Time for Truths
“I’d hate you for it?!” Kate stumbled out of her chair, backing away from the counter. “Why then this whole—” She trailed off, her blank mind left her standing in the middle of the living room, grasping for words.
“You’ll understand soon enough.” Lucien stood as well, fingers twitching like he wanted to reach out for her.
She took another step back, wanting nothing but space between them now that the bubble had burst. “But I felt you… relax.” She blinked back hot tears. “You’ve been pulling on my strings this entire time. The dress, dinner, the touches. Why? Why play with my heart like this?”
His hands balled to fists, jaws grinding over each other. “If we cross the line tonight, I won’t be able to hold back.”
“I never said you’d have to hold back.”
What did that even mean? Kate swallowed, wincing from the heavy ache in her throat.
Lucien just stood there, leaving her with clues for answers, but she was done with it.
Done with the half assed truths and digs.
“You’re selfish Lucien, always keeping the truth to yourself and leaving me in the dark.
” She released a staggered breath, leaning against the couch for support.
Lucien raked a hand through his hair, breathing hard. “You want a piece of truth? Fine. Maybe I wanted a sense of normalcy in a world that is anything but, maybe I wanted to be near you to convince myself there is still good out there.”
Kate froze, ire leaving a hole in her chest. Where has he even been?
“I’m always in control, Kate.” His gaze snapped to his white knuckled hand. “But I’ve been slipping.”
A truth, but not the whole truth, else he would hold her gaze still, but his eyes danced away from hers. He murmured lowly, almost as if he was talking to himself. “What happens when I can’t hold back anymore?”
Something hit him tonight, hard. “What did you do tonight?” She braced herself against the couch. Truth, she needed the truth.
A stone-cold look took over his face. “I’ve merely been productive.”
You’re scaring me. She almost voiced it, but shoved it back at the last possible second. But he’d noticed, of course he had.
“You’re scared of me, sweetheart.”
“No. I’m not.”
Lucien strode forward, grasping her hand to place a finger on her wrist.
Her heartbeat raced beneath his touch, offering up the truth. “You do a lot of things well, but lying? It’s not one of them.” Tracing a slow pattern over her forearm, he murmured. “Even now you stay, you don’t ever stand down, do you?”
“I could never.” How could she? When all she wanted was to comfort the killer in front of her, even now her mind was numbing below his touch, like an addict to drugs.
She shook her head in confusion, tearing her wrist from his grip, refusing to look at the pain that flashed across his face when she broke the connection.
Clear, she needed a clear mind.
“But I don’t understand you. There is this side of you that cares, teaches even nurtures. And the other side? Soaked in someone else’s blood, uncaring like a killer who feels no remorse.”
“It’s a dual nature, Kate, it’s one and the other. I can’t pick and choose.”
The words kept spilling out of her, she hadn’t even registered his reply. “You’re the one playing the piano, pulling me apart and healing me at the same time. The one who makes me feel seen when no one else did. Which one is true?”
“They both are.”
She needed to understand. “Is it an alter ego?”
“It’s who I am.”
“Fine.” She bit out. “It’s fine, I know I’ll never get the whole truth from you.” She raised her hands in surrender. “I’m done trying to understand you.”
She dropped them back by her side, turning to race up the stairs but the silence of her room, the rush of blood in her ears would make her crazy, so she stalked past him. Ignoring his look of surprise as she dove into the kitchen cabinets, reaching for a cloth and the dish soap.
I need something to do. Need something to do before I race off into the wilderness.
“I’ll clean it up.” He murmured behind her.
“No.” She grabbed onto the dishcloth, fingers stiffening around the fabric. “I will do it.” She dunked the cloth beneath the rush of the tap, splattering cold water all over herself. Not even feeling it, she turned it off with a harsh flick of her hand.
He just stood there in the middle of the living room where she’d left him, looking like a child lost in the supermarket.
Ignoring the painful stab in her heart she turned to the counter, dunking soap over it, she brushed and brushed the red away until it was sparkling white again.
Moving over to his chair, she halted, eyes falling to a little piece of paper, a smudge of blood coated the half of it.
Bending down to her haunches she picked it up and turned it over in her hand.
A picture. With a man on it, wait… that face.
It nearly slipped between her fingers, those eyes, piercing black. An image that had been present in her mind more often than not.
You only take paid jobs?
Red lettering shone through the picture, she flipped it over, reading those three blood red written words. Paid in full.
Time slowed down.
Please, someone tell me I’m dreaming.
Lucien, he had done as she had blurted out in that moment of fury, hadn’t he? It wasn’t just any man’s life liquid that coated Lucien in blood. In a way he had gone out to exact her mission, her revenge.
“It’s my doing, isn’t it?” She held the picture tightly in her grip. Her hands bloodied, just as much as his.
Gone was her innocence.
Lucien shook his head in refusal. “The second he touched the boy, it was decided.”
Even now he was trying to protect her from the truth of what she’d done.
“You were checking for witnesses to your presence. Not my meltdown.”
It wasn’t framed as a question, no, she stated it because she knew. That she had been the one to sent him on this kill.
Lucien remained quiet, letting the silence carry the weight of his answer.
Then it hit her, like a train barreling into her. Slipping, he had told her he’d been slipping. Which meant… “Why did you slip?”
Lucien had gone out to kill, yes. But the blood…
It’s not all mine.
The blood-covered trunk. People, plural, a couple known for their dark tendencies.
