He nods. “Yes, he did.”
“My father told you to do it.” It’s the most logical explanation. Deep shame bursts inside my chest. I didn’t trust Jase when he needed me the most. He didn’t murder my father. He ended his suffering.
“Your father took the gun from me, and I begged him to kill me. After what I’d seen—after watching you die—I didn’t want to live, not as a son of that motherfucker. But your dad, he told me I’d be able to get Dornan back one day. He gave me what I needed to bring them all down. A contact. Some fucking hope.”
I’m shivering violently as I watch Jase’s anguished speech.
“Your father smiled, even though he was in pain, and he said, ‘Don’t be silly, Jason. Do you know where I’ve been shot? I’m going to die anyway.’ He’d already made up his mind.”
“I begged John, but he took my hand, and wrapped it around the gun. He put it to his temple, and he squeezed the trigger. And he died, in my arms.”
Jase finally looks at me, probably expecting anger. Instead, all I feel is devastation.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
Oh, god. I had told him earlier he was just like Dornan.
Elliot leaves the room, just like that. He must see the resignation on my face, the acceptance. It was a mercy killing.
I reach out for him, the boy I love. The boy I’ve always loved. Hands stretched out in front of me, and I cannot bear to go one more second without his skin against mine. I tell him I’m sorry, over and over again as he crushes me in his arms.
He whispers to me that it’s okay, that he’s missed me, and that he’s so fucking glad I’m here, now, with him.
He holds me for a long time. And it feels right. It feels better than anything.
I am safe. I am loved.
Maybe everything will finally be all right, at least our screwed-up version of all right. We can get through anything. Our love survived beyond death, so we can survive this.
“Thank you,” I say to the quiet room, and to the boy who took me on the Ferris wheel on our first date and held my hand tight. The boy I was always meant to be with. How did I ever think he could be capable of killing my father in anything other than mercy and desperation?
“What for?” he asks, rocking gently from side to side, his chin resting on top of my head, his arms clutching at me like he’s drowning and I’m the life raft. Which is rather ironic, really, given what’s just happened.
“For ending his suffering,” I say, my voice cracking under the burden of the truth. “For making sure he didn’t die alone.”
The relief, the embrace, is held for several minutes before we break apart.
Because there’s something else. There’s always something else.
“Are you…are you all right?” Jase asks, his eyes roaming my face. They drop to my neck, my arms, looking for damage I suppose. I turn my arm, too late, and he shoots a hand out, clamping it around my wrist.
He stares at me and there seems to be a thousand unanswered questions in his eyes. What do I say? What do I do? I cannot bear the shame of what I am, of what I have become. Of what Dornan has caused me to be.
I have become my mother. An addict. A junkie. Mere hours ago, I sat and let someone put a needle into my flesh, to push forth a substance my baby—our baby—shouldn’t be subjected to.
I am a terrible person, because instead of thinking about how to stop, I am already thinking about how to get more, how to hide this, because I. Can’t. Stop.
I feel like if I have to stop, I will die.
Jase turns my arm over, exposing my scarred flesh, the tender skin where veins run underneath like rivers and tributaries, like a great system of influx and outflow. I shudder as he presses his thumb to the punctures in my skin, some new, some old, all telling a story best left unsaid.
“What is this?” Jase murmurs, his eyes hovering between my eyes and the telltale track marks, the story of my destruction. I might be free, but I still belong to Dornan.
In this moment, I feel like I will always belong to Dornan Ross.
“He gave me drugs,” I say softly, casually almost. Don’t let him see how bad this is. Don’t give him another burden to bear.
“What drugs?” he growls.
I lick my lips nervously, feeling dry, chapped skin under my tongue. I am a mess. I must look like some sort of gross caricature of my former self, all bony and dull, pale and vacant.
The word heroin is on the tip of my tongue. I almost tell him. It’s ready behind my teeth waiting for breath to make it alive. Heroin.
But I am a coward. I remember my mother. How tragic her existence was when I was a child. How nobody, not even my father, wanted her around because of the way the drugs turned her into a monster.