26. Leonor

26

LEONOR

W ith another slow, steady breath, I twist my wet hair up on my head and clip it in place.

My heart rate has finally slowed down, my hands have quit shaking, and the fear and panic I felt right before I blacked out is finally nothing more than a low hum in the back of my mind.

It probably helps that I took my anxiety meds as soon as we got here but I’m not sure that’s the only reason I’ve calmed down. They don’t generally last this long, not after a blackout without another dose, and since it’s been a few hours I doubt they’re still actively working through my system.

No, I honestly think I’m as close to normal as I’m going to get because Markus came to my rescue and didn’t waste any time getting me the fuck out of my building, and I know the rest of my boys are on top of handling whatever the hell is going on.

“Knock, knock.” I glance over my shoulder as Justine pushes the bedroom door open the rest of the way, her smile turning from worried to relieved when she sees me. “I brought you some tea.”

I drop my hands to the mattress and grip the edge, squeezing it briefly before I shift around and scoot back onto the bed. “Peppermint?”

“Of course.”

“With a shot of honey?”

“Will you drink it any other way?”

“No,” I say with a smirk as I watch her set the tray on the nightstand.

Justine tests one of the mugs, carefully touching the outside of it before picking it up then hands it to me as she slides onto the quilt at my side.

She brought a second mug and a small tea pot clearly full of hot water based on the steam, the honey, and a few extra tea bags but instead of pouring herself some, Justine repeatedly smooths out the top of her skirt.

Her eyes are downcast, fixed on the way her hands move and as I watch her from my peripheral, I can’t help but smile a little.

“Is it too hot?” Justine glances at me again before going back to her linen skirt. “I can have Pierre bring you some ice if it?—"

“I’m ok, Justine.”

Her gaze lifts to mine, tears brimming on her lower lashes. “I know.”

“Do you, though?” I take a sip of tea and smile. She made it perfectly, the same as she always did. “Because I don’t think you do.”

“I do.”

“Really?”

“ Yes ,” Justine huffs before her shoulders sag. “I can see that you’re ok, and I know there isn’t anything physically wrong with you, but I can’t help worrying, Leonor. What happened today, what’s been happening… it all feels too much like?—"

“The most morbid case of deja vu known to man?”

She frowns before rolling her eyes. “That’s not exactly how I was going to put it but, yes. This is all too familiar, and I don’t like it.”

Taking another sip of the warm peppermint and honey goodness, I turn to face her, tucking my legs under me. “Neither do I.”

“Which is why I’m worried. You’ve been doing so well the last few months and to have something like this happen? To be dealing with another stalker on your own? This is the sort of thing that could…”

Her words trail off as Justine looks away, discreetly wiping her eyes and taking a shuddering breath.

I know why she’s worried, why everyone is worried, but I’m actually ok.

Scared? Absolutely, I’d be crazy not to be but regardless of how familiar all of this is, it doesn’t have me ready to eat all of my prescriptions in one sitting or reacquaint my wrists with a razor blade.

I know that’s what everyone is thinking.

I don’t doubt for one second Justine and Pierre have had terrible flashbacks of walking in on the multiple times I tried to kill myself because I didn’t know how else to cope. Just like I’m sure the boys are all chomping at the bit to get here so they can keep an extra close eye on me. They don’t know everything, but they know enough to be extremely worried about me and what I might do after finding a goat’s head on my balcony.

Maybe it’s because this is the same but different.

Similar because of the things left for me to find, because there’s another human stalking me and my boys but it’s not the exact same. Not yet anyway, and because I have been doing well—the last couple months and not really the six or seven Justine implied—I’m more hopeful that this won’t turn into a complete repeat situation.

Yes, things have been escalating. Dead animals aren’t the same as the notes and roses, but I’m feeling oddly optimistic.

And that’s probably because I have my family back.

My relationship with Justine and Pierre has settled into something close to what it was before, the only difference being the level of hesitation when it comes to certain things. They’re leery and have every right to be but aside from that, my mama and daddy have gone back to being just that.

