The Little Dove #2 ✔️

39. No More Lemon

CHAPTER 39: No More Lemon

I spent one hour, just driving. Marvin said it was alright to return back to the dorm, confirming with Lorraine that he could stay in her room, given their closeness over the past month had helped in ways I couldn't understand at the current moment. To know that Edmund had been a part of those threats, or well, his group had played their parts in it was hard to stomach, let alone accept. Every time I turned to him for comfort, I had let myself be reeled in, his past was...frightening.

The abuse, from the orphanage, the brotherhood institute and Oswald. All of it.

One week. One week of staying in my room, working through classes, lecture videos online. Purchasing groceries and having it delivered. Ignoring his phone calls, his messages, his constant knocking on our front door, sometimes even at one in the morning. I couldn't do it, I couldn't see to everything so soon, not when I was still going over Marvin's analysis and investigation on them all.

One week was enough.

I stare out into the water along the bridge, the pier was easily visible and with the heirloom in my pocket, I made a mere hunch of him coming, of Edmund. It had been two weeks of avoided encounters and the ignorances of phone calls and messages on my behalf, my fault on not wanting to listen to him or try to understand why he withheld so much information from me. My phone gave me notification of two individuals nearby, standing and watching me in silence. I watch the radar of one split off, and I notice Talon walking close to the pier, where he throws stones across the water, measuring their distances with his eyes.

"Your way of contacting me, hmm?" I hear the same husky voice behind me. My orchid stepping on the bridge with the water of the lake underneath, the dark blue, unmissable shallows below, algae visible and flowing with the current, I stare at it, rather than him.

"When did you find out about Erik's decision to first use the USB, but then agree to frame me with Iris' aid?" I ask him, still staring at the water with my red trench coat fluttering in its reflection and the wet wind, the freezing cold air and yet the water hadn't frozen over.

A masculine hand moves in my peripheral vision, not too long after, Edmund's cuffs come into view, Edmund leans on the rope railing of the bridge, he takes a deep breath, "I found out about the USB and the fact Erik staged the attack after I stupidly accused you of being the one who had done it. No one noticed, but I hadn't spoken to either of them, or even Lyndon when I found out he had a part in it too. I didn't tell you because they were all ashamed of it, Lemon. I have known and stuck by them my whole life, I didn't tell you to protect them, but I tried helping you, so I could protect you. Getting you to tell me all of what was happening was difficult, lemon. When you were....when you were kidnapped, they told me everything, I was so angry, and I still am at their choices that put you in so much danger, I only focused on finding you, lemon." He whispers the last part, turning towards me.

I pull out the heirloom, the casing of it from my pocket, "This continuously reminds me of the three times you lied to me about Oswald. First it was about him being your father on a farm in the outskirts of New York, about your uncle handing you the company. You lied about your mother owning the land the festival was on, then when I found out you were an orphan, you told me Oswald fostered you, that he was alive and wanted to meet me. How your family knew about me. Now, it's that he's dead and was an abusive bastard who had hurt you, and that he was your real biological father." I murmur, turning towards him with an expression of stone, stilled against the questionable weather.

I stare at him closely, his profile with his jaw clenched, he shakes his head, profusely. He was troubled with telling me what I already know, I step up towards him, curling my gloved hand around the sleeve of his long coat, already feeling the toned muscle underneath, "Edmund, I don't want to push you into telling me everything. I know you have had the hardest of a childhood, probably even harder teen years growing up. I won't look at you differently-" He turns to me abruptly, hands grabbing my upper arms, he stares down at me with sharp silver eyes.