17. echo
echo
Hunter left me with three instructions and the kind of look that suggested he knew none of them would survive the evening intact.
Finish the paper I had been bitching about since Monday.
Stay out of his desk. Leave Nichlas alone.
He delivered all three while pulling on his coat, already distracted by whatever fresh headache Desmond had decided required a family dinner instead of a phone call, and I gave him the same vague nod I used whenever one of my fathers told me not to do something they already knew I was considering.
Malakai lingered near the elevator long enough to look at me twice, probably still carrying the argument from earlier around in that giant head of his.
Ronan checked the time, said something to Hunter about being late, and the three of them disappeared behind the closing doors before anybody decided leaving me alone was a terrible idea.
I lasted twelve minutes before my phone buzzed.
The first message was from Nichlas.
Can we talk?
I stared at it long enough for another to appear.
I mean actually talk. I need you to listen to me.
Nichlas had spent most of the last few weeks avoiding anywhere I might breathe in his direction.
He had changed tables, routes, study rooms, the hours he ate, and probably the side of the bed he slept on if he thought I might somehow crawl through the other one.
He had begged for more protection, watched me walk around with the men who were supposed to keep me away from him, and learned that Hunter’s promise did not mean I had to make his remaining time comfortable.
I typed back.
Kings’ lounge.
His response came quickly.
Are they there?
I looked toward the elevator, then across the quiet room Hunter had just entrusted to me.
Family dinner. You’ve got a few hours.
There was no answer for almost a minute. I could picture him staring at his phone, trying to decide whether the absence of the Kings made coming here safer or considerably more stupid.
Then the typing bubble appeared.
I’m coming.
I cleared my laptop from the coffee table, mostly because I did not trust Nichlas around anything I needed for class, and carried my drink toward the windows while I waited.Nichlas had asked to talk, and I genuinely wanted to hear what version of our history had finally become unbearable enough for him to seek me out.
The elevator chimed eighteen minutes later.
Nichlas stepped into the lounge cautiously, and for a moment neither of us spoke.
His gaze went past me first, checking the room, then toward the hall leading deeper into the private floor before he finally seemed to believe I had told him the truth about being alone.
He looked thinner than he had when I first found him at Aldrich.
The expensive clothes were still there, but they no longer helped. Fear had been eating him from places money could not pad. “You really are alone,” he said.
I leaned against the edge of Hunter’s desk and folded my arms. “You came all the way up here to verify my attendance?”
His mouth tightened, but he moved farther into the room.
“I came because I can’t keep doing this.
” Nichlas rubbed both palms against his thighs.
“I don’t sleep. I can’t concentrate. Half the time I think you’re behind me when you aren’t, and when you actually are there you don’t even do anything. You just fucking look at me.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“It’s torture.”
Nichlas saw enough in my face to regret using it. “I know you hate me. I know why. But you keep acting like I woke up one morning and decided to sell you out because it was convenient, and that isn’t what happened.”
I pushed away from the desk. “Then tell me what happened.”
He blinked, clearly having prepared himself to fight harder for the opportunity.
“You wanted me to listen. I’m listening.”
Nichlas swallowed and glanced toward the nearest chair.
He did not sit until I nodded toward it, and even then he perched near the edge instead of settling back.
“At Westbridge, what we were doing had gotten bigger than we thought. We wanted to offer favors in exchange for a boost in status or whatever the fuck it was that you were after.”
I chuckled. “We knew exactly how big it was.” That part of undergrad had been a high.
It had been the one reason I woke up and went to classes every day.
Having people owe me was fantastic. Every where I went, I was important without being the center of attention.
If people needed something, I was their bitch and when they owed me something, I got to be their nightmare.
Westbridge had been built on favors long before Nichlas and I touched it.
We had simply been better at recognizing that favors became leverage the second somebody wanted to pretend they had never asked for one.
A freshman needed an answer key. A senior needed a disciplinary complaint to disappear.
