I wondered if he knew how much I needed his hope. I’d spent so much of these past weeks resigned to my fate—to my need to stop my father for good and the sacrifices I’d have to make to do it. I’d hoped the police would keep my father in jail. I’d hoped his police brothers would stop letting him use them as his weapons. I’d hoped my brothers could stay safe and that we’d somehow manage to wring a successful life out of the ruins of our family. But the idea that I wouldn’t eventually be alone? I hadn’t dared to hope for that.
And as if that weren’t enough, he’d left the decision in my hands. He’d trusted me in a way I hadn’t expected he ever would. Eight paragraphs all culminating in his willingness to wait for my decision meant that he trusted me with something precious to him. He trusted me with our future, and then asked me to trust him as well.
And for the first time, I could see it, our future. I could believe in a future of us together. No more thoughts of temporary. No more thoughts of false nobility. No more thoughts of anything but my Lock waiting for me in the park.
I left the hotel a few minutes later, my bag slung across my body in the least painful way possible. Getting dressed, packing up, and checking out had all felt like separate eternities now that I had somewhere to be. I willed my body to be less broken so that I could get there faster.
But something about being out on the streets and among the people of London made me start to second-guess everything. In that hotel room, all alone, Lock’s letter had seemed the starkest truth in the sea of my empty concerns over what could be. And with strangers all around me, laughing and arguing and rushing this way and that, the dim, clean comfort of the hotel room felt more like a total fantasy. My hope, an exercise in wishful thinking.
Still, I forced myself on. Lock was waiting, and I could see it, our future—even if it was only a year from now, I could see it.
It wasn’t until I reached the very center of York Bridge that I stopped walking. I wanted to move forward, but my thoughts buzzed with “what if” scenarios, the most prominent being, What if keeping him with you gets him killed?
I closed my eyes in an attempt to bury the thought. Needless worry over something that wasn’t even a remote reality. ?Within four minutes I could be walking into Sherlock’s embrace. I could have a partner, an ally. Maybe I could even protect him from being corrupted by me. Maybe if I held him close enough . . .
I took another step to cross the bridge, but I was stopped again.
What if loving you ruins him?
Because I couldn’t afford to engage in wishful thinking. Lock saying he wouldn’t get in my way didn’t mean he could stand by and watch me end my father’s life. Or that he should have to. And that was what I’d be asking of him, if I met him at the bandstand.
But he’d said that his choices were his to make, and I had to respect that if I wanted him to let me make my own choices as well. I couldn’t get angry at his incessant need to tell me what was for my own good, only to turn around and tell him the same. I wouldn’t do that to him. Not anymore.
So I took a few more steps, and thought I’d make it all the way to the end of the bridge, only to be stopped again, this time by my father’s voice.
What if he can’t love who you really are?
That one hurt more than the others, because I believed it. Perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps, as I’d told Mycroft all those weeks ago, I’d be the one who was broken in the end. But that wouldn’t change my decision that day.
Because I loved Sherlock Holmes. Was that a good enough reason to war with myself in the middle of a bridge?
I stood there, on the edge of the bloody bridge, because he was mine. Sherlock was mine and I wanted him. I loved him, and maybe it was wrong, or twisted, but I couldn’t be swayed. Not again.
I paced off ??York Bridge toward Regent’s Park lake. I went to Sherlock because he was my hope, and I needed him. Because he was right. We always did see things better together. I knew my crimes would taint him the way they’d taint me. I knew he’d feel the pain of my destruction, but still I walked the path, past the rubbish bin where the wallet man used to search for recyclables, past the bench where the Lady Constance used to rest with her bags. I was almost to the bandstand. I could see the silhouette of my shadowed man, waiting there with nerves that made him stand stock-still.
I smiled, but before I could move more than a step farther, I was stopped again, this time by hands that came out of nowhere, pinning my arms to my sides and stuffing something over my mouth and nose. As my world turned gray and then black, I could still see Sherlock just up ahead, but I couldn’t make a noise. Couldn’t move. And then I couldn’t see him anymore at all. Right before everything went black, I saw someone hurl my mobile down at the ground and heard feet stomp it to bits.
Chapter 30
The pain woke me up. My head felt like someone had beaten on it with a bat. Everything smelled weird. The minute I tried to move, my shoulder screamed at me to stop. I groaned aloud but made myself sit up, which made my hip join in on the pain party.
“You’re awake.”
I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t figure out where I was or what had happened.
“Alice. I think my dad tried to attack me.”