Sadie pressed her lips together, looking down so she could avoid the look of anger and betrayal that was surely on his face. She had told herself this was the most likely outcome but Effie’s quick forgiveness had given her reason to believe that there might have been an alternative.
“I don’t know what I thought he would do.” Sadie spoke quietly, not wanting to provoke him into anymore anger while he was healing. “We were talking about my parents. Hook has looked out for me since I came here and I trusted him when I told him that I never wanted to be responsible for someone’s death the way the I thought the Darlings might be responsible for my parents.” It wasn’t an excuse, but if he was going to hate her, Sadie would leave him with all of the facts first.
“I had almost forgotten the information I even told him. I’m not part of his day to day organization, I don’t ask what he’s planning and I convinced myself that because I had made it clear that I didn’t want to build my life on revenge or anger that he would want to protect me from that more than he wanted to hurt your family.”
It hurt to admit that she had been wrong. “I went with you because you asked and I care about you. I wanted to move forward with my life and I thought by meeting them that they would stop being the shadowy faces that scared me. I made a mistake and that cost a man his life. I am living with that now and if you need to tell your family so they can find some peace, I won’t ask you not to. Just please believe me when I say that I am sorry and that this isn’t the person that I want to be. You were never part of anything, I just liked you and didn’t want to let that feeling go.”
Lewis looked down at the mention of her parents, even in his confusion it didn’t escape him what she had been through. She didn’t seem the type of person who would want to inflict that on another person (or two people, in the Blackwells case).
The subject of Lewis’ naivety was something he knew had been somewhat of a joke at the Loft. That he knew nothing, that he never quite got it right. All in good fun, but he was starting to wonder if there was a truth to it. There was only one other instance when he felt so utterly blindsided by the sharp twist of a situation, and that was back in Amsterdam when he had caught his ex cheating on him. She wasn’t him, and the situation was strikingly different, but betrayal was betrayal and when it came from someone you cared for, it struck as hard all the same.
That was when it really dawned on him, he didn’t like her, he liked her.
“I’m not going to tell them any of this.” He told her before he could mull on it and do the opposite, when he gave his word he kept it and he would bind himself to that here and now. Perhaps there was truth in all that she said, that she had underestimated with the Captain would do, but he wouldn’t make that same mistake with his uncle. That wild look in his eyes when he was stood over him on the pavement, those words he had thought he hallucinated in the trauma that became clearer each time he wandered back to them. I’ll kill them. Kill them all.
He wouldn’t offer them peace if it meant offering them her.
Someone had planted that bomb, someone had planned it, someone had put it together and they both knew Hook chose the target. Let them be the ones to pay the price for what had occurred that night.
“I don’t think you should tell anyone else about that either.”
