His Favorite Killed His Saviour Chapter 07

His Favorite Killed His Saviour Chapter 07

The night before I was discharged, I dreamed about Elliot.

He sat beside my bed with the same gentle smile I remembered. I threw myself into his arms and

cried while he stroked my back.

His arms felt warm and solid, and for a few precious moments I could pretend the crematory, the

urn, and the grave had never existed.

I held him more tightly because some part of me already knew this was a farewell.

“I’m sorry, Avery, but I have to go,” he said. “Being human was too hard.

“Next time, I think I’d rather be a cat.”

“I could eat, sleep, and lie in the sun all day.”

I begged him to take me with him. He only soothed me and made me promise that I would stay alive.

No matter how desperately I pleaded, he answered with the same quiet patience he had always

shown me.

He asked for the one thing that felt impossible: a future in which I continued without him.

“Then come back to me as a cat,” I said through my tears. “I’ll take care of you.”

Elliot smiled but gave no answer. He waved goodbye, and I knew this time he was truly gone.

The next day, Blaine waited outside the hospital with a bouquet.

He stood directly beyond the doors in fresh clothes, holding the bouquet with both hands and arranging his face into a hopeful smile.

The scene might once have moved me; now it felt like another demand disguised as devotion.

“Give me one more chance,” he said. “I’ll love you the way I should have from the beginning.”

He held the flowers out as solemnly as an offering.

“Time doesn’t erase everything.” I took the bouquet, threw it onto the pavement, and crushed the flowers beneath my shoe.

“How can you still stand in front of me? Two people are dead because of what happened between

us.”

“Every time I see you, I see Elliot dying, Brielle bleeding in the street, and every cruel thing you did

to me.”

My voice broke into a scream. An apology did not automatically earn forgiveness, and some damage

could never be repaired.

He seemed to believe regret could reverse death, humiliation, and betrayal if he displayed enough,

pain.

I needed him to understand that forgiveness was not something he could force from me.

I turned away. Blaine blocked my path, clung to me, and begged me not to leave.

“Hit me. Curse me.

“Do anything you want, but don’t abandon me.”

“You’re all I have left.”

He sounded like a man begging for love, but he had done far more harm than any desperate

stranger.

I caught his hair and forced him to look at me.

“You want forgiveness? Fine.

“Run naked through downtown Cedarhaven tomorrow, and maybe I’ll consider it.”

The hope in his eyes went out.

“Can’t do it?” I asked.

“Then don’t come back until you can.”

Blaine and I both owed debts that could never be repaid. Living with them was supposed to hurt

more than dying.

I had pushed Elliot toward a sacrifice that shortened his life, while Blaine had turned that sacrifice

into cruelty.

Neither of us deserved the easy escape of forgetting.

I expected him to hesitate for days. The next morning, noise outside woke me before I had even

gotten out of bed.

“Avery, I did it,” Blaine called, naked and gasping for breath. “Can you forgive me now?”

Voices and phone cameras surrounded him, capturing the Whitmore heir’s public humiliation

while he looked only toward my window.

He had obeyed the impossible demand with the desperation of someone who believed suffering

created a right to forgiveness.

His relief at seeing me lasted only seconds. Richard’s car stopped at the curb, and hé stormed out

“You disgraceful fool,” he shouted. “You’ve humiliated this entire family.

“How could someone like you ever take control of Whitmore Holdings?”

Richard ordered his staff to clear the onlookers, then struck Blaine twice across the face.

Richard cared less about his injured son than about the videos already spreading through Cedarhaven and the damage to Whitmore Holdings.

Every blow was aimed at restoring authority, not understanding what had driven Blaine outside.

He raised his hand again. This time, Blaine caught his wrist.

“What gives you the right to hit me?” he demanded.

“Did you ever raise me? All you ever gave me was criticism and violence.”

“Maybe I’m a failure as a Whitmore, but were you ever a father?”

His voice shook. “I’m twenty-eight years old.

“Have you ever once celebrated my birthday?”

“Stop pretending this is about the family. You’ve waited years to replace me.

“You brought your son from that affair back to the States last month.”

“Take the company. Take all of it.

“I don’t want any of it.”

Years of buried anger finally broke free.

For the first time, Blaine named the neglect, violence, and humiliation his father had always

expected him to endure in silence.

His voice cracked, but he did not release Richard’s wrist.

When everyone had gone, I stood at the second-floor window and met Blaine’s red-rimmed eyes.

“Come back in three days,” I told him.

He smiled with the open happiness of a child and nodded.

But I already knew I would disappoint him.