Chapter 35 #3
A frisson of panic shoots through me, and I try to curl my hand around the card, but it’s too late. He lifts it from my hand and holds it up to the moonlight. His expression shifts, from sharp to soft to devastated in the span of three seconds.
“A playing card.” His eyes find mine. “This is why you came to my house?” He holds the card up. “You were, what, gonna leave this there?”
I look down. “I was going to try to say goodbye first.”
“Good—” he scoffs. “Goodbye? Fuck, Lucy.” The pain in his voice makes my chest ache. “You were going to run. For real? From me?”
“Don’t, Hatter. I don’t want to talk—”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No way. Fuck that. You don’t get to run from me anymore. Wherever you go, I go. Are we clear?
“I have to leave. You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly.” His voice hardens. “You think you’ll get me hurt. You think if you remove yourself from the equation, you can’t be used against me. You think you’re protecting me.”
Tears spill down my cheeks. I suck in a shuddering breath and nod.
The slow smile that spreads across his face makes my stomach flip. He steps forward, and I don’t move even as his eyes darken.
“Baby, baby, baby.” He steps forward, barefoot, sweatpants hanging low over the V of tattooed muscle disappearing beneath the waistband. He closes the gap until I’d only need one deep inhale for my shirt to brush his bare chest. “Do I look like I need protecting?”
His smile is sinful, and I gulp.
“Did I look like I needed protecting,” he murmurs, closing the gap and pressing me flush to the support beam, arms coming up to cage me in, the card still in one hand, his warm chest against mine, breath ragged and hot where it fans across my cheek, “when I was executing the man that hurt you?”
I moan. Actually moan.
“And now that you’re looking at me like I’m not a monster.” His breath goes ragged and hot where it fans across my cheek. “Now that you see me. I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
He pulls back, just slightly, searching my face.
“You didn’t run because you were afraid of me. And if you really wanted to leave, you wouldn’t have come to say goodbye.” Something flickers through his expression. “Trust me. I know what it looks like when someone actually wants to disappear. That’s not what this is.”
Before I can ask what he means by that, he continues.
“So secret for a secret, Lucy. Mine is, I’m a murderer.” He holds my gaze. “Your turn. Why did you really run back there?”
I swallow. He already knows almost everything already. What’s one more secret as a thank you for murder?
“Because I didn’t hate it,” I say, the words breaking free and tumbling out. “Some part of me saw what you did and didn’t recoil or shut down or want to disappear. It leaned in. It felt vindicated. It felt right in a way that scares the hell out of me.”
I lick my lips. “Hatter, I’ve spent my whole life believing that if I stayed soft enough, careful enough, quiet enough, invisible enough, I could keep the worst parts of the world from coming for me again.
And then you lost control for me, and instead of being afraid, I felt—” My voice cracks.
“Protected. Chosen. Wanted. Things I never felt before. And I ran because wanting that, wanting you after seeing what you’re capable of, means admitting there’s something dark and dangerous and hungry in me too.
And even though I was young, even though it was traumatizing, some part of me even back then, could feel that there was a darkness inside of me.
Something that liked killing too. And that terrifies me. ”
Hatter’s quiet for a moment as he studies me. Then he lifts his chin, and when his eyes meet mine, I feel an unwavering peace settle over us both.
“Lucy, I may not know a lot, but I know one thing deep in my soul. You are good. You don’t like killing.” He shakes his head. “You like justice. Unfortunately for us, we both learned young that sometimes those feel like the same thing. And, sometimes, they are.”
“You’ve felt it too?”
He takes my hand and presses it flat against his scarred arm.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I have.”
Fury surges through me at that—hot and sudden—for him, for what someone did to leave those marks, for every woman and child who learned too early what the world was willing to do to ruin them.
He seems to sense the shift, because he forces me to meet his gaze before I can disappear into the madness.
“So tell me, Lucy. Now that we see each other, no masks, what’re you gonna do? Because running? That’s no longer an option for you, bunny. Not without me at your side. From here on, you either run to me or I chase after you. Those are your only two choices. You just decide which on.”
His nose brushes mine, and for one suspended second his lips are a breath away…
Then he steps back, once, twice, giving me room. Giving me the choice. Giving me freedom.
“Which one is it going to be, baby?” He tucks the Queen of Hearts into his sweatpants pocket and spreads his arms wide. “Run to me. Or make me chase you again.”
I push off the piling.
His chest rises sharply, panic in his eyes.
But for the first time in my life, I don’t run because I’m scared.
For the first time in my life, I run because I’m finally, finally not afraid.