Page 62 of Mayhem

“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?”

He looked down and I caught his chin and forced his head up again. “After you were safe?”

His throat moved beneath my fingers. “Yes.”

“That’s the part you keep trying to dress up. You were scared, so you gave them the book. You were scared, so you kept me in the dark. You were scared, so you left me bleeding. Then when you figured out handing over the book hadn’t stopped them from looking for me, you stayed hidden because you were still fucking scared.”

“I thought you were dead for a while.”

“And when you learned I wasn’t?”

Nichlas went quiet.

I released his chin and straightened. “Exactly.”

He stood abruptly, anger finally breaking through the fear. “What did you expect me to do? Walk back into it? Tell them I lied? Go searching for you when I knew people were watching me? You had your fathers. You had people who could protect you. I had nobody.”

“You had me.”

The words stopped him harder than shouting would have.