Somebody’s father needed to know which student had been talking about a company investigation.
Somebody else wanted photographs buried before they reached the wrong person.
One favor became another, and eventually people stopped asking whether I could do something and started asking what I wanted in exchange.
Nichlas had helped keep the book because he liked order. Numbers, initials, dates, little marks beside debts that meant something only because we had decided they did.
He had never understood that the book was the least important part.
“You knew.” He looked at me quickly, then away again. “I didn’t. Not really. I knew how many people were in the book and how many favors moved through us, but I didn’t understand what it looked like from outside until people started asking questions.”
That caught enough of my attention that I moved to the opposite end of the coffee table instead of remaining across the room.
Nichlas kept going. “We started with stupid shit. Getting exams moved. Finding out who was sleeping with somebody’s boyfriend.
Getting a roommate transferred. Then people started asking for things that mattered.
Records. Access. Introductions. Information about professors, family businesses, drugs moving through houses, who had money problems. You kept track of all of it because people always came back wanting something else. ”
I remembered.
“The Quorum started moving into Westbridge,” he said.
“Not publicly. I didn’t even know who they were at first. Somebody approached me at a bar off campus and asked about the favors.
I told them they had the wrong person, and two days later someone else found me after class with enough information to prove they didn’t. ”
“What did they want?”
“The network. They said Westbridge was getting folded into something larger anyway and it could happen cleanly if we cooperated. They wanted names, debts, records, whatever we had that showed who belonged where.” His hands tightened together between his knees. “They knew there was a ledger.”
“And you told them you had it.”
He let out a heavy sigh, his shoulders falling slightly.
“They said if I handed it over, they’d leave us alone.
No retaliation, no trouble with the school, nothing going to our families.
They made it sound like they were buying out an operation.
” Nichlas finally looked at me properly. “I believed them.”
“You believed the people threatening you.”
“I didn’t know what else to do, Echo!”
I tilted my head. “That has never been the same thing.”
His face pinched. “Echo, I thought everything was in that fucking book. Every favor, every code, every person we had dealt with. I thought if I gave it to them, they had what they wanted. I didn’t know they would come after you after that.”
“I was trying to save you,” he said, leaning forward now because desperation had finally pushed him past caution.
“I didn’t tell them your real name. I never told them who your fathers were.
They asked who else ran it, and I kept you vague because I knew if they had enough to find you directly, things could get worse.
I gave them the book so they wouldn’t need you. ”
I stared at him.
He mistook the silence for permission to keep building.
“I thought it would end there. I thought they would take over whatever they wanted and we could disappear from it. By the time I realized they were still looking for you, everything had already gone wrong.”
“If you were trying to save me, you would’ve handed them the book and come straight to me.”
Nichlas stopped.
“You would’ve found me and said, ‘Echo, some very bad people want what we built. I gave them the ledger because I panicked, and now we need to fucking run.’” I stepped closer while I spoke, not raising my voice because I did not need to.
“We could have disappeared together. My fathers would’ve moved us before those people figured out which fucking direction to look. ”
“You don’t know what they threatened.”
“And you don’t know what I would have done because you never gave me the choice.”
His breathing changed.
I continued before he found another excuse. “You keep telling me what you didn’t give them. My name. My family. Whatever tiny pieces you managed to keep back so you can still look in a mirror and tell yourself you protected me. None of that changes what you actually did.”
“I thought you’d be safer if you didn’t know.”
I stepped between his knees and leaned down until he had no choice but to look at me. “The last time I saw you, you left me bleeding the fuck out on a sidewalk.”
His face emptied of all emotion as the color disappeared from his skin.
“You got in a car and left. I was on the ground, Nichlas. I could barely fucking breathe, and you left me there because staying might have meant something happened to you.”
“I panicked.” His eyes filled, and I hated him a little more for looking devastated now, when devastation cost him nothing. “I came back later.”
“After?”