“Liar,” I muttered to the empty darkness.
That voice drifted through my head, soft and devastatingly sad. You can’t save everyone, Clare.
“Shut up.” I typed another futile search. Maeve + missing person river Geneva.
The laptop churned. Offered me nothing useful.
I should have been researching seizure protocols. Mapping the progression of chemically-induced brain deterioration. Finding anything in the medical literature about slowing a neurotoxic cascade through Xavier’s grey matter.
Instead I was hunting ghosts. Chasing the shadow of a woman whose only crime was existing somewhere in Xavier’s erased past.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Xavier was dying. Two weeks, maybe three before the chip’s malfunction destroyed enough brain tissue to render him a breathing vegetable. His memories, his personality, everything that made him Xavier, all being systematically obliterated by chemicals designed to keep him compliant.
And I was sitting in the dark, eaten alive by jealousy over a name he’d whispered during seizure confusion.
For sure you got your priorities right, Clare. Absolutely brilliant allocation of limited time and resources.
But I couldn’t stop the spiral.
I’d tried being logical about it. Clinical. The name could mean anything. Sister, childhood friend, someone he’d known years ago who resurfaced in the chaos of a misfiring hippocampus.
Except it hadn’t sounded like that.
The way he’d said it, Maeve, had carried weight. Longing. The kind of ache that came from missing someone who mattered.
What if she was his wife? His girlfriend? What if Xavier had an entire life waiting somewhere beyond his fractured memories, and I was just the convenient warm body keeping him grounded while his real world stayed locked behind conditioning protocols?
What if I was the other woman?
The thought made something ugly twist in my chest.
I’d been the other woman once. Freshman year, before I knew better. Didn’t realize the charming pre-med student had a girlfriend until she appeared at my dorm room door, mascara-streaked and shaking, asking how I could do this to her.
I’d felt like the worst kind of person. Like I’d stolen something precious that had never been mine to take.
And now here I was again. Potentially. Maybe.
Except Xavier didn’t remember her. Couldn’t explain. Couldn’t tell me whether I was breaking someone’s heart by touching him, kissing him, falling for him like gravity had shifted and he was the only solid thing left.
The not-knowing was eating me alive.
And beneath the jealousy, beneath the sick fear of being that woman again, lurked something worse.
What if my judgment was wrong? What if Xavier needed Maeve, and I was standing between them? What if by keepinghim here, by convincing him to stay, I was making the same mistake I’d made in the past?
Trusting myself when I shouldn’t.
I’d thought I had time with... Thought I knew better. Thought one more shift wouldn’t matter.
I’d been catastrophically, fatally wrong.
How could I trust my own judgment now? How could I believe I was helping Xavier when my track record for recognizing who needed what and when was written in blood?
So I sat in the dark and searched for ghosts.
A knock at the door made me jump.
