Page 14 of Wicked Heat

“Not. Your. Fault,” she repeats, clearly reading my mind.

I shrug. “Also not the point.” She starts to speak, but I hold up a hand and continue. “I didn’t keep it from you,” I tell her. “I didn’t know.”

“You—wait. What?”

“I only remember him saying strip.” I’ve had dreams though. Horrible dreams where I’m touched. Caressed. Dreams that have me fighting my way back to wakefulness cold and shaking—and reminding myself that it’s only a dream. Only a dream.

Except now I know it wasn’t. And some part of me has always known the truth and kept it locked up tight. A secret even from me.

“You’re serious?” Aria presses, pulling me back from my thoughts. “You don’t remember the rest of what he said?”

“Nothing.” I blink back tears. “What else don’t I remember?” The tears flow in earnest now, and I hurl one of the couch pillows across the room. “Dammit!”

I have to calm down. I have to. I can’t fall apart because I can’t fuck up.

Whatever they want, I have to do. And that means I have to breathe. I have to settle.

I have to think.

“You don’t remember…” Aria’s words aren’t a question, but they’re not really a statement, either. They’re just a remnant of thought as her mind tries to wrap itself around all of this.

“I didn’t,” I tell her. “Not at all. Now, though….” I shudder. “Now, I think I’m starting to.”

I’d told her before how our kidnappers watched us through cameras. At the time, I’d believed the kidnapper was alone. I’ve since learned that wasn’t the case. There were two of them and at least one more who knew but may not have participated. All three are dead, including Rory, the vilest of all of them, because he’s the one I knew and trusted.

The one I’d slept with. The one I’d dated. The one I’d thought maybe I could even love.

I cringe, not for the first time wondering about my own judgment. If I fell for a man like that, what does that say about my perception? My choices? And if it wasn’t just me—if the whole world looked at him and saw a good person—how do you ever know anyone at all?

“Bree?”

I realize I’ve zoned out. “I’m okay,” I assure her. “It’s just…”

“Icky?”

I almost laugh. “Yeah. Icky sums it up pretty damn well.”

For a moment, she’s silent. Then she moves to sit on the coffee table and faces me. “I don’t get it. Everyone involved in the kidnapping is dead, right?”

I nod.

“Then who…?”

“I don’t know,” I say, and that gaping hole in my knowledge terrifies me. “There must have been someone else involved.” I force myself to keep my voice steady, but it’s hard. For years now, I’d believed that nightmare was dead and gone. Now I think it’s come back to life, and I fear that, like a vampire, this time it will be even harder to kill.

“Did you recognize the voice?”

I shake my head. “It was filtered. Just like before. But I think it was Rory. A recording, I mean.”

“Fucker,” she says, the word coming out harsh and fast. “I almost wish he were alive so I could kill him all over again. Whoever shivved him in jail deserves a pardon. That’s all I’m saying.”

I don’t disagree.

He was the one who’d shoved the first dose down my throat, thrusting me into a drug-induced nightmare where the world went wonky. Where I’d half-sleep, half-dream. I’d float in a non-reality that was, at least, slightly less terrifying than the reality in which I’d been trapped. It had seemed like forever, but it really wasn’t that long. Little Anne they kept longer. Another factoid on which I balance my many mountains of guilt.

They’d kept Anne drugged, too. I’d been so scared that the drug had hurt her that after we were free, I interrogated every doctor I could. I learned that they used a drug called Versed on both of us. It’s oral and it relaxes you down to the bone. It’s used a lot with children to calm them down before surgery.

Because of the amnesiac effect, Anne has no memory of the kidnapping at all. She doesn’t even have bad dreams. But maybe they didn’t get my dose quite right. Because even though I don’t remember, for years after the kidnapping, I had nightmares.