Then there’s the guys.

Having them back, seeing them every day, it’s done wonders for me and I’m struggling to reconcile my previous line of thinking with the hard truth. The truth being that I need them because they make me stronger, they make me feel loved and safe, and they really do make me whole. All without factoring in the evolution of my relationships with three of them.

Maybe the optimism is misguided or misplaced, hell, it could even be delusional but I’m choosing to believe it’s not. I think it’s genuine, it’s the real deal and whether or not it’s warranted is something I’m choosing not to focus too much on right now.

So yeah, I’m scared. I’m afraid of going through more trauma with the potential of losing the fight against surviving it but I’m not letting it run my life anymore.

That’s why, as I watch a tear slip down Justine’s cheek, I set my mug on the nightstand and scoot toward her, resting my head on her shoulder as I wrap my arms around her waist. “I know why you’re worried, and I know there isn’t much I can say to change it, but I really am ok, Justine. I’m scared, I won’t lie to you about that. I’m just, I guess my headspace is different.”

“I know,” she says as she wraps me up in a brutal hug. “I can see it in you, the way your strength is shining through the darkness, but I will always be afraid of losing you, Leonor. I did once, and none of us can go through that again.”

My nose stings as I hold her tighter, closing my eyes while I breathe in her jasmine scent. “You’re the only reason I’m still here, Justine.” She takes a deep breath as I feel her press her cheek to my head. “You and Pierre. If you hadn’t stuck with me, hadn’t had faith in my ability to survive and push through everything, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Justine simply nods as she pulls me closer.

But I don’t think she really understands what I’m saying. Not in the way I need her to.

“It’s funny, in a sort of ironic way,” I pause, briefly debating on sharing what only Franc De la Grange and I know before deciding I should. “My biological parents, they were worse than any of the foster ones I had and that’s saying something.” Justine tenses and I can almost feel her curiosity bloom right between us. “My sperm donor, he was a high-ranking member of the Irish mob who came down here from New York in the late seventies. He was hiding for double crossing someone; I don’t know all the details and I really don’t care about them but I found out enough. I guess he met my birth mother on his way down here, picked her up while he was heading to Louisiana.”

Kidnapping her is more like it.

She was only seventeen, totally naive and inexperienced but when she met my biological father it was some sort of twisted love at first sight, maybe even Stockholm syndrome but based on what I read she loved him once.

Until she didn’t.

“Leonor,” Justine says with a sigh. “You don’t need to tell me anything you aren’t ready to share.”

I nod with a yawn but keep going anyway. “I know and I love you for that, but I do need to share this. Maybe not with anyone else, but I need you to hear it.”

“Ok.”

I honestly think Justine doesn’t want to hear this, not what she thinks I’m going to tell her anyway. But I have my reasons for finally sharing part of my history, and the role Justine and Pierre stepped into over the better part of fifteen years means I need one of them to hear it so they can start to understand where I’m coming from now.

“He pimped her out.”

Justine tenses again as a little gasp of surprise moves across my hair before she sits up. I almost laugh at that but if that seems scandalous, everything else I have to tell her is going to shock the shit out of her.

“I still don’t know how they discovered my last name but when they did, they found my biological parents because of their criminal records.” Which were extensive as fuck. “Drugs, guns, prostitution. They’d been brought in for everything but more prominently, my sperm donor had multiple domestic abuse and battery charges. He pimped my birth mother out and whenever she stepped out of line, he beat her senseless. Including when she was pregnant with me.”

“Oh, Leonor…” Justine sniffles and squeezes me to the point of smothering but doesn’t say anything else.

For some reason, it makes me smile again. “I was about a year and a half when he killed her. He beat her to death with a baseball bat, left me with her dead body while he went on the run again, then got arrested on an unrelated charge a few hours before they found us.”

“But I thought, what you said about the firehouse?”

Sitting up, I look Justine in the eye. “It was all bullshit. There was no firehouse, no note pinned to my shirt. One of the cops made a comment about Poe but more or less because of how gruesome the crime scene was.”

