Bright purple lightning.
Oh God. That was me. Irememberedit. Remembered the suffering but why? Pain lanced through my mind as I chased the memory, but I couldn’t catch it. Couldn’t clutch the strands as the image faded from my mind.
I collapsed to the tiled floor, my body shaking and my skin clammy and cold.
In my haste to get to the bathroom, I dropped the ring on the floor. The diamond shimmered in the morning sun, and those two letters made my stomach lurch violently again.
LR.Lawler Rowan. My father.
What was my father doing here, and how had Byron gotten the ring?
I wasn’t sure how long I’d spent on my bathroom floor, but I needed to move. Cramp had set into my lower legs from being curled into an awkward position and my ass was numb. The ring was still there, nestled against the threads of the carpet, looking small and innocent but I could feel the weight of its secrets. I needed to know what my father had done to me. I had all these questions and no answers. Nothing made sense. It was all just fragments and shards of memories, and I wasn’t even sure I could trust any of them. Were they even real?
Who was I if the memories of my childhood had been rewritten? Was I still me?
A headache settled at the base of my skull, thudding in time with my heart. I dragged myself up off the floor and managed to make it through a quick shower without any more shit hitting the proverbial fan. After throwing some comfortable clothes on I grabbed my phone and called my sister. Perhaps she would be able to help with some of the answers. I doubted it. She wasn’t the type of person to admit she was ever in the wrong.
“Hello, little brother,” she answered, her tone bright and cheery. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I replied shortly. “Have you got a few minutes?”
“Not really,” she chuckled. “And neither have you if you’re going to go and pick up your suit for this evening.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. For fuck’s sake. I’d forgotten all about that. “I’ve got plenty of suits, Dara.”
I didn’t need another one.
“Not like this one, you don’t.”
I sighed. I wasn’t going to fight her on this. For one, I wasn’t in the mood, and for another, I’d be wasting my breath. We both knew I was going to go and pick the suit up so why bother arguing in the first place? “Look, I just wanted to ask about what we discussed the other day.”
Silence greeted my words.
“Dara?”
“I’m still here. I’m just… thinking,” she said seriously. “Go on.”
“Well, um, how bad was it? And is there any way to get my memories back?”
There was a sharp intake of breath down the line. “Why would you want the memories back, Wilder?”
“Because I have to know. I have to know what he did to me.”
“No, you don’t,” she hissed. “Leave it in the past, Wilder. Don’t go digging things up that were meant to stay buried.”
“So, it’s possible to get the memories back?”
“Don’t go looking for the answers. You won’t like what you find,” she said, her voice threatening and dark.
What the hell? “I get that you were protecting me, and that we left home to save me or whatever, but you can’t stop me from finding out what happened to me.”
“Wilder, please—”
“I don’t know who I am!” I exploded, cutting off her begging. “I have all these fragments and blank spaces, and nothing makes sense to me, Dara. So, you can threaten me all you want, but I am finding out what happened to me, with or without you.”
Then I hung up the phone and threw it against the wall with a scream. My fists clenched at my side, trembling as I held back the urge to punch something. How dare she try to stop me? Theywere my memories.Mine!And I was going to find them again, whatever my sister might think. I wasn’t some child she had to protect anymore and maybe I’d regret this at some point, but I grabbed my father’s ring, picked my broken phone up off the floor and fired off a text to Byron.
ME