The need didn’t make her irritable per se, but she did feel on edge. In a desire to curb it, she ordered extra sides at the restaurant they dined in before crossing the English Channel in the Eurotunnel.
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?” Elijah asked as he paid for their meal. He was expounding a lot of extra energy toglamour himself and Echo whenever they were in public. Him being recognized would be the end of all their plans.
“I’m fine,” she insisted quietly. “Just eager to get to Scotland.”
“We’ll have to stop twice again, remember. I’m thinking we stop outside Darlington in the morning and then Stirling the next morning. Just to be safe.”
Echo merely nodded.
At customs for the tunnel, Elijah made the customs officer see passports when they had none. He muttered under his breath about “hating doing that,” but Echo didn’t bother reminding him their lives depended on it.
As Elijah drove onto the train carriage to park on the shuttle, Echo was distracted from her need for blood and the fact that she was slowly beginning to starve.
Because it suddenly occurred to her, they were about to travel under water.
A tightness banded around her chest.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
She told herself revealing her past was just a way to forget about the hunger gnawing at her gut. It had nothing to do with wanting Elijah to be reminded that she was once human. That she wasn’t just a monster who starved without blood.
“When I was fourteen, I was at boarding school in Canada. It was an all-girls’ school, but our neighbor was an all-boys’ school. On the weekends, we’d get together with the boys. A group of us went swimming in a nearby lake. There was a girl, she was a year older. She hated me because the boy she liked, liked me instead. I didn’t know it at the time. I thought she was trying to befriend me. She and three of her friends invited me farther out into the lake to hang out with them. When we were out of sight of everyone else, they grabbed me and held me under the water.”
“Jesus fuck,” Elijah cursed. “Evil little witches.”
“Just human, unfortunately. The boy she liked was suspicious about her taking me away. He and his friends had come after us. By the time they pulled me up, I was unconscious. He gave me CPR and saved my life. His name was Hayden.” She remembered him fondly, though Echo usually tried not to think about Hayden. He was part of the life she’d lost and could never get back. But it didn’t hurt so much to think of him now. Echo wouldn’t wonder at why.
“What happened to the girls who tried to drown you?”
“Slap on the wrist from the school,” she replied dryly. “Their families donated too much money to the school for expulsion or pressing charges. I got my revenge in the end. I dated Hayden for two years until my … until William found out and made me break it off.”
“It … it sounds like you cared about him.”
“I did. He was my first everything. But it had to end because I knew it couldn’t go anywhere. We had no future when William was planning to turn me at twenty.”
“I’m sorry.”
Echo turned to him. “I used to hate thinking about him because it reminded me of everything I gave up. But it doesn’t hurt anymore. Not everyone gets to have a childhood sweetheart. I’m grateful now that I had him for as long as I did.”
“You loved him?” Elijah’s voice was hoarse.
“Yes. But it was teen love. It wouldn’t have lasted.” The words slipped out.
“Why?”
Their gazes locked as the shuttle moved and Echo was distracted from her fear of being underwater. Distracted by the intensity of Elijah’s expression and the questions she could see in his eyes. Questions about them. Their connection.
Unwilling to answer any of them, Echo tore her gaze away. “I found out when I was turned that William had a hand indestroying the lives of the parents of those girls who tried to drown me.”
A few seconds later, “How?”
“Financial ruin. He told me he’d wanted to kill them, but it would be too easy to trace back to us. Instead, he made sure their parents’ careers were destroyed, that investments went south. He couldn’t let it go.” Bitterness rang in her words. “I thought it was just his way of loving me. It wasn’t. He can’t stand anyone to get away with crossing him. And he has patience. He’ll wait until the optimum moment to punish them for any perceived insult or offense, no matter how long.That’sthe male who raised me.”
Elijah let out a slow exhalation. “Why does it feel like you’re warning me off?”
“I’m not.” Or was she? Echo was so confused. One minute she didn’t want him to believe her to be a monster, the next she was trying to talk him into it. “But you were raised by kind, brave parents. I was raised by one of the oldest psychopaths in the world.”
“Which is what makes you so bloody extraordinary. You can pretend to be cold and ruthless all you want, Echo Payne. But I see through you. I see the woman who gave up everything to save her sister, to save me, to save the bloody world. I see a woman who can’t bear to watch a dog cry in a crate by itself. A woman who saved my parents lives’ and mine. I seeyou.”