Poison, it’s a woman’s weapon. I don’t like the mess. You’ll understand soon enough.
It had been a reckoning.
“I saw things, things I won’t repeat. It doesn’t deserve to see the light.” His eyes bored into hers. “Had you been there. I think you would have done the same.”
She shook her head, refusing to accept his words. “No. You can’t say what I would have done.”
“Don’t you think I know?” Her head snapped up as he stepped closer. “The way you nearly attacked the man for raising a hand, you could barely contain yourself. If I hadn’t been there, what would you have done?”
Kate leaned away from him, bracing her hands on the counter.
She didn’t want to have this conversation, did not want to look at the darkness present within her.
Because what would she have done? Give him a taste of his own?
With the all consuming rage as it had been, as it still felt every time her mind strayed there. She couldn’t tell.
Lucien’s voice lowered, sensing full well the turmoil that was waltzing through her. “In the end the truth is, all of us have a killer buried inside. The line blurs, it differs for everyone. But push us over the edge, and we’re all capable of the act.”
It’s what he had told her before.
And there was this smoldering part within her vicious heart, that whispered it wanted to get things done his way. While her brain fought for what it meant. Killing wasn’t right, no matter how right you could make it sound in your mind. But she knew, if she saw something bad enough, she’d snap too.
At least now she understood his earlier behavior. The flirtation, the lack of control.
The leash on that shadowy part of him had broken tonight.
Just like it had when he’d sat behind his piano, when he’d looked so weighed down by the world’s pain, the music so… right so raw.
Wood creaked under her feet as she drew closer to him, hand trembling she let it rest on his forearm. His focus snapped to her arm, but he didn’t pull away. Ever so slowly, almost reverently he lifted her hand into his, slowly folding his fingers over hers. Both were still covered in blood.
His own tainting hers. She would have saved his life, if it had been necessary. And he’d just taken one. The irony of it didn’t go lost on her.
Noting her trembling body, Lucien whispered. “Maybe you and I would have been different.” He went still, a silent war raging in those green eyes. She saw his throat bob and he went on, murmuring quietly. “Maybe we would have been spared from living the nightmares that haunt us.”
Kate’s breath hitched, the blur over her mind lifting. Could it be?
“You and I?” She questioned him hesitantly.
His jaw tensed, it cost him to force the words over his lips, but when they did, it was like a dam had broken.
“I did it for you, for the child who was thrown in a family where nothing but hate reigned. I did it for Ethan, whose life will be changed forever bearing the scars of his youth, but now he has a chance at life, at love.” His breath faltered, his swallow loud in the silence of the house.
“And for myself, for the kid that saw too much, and changed because of it.”
His words were vague, but the pictures they conjured up were vivid. Born out of her own misery.
“For the children who don’t deserve to be treated like we were.” Kate needed to strain her ears and lean in to catch his low whisper. His gaze trailed over every line carved in her skin. “Shouldn’t we get to change it, make it better?”
The world around her tilted as realization dawned on her. What she’d missed all this time, so caught up in her own past and the pains that lingered. She should have recognized the fellow victim of abuse.
His hand steadied her, cradled her. “I saw it written in you when you joined me by the piano. You want it to change, same as I do.”
Throat aching she got out. “Is it so obvious?” Because it was true, she wanted change. But whether his way was the right way… that was what made her insides clash.
His face twisted into a pained smile. “It is for me. I see the sadness swimming in your eyes, the way your shoulders tense.” A light squeeze followed.
“The way you flinch at a loud noise or when I make an unexpected movement. Each time it happens. I want to reach out and tell you everything is okay. But it’s not, I took choices from you, scared you many times.
I shouldn’t be the one to catch you when you fall. ”
Her heart ached, thoughts whirling through her mind at a million miles an hour.
Everything he had shared with her, a part of the truth she’d so dearly needed.
That told her what she felt was right. He wasn’t like them, the people who had hurt her, scarred her beyond belief.
She wasn’t crazy for the draw between them.
They were just two people who had seen too much.
“I’m so sorry.” Kate’s voice broke. “I should have seen it, what you’ve been through.”
Her eyes fell to the floor, a lone tear racing down her cheek.
“No.” A finger forced her chin up, making her look up at him. “It was a long time ago, sweetheart. There is no reason to linger in it.”
She laid a hand on his chest, felt his heartbeat ramp up beneath it. “Some of the things you do aren’t right. But I don’t know if I would have done the same, somewhere I hope I never will. But I know you’re not like them, you have good in you.”
His green eyes zoned in on her with an intensity that would make her step back. Were it not for what he’d just chosen to share with her. “Would it bother you? If I put my effort toward removing such… specimen?” He spat out the last word.
She shook her head at his question. “I don’t know, Lucien, What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say what’s in your heart, without thinking. What’s the first that jumps to mind?”
She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his gaze on her. Weighing her as he always did.
What did she want? No one had ever asked her that before. When her foster father touched her, she’d wished for protection, for someone to take her out of that place. If anyone had asked her that question then?
Kate knew what he wanted and yearned to hear from her. But she wouldn’t, couldn’t in good faith voice them. Opening her eyes, she released a heavy sigh. “Should we play for God?”
One final squeeze over her hand before he let go, allowing space to filter between them. Softly she released a breath through her lips, her body betraying the lingering fear still hidden away.
A knowing look graced his features as he turned away. “Maybe you should figure that out.”