Because my biological father was a sadistic fuck who beat my mother to death, cut out her heart and left it as a warning to the rest of his girls, then split before shit hit the fan. And he did it all while I was a few feet away in my crib. The police report even said I had blood spatter on my face and clothes when they found me four days after my mother was murdered.

Talk about fucking trauma.

“I didn’t know any of that until maybe five years ago, now? For some reason, being stalked the first time got me thinking and I went looking for answers to the questions I had been too afraid to ask before.”

“Because you didn’t want to think the story you’d been told since you were little was a lie.” Justine nods as she turns to face me, reaching out to push a loose curl behind my ear. “Because foster care wasn’t any better and you wanted some good somewhere in your childhood.”

She’s right and she knows it, but I’m not about to dive into how fucked up all of that was.

Instead, I simply agree and finally get to my point. “Being stalked and almost killed by Colin Hastings was only one time out of many where I could have died and while it was by far the worst time, pain and death have been a part of my life from the very beginning. Between my biological parents and countless foster ones, I’ve seen a little bit of every kind of cruel and twisted way this world works since before I understood it, but I truly believe right down to my bones, you and Pierre are why I survived it all.”

Justine frowns and opens her mouth but shuts it when I arch a brow.

“You might not have found me until I was basically a pain in the ass adult, but I know in my gut, the two of you were always meant to be my parents. My real parents.” Her eyes instantly fill with tears, and I can’t help but smile at that. “You weren’t the reason I went through everything I did but you were my reward for surviving it. And you abso-fucking-lutely are the reason I’ve survived everything that’s happened since I met you.” I lift my index finger and swipe a tear that slips down her cheek. “You might not have carried me for nine months, and neither of you share my DNA, but you and Pierre, you’re my mama and daddy, and without you I wouldn’t be sitting here today. I need you to know how fucking grateful I am for the two of you, and how much I fucking love you because the biggest takeaway from living the life I have is that everything is conditional and temporary.”

With a shaky breath, I fight my own tears. “You and Pierre, you chose me and never, not once has anything about that decision and what came with it been conditional or temporary. I survived what I did in order to find you, and you saved me every single day the last three years so I could keep you. I guess everything that’s going on now made me realize how important it is to finally tell you that.”

“Leonor Allan,” Justine sobs as she leans forward, wrapping me up in her arms and squeezing harder than I think she ever has. She pulls me close as she cries, her back hitting the headboard with a soft thud before she starts swaying back and forth. “I just… girl, you didn’t have to say any of that but hearing it has ruined me. You’ve ruined me and my makeup, Leo, and I don’t give one single damn. I love you and those words mean everything to me and Pierre both.”

Letting a few of my own tears free, I smile wide even though she can’t see me. “Which means you’re going to tell him everything I said while you bawl your eyes later.”

“Word for word.”

“He’s going to think you’re nuts.”

“Will not,” she says with a defiant tone. “If I know your daddy, he’ll cry right along with me.”

“Then you'll end up right back in this room demanding Pierre hear it word for word from my mouth, and I’ll have to listen to both of you sob all over me.”

“Exactly.”

I snort as Justine hugs me impossibly harder, swaying us back and forth until she’s finally calm and humming off key in my ear.

Everything about this was way out of character for me and Justine knows it but the urgency I felt, the pressing need I had to tell her how I feel, it was just that.

Because if this shit goes the way it did before, if my new stalker is so much of a copycat he goes all the way and then some, I might never get the chance to say any of this.

All fear aside, they need to know.

This was long overdue and once Mark comes back, I’ll let this new attitude keep working a final time, making sure my teddy bear boy knows exactly how I feel about him too. Then if for some reason shit goes south, at least I’ll walk through the gates of hell knowing the only people in the entire world who have never been conditional or temporary, the ones who have loved me from the moment they chose to do so know without a shadow of a doubt, they’ll know how I feel about them.

Burning won’t be so bad if that’s what happens before the devil comes knocking.