Free Secrets [5] Echoes: Part One by A.M Hudson Page A

plan these things out.”
    “So you think he left because he hates you?”
    I didn’t want to think that. But my inner voice sure as hell didn’t care what I wanted. “I just think he feels really alone right now—like he has no one to turn to.”
    “And you care how he feels?”
    “Of course I care. I don’t want anyone feeling like shit.”
    “Especially not someone you love , right?” she said with her voice, but her eyes asked a different question. I decided to answer the second one.
    “It’s over between us,” I said with my voice, but my heart was running through the forest, screaming out for Lilith and telling her … No. Scratch that. That wasn’t an option. Jason and I were fated. David hated me. And I just had to accept that and move on.
    Emily puffed her cheeks up, blowing a long breath out through tiny holes on the corners of her lips. “One day, he’ll come to you, Ara—when he’s had time to heal. And only then is it time to talk to him about it all and maybe mend some bridges. Until then, he just has to feel like shit for a while. It’s a part of the process.”
    “I do know that. I just feel sad for him, is all—the fact that he had to run away to the other side of the universe to get some space.”
    “Paris is the other side of the universe?” She smirked.
    “It feels that far away.”
    We both looked out the library window then and sat in silence for a very long time, just watching the pale blue glow on the horizon change to a lighter grey as the dawn approached. I could hear Blade in the corridor outside at his guard post, thumbing away on his phone, but the rest of the manor was in almost complete silence. Only slight murmurs of staff setting up for breakfast broke the stillness on occasion. Until a familiar and very stern, deep voice said my name.
    Em and I started to attention, eyeing each other like rabbits listening for hunters, before slowly turning to look over our shoulders.
    I put my book on the table beside Emily, praying for words to come. “David, I didn’t realise you were back.”
    He walked in from the doorway with a stack of packages under his arm, his hands tucked into his pockets. “I just arrived.”
    “Did you take care of everything in Paris?” I asked, breaking contact from those breathtaking eyes: they were so intense in this light, his lashes thick and dark, framing the vibrant emerald city like a black night, but the stern set of his jaw and his tight lips only offered that same ugly detest he’d had there when he left, and it threw me off guard in an unnerving way.
    “These are for you,” he said, ignoring my question.
    I took the seven or so parcels and fingered through them. “What are they?”
    “Post. Mail sent to the Ninth Order. They held onto them rather than couriering them to you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it was easier if I brought them back with me.”
    “Oh.” I looked at the address on an envelope, then at the giant square package. “These are from Vicki and Dad. I’ve been trying to contact them.”
    “It seems they’ve been trying to contact you.”
    “What do they say?” I asked, sliding my finger under the lip of an envelope—the oldest one.
    “I don’t know, Ara. I didn’t read them,” he said dully. “They aren’t addressed to me.”
    “Yes, they are.” I showed him the envelope. “They say, To Mr and Mrs Knigh—” I stopped then, his surname falling out of my lips like an insult. I didn’t mean for it to dredge up our lost future, but I guess it just wrapped up all the hurt and the betrayal in one sentence then slapped him in the face with it.
    He turned away stiffly. “I need to unpack.”
    I winced at Emily, wrinkling my nose until David disappeared. “Oops.”
    She pulled the same kind of face. “I’ll go see if he’s okay.”
    “Okay,” I said, and slid open Vicki’s letter, shaking my head at myself. But before my eyes read the Dear Ara and David , they swept suddenly down the page, seeing the