Page 76 of The Villains of Winter

“No. No one followed me.” Elliott cleared his wet eyes with his dampened sleeve. His navy fisherman jacket was slick with the vehement spring torrent.

He didn’t care that his life was in peril. All he cared about was James.

Elliott had too much heart and it would get him killed.

“How could Knox be so fucking careless?” James felt like punching a wall. His rage was increasing by measures he’d rarely reached. “After everything we’ve done?”

James shoved open the bay window, glancing down below at the crowded streets for any sightings of the ginger-haired reporter with flecks of gray in his beard. His eyes searched the wind-driven rainstorm that pelted the clots of staffers awaiting taxis; the crowds of errand runners that scampered in and out of coffee stores; the hectic tides of assistants that dried their paperwork from the blustery wind underneath umbrellas. No sign of him.

“Everything happened because of me.” Elliott was falling apart. The saturnine months weighed on his haunted, remorseful eyes. Elliott’s jacket was inverted, his hands were a mess of bandages beneath his sleeves that were scarred all the way to his elbow, and his skin paled beneath his eyes from lack of sunlight. He hadn’t been outdoors in months. He hadn’t had fresh outside air in his lungs since last December. He was rapidly losing his composure. “None of this is Knox’s fault. Let me talk to the reporter. Let me explain everything to him.”

Knox Pearson had a son to raise. Elliott couldn’t let himself be protected forever. He couldn’t let a child be raised without his mother and father, a fate Elliott suffered.

Alarm seized James’s brain. “Elliott, what are you saying?”

“I need to be the one to confess everything.” Elliott tucked his hands into his pockets. A letter of his own was addressed to Jamie. His smile was bittersweet. “I only wanted to spend one last moment with you.”

Shock obliterated James’s thoughts. The world tilted uncontrollably inside of him. “Don’t do this, Elliott.” I slaughtered a man for you. I severed him apart, then burnt him to ash for you. “You aren’t thinking straight. You haven’t slept well, Elliott. Have you been taking your medication?”

James needed to keep him under control.

James ransacked the haphazardly packed suitcases. He rifled through his clutter for the medication he sent to Knox to administer to Elliott every six hours. James always packaged the anxiety prescriptions himself, painstakingly mailing it through their abstrusely convoluted delivery system. The system that involved hired mailmen. All for Knox to burn it all to the ground with eight phone calls to Finch. Two visits to the student infirmary in person.

In fairness, Finch couldn’t drive to New York or Philadelphia to make calls. As far as Knox knew, there was no murder either. Knox didn’t know there was a homicide involved. In truth, all he was told was that Elliott needed somewhere to hide after he fled the ceremony as the chosen honorarium.

However, James’s mind refused fairness or truth.

Knox would implode everything.

“None of this is about medication.” Elliott could hardly remain upright. He leaned against the wall; he was buried beneath his endless thoughts. “I will confess on July thirteenth. It won’t impact the debate reception–”

“Forget the debate reception.” James would bolster through the media blitz if it meant Elliott was kept hidden. He would sacrifice everything to protect him. As he’d always done.

All Elliott needed to do was trust him. All James had to do was get rid of the reporter.

“Let’s take a shower. I’ll order in Thai takeout–pad thai with peanuts–it’s your favorite.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Elliott unraveled. Even in the throes of self-hatred, Elliott’s heart was achingly beautiful, the tragedy in his eyes was worthy of art. It dawned on James that this might be the last time he would ever lay eyes on Elliott. Elliott truly intended to turn himself in. “Lucien’s family doesn’t even know what happened to him. How can I live with that?”

“Do you think Lucien would’ve cared if it were you? Think, Elliott.” James seethed back at him heatedly beneath his breath. “He would’ve moved on with his life. He would’ve hunted after every freshman girl on campus like they were pheasants, if we hadn’t killed him.”

“It’s not about him, it’s about doing the right thing.” Elliott sounded sleepless, senseless. “When I make amends, it’ll fix everything. He’ll leave me at night.”

He’ll leave me at night.

Elliott unlatched his backpack from his shoulder. It was brimmed with journal pages and sketches of Lucien’s mutilated body. “Don’t you regret any of it?”

Not for a moment, James responded in his mind without a single need for thought. However, for Elliott, he had to behave contrite and repentant, like how normal people with a conscience would react. “It pains me, Elliott.”

“It does?” Elliott softly gazed up at him. A sheen of dew on his freckles.

“Of course,” James smiled at him gently. “You’re not alone.”

It was if that was all Elliott needed to hear. He wasn’t insane or isolated in his feelings, James was on this journey with him. They were side by side together in this. Elliott couldn’t abandon him. He was needed.

Warner Hammett, the reporter, only had questions and suspicions. He didn’t know what or who he witnessed. All James needed to do was to get Elliott to climb in bed for the night.

Foolishly, James thought a night of proper sleep would repair Elliott. That the abyss of guilt aching inside of Elliott, devouring every thread of himself, slowly unspooling him inside out, could be cured with a hearty meal and rest.