doubt on Theo’s face when he’d given it to me.
If you two are smart, you’ll steer clear of Nia Williams.
“He’ll execute me,” Lucas said, certain.
“You don’t know that!” I wiped the tears from my cheeks, and new ones replaced them. “Let me try, Lucas. Let me save you.”
He exhaled, loud and frustrated.
“Until I die. That’s what you promised me. You aren’t dead yet.”
He considered me for several seconds. “What will you do when they decide to execute me?”
Heart pounding, I flinched at the images that sprang forth—images of heartbreak and screams and endless torment.
“Tell me, Sophia. When the Defiance sentences me with execution for my war crimes—as they should—how will you respond?”
“That won’t happen.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “Tell me what you’ll do.”
The picture formed, heedless of my desire not to see it—Lucas denied mercy, strung up to suffocate. It burned a fiery wave from my stomach to the tips of my fingers and toes. My hands curled into fists.
He nodded as he stared at my face, like my expression said it all. “I won’t be the cross you die on.”
“You’re the only thing left to live for,” I whispered.
His gaze dropped to his knees. “You love me too much. Love isn’t supposed to hurt you.”
I sniffed. “Isn’t that all love is, Lucas? Just another knife buried in our hearts? If you die, it’ll tear the knife out. I’ll bleed to death.”
His eyes squeezed shut. “God. So dramatic.”
“I’m serious, Lucas. You’re a part of me. I can’t live without you.”
My name was a soft huff of air, and he dropped his head, lifting my hand to kiss my fingers. His tone lost all life. “I will go with you, but when they apprehend me, that’s the end.”
Relief washed through me. “Are you saying yes?”
“I’ll go with you—”
A smile broke over my face.
“—as long as you promise me you’ll let them take me, if that’s what they choose to do. You will not fight for me. You will not get hurt for me. You will allow them to do what needs to be done. Do you understand?”
I froze.
“I am the devil, and you cannot follow me back to hell.”
“Lucas—”
He met my eyes. “I’m not bargaining with you.”
“Lucas!”
“You fell to your knees and begged me to kill you today, Sophia.” His voice shook. “Do you have any idea what that did to me? If this doesn’t work, you will stay safe.”
“The only times I’m ever hurt are the times I’m not with you.”
“I will stay with you,” he said. “Until I die. It’s coming, Sophia. You can’t stop this, but you can stay safe. Okay?”
The hard set of his shoulders, the bright, angry blue in his eyes—they told me he wouldn’t budge. No use arguing.
So I lied. “Fine.”
He eyed me, head cocked. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’ll hold you tighter.”
He gave a heavy sigh, his hand tightening on mine. His thumb brushed the gold ring on my finger. “This is beyond stupid. I hope you realize that.”