W\\CKED

I Don't Want to Remember...

I stood by the window in my bedroom, the view stark. The trees wept from the loss of their leaves, limbs bent low with grief. A high wall ran the length of the estate's perimeter, barring me from the world outside my father's fortress.

This prison I was trapped in was suffocating me breath by breath, but there was nothing better beyond it.

Sanny sat cross-legged on the bed, still wearing her wrinkled clothes from the night before. It was after dawn. Neither of us had slept.

As I crossed the room, her eyes apologized to me, as they had a thousand times already. I didn't know. If I'd known. I should have known.

Her guilt poured all over me, suffocating my own feelings.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"I'm hungry."

"I'll go with you." She slid toward the edge of the bed.

"Please don't."

She stopped. "Why won't you talk to me?"

"I'm not ready." I opened the door.

"Bring me some coffee?"

That, at least, I could do. I nodded.

Brandon sat in a chair in the hallway, reading a paperback. He'd taken off his jacket; the navy shirt underneath, smoothly ironed with every button done up properly, was no less formal.

"Where's my father?"

He set down the book. "In conference. Do you need him?"

I shook my head.

As I walked past Brandon, he stood up. "Where are you going?"

"I need to eat."

He nodded. "Come with me."

I was being given permission by an employee to walk around my own house. I wanted to scream at him to leave me alone, but my courage failed-as it always seemed to fail where my father's iron-clad will was concerned.

He led me downstairs to the kitchen. The rich smell of coffee soaked into my nostrils as I walked in. On the far side of the island sat a large pot already half-drained of its freshly-brewed contents.

Brandon stayed on the other side of the island as I prepared a mug for Sanny. "You look like you didn't get much sleep."

"I didn't get any."

"Bad dreams?"

The pot shook in my hand as I set it down. "Bad memories."

What was I doing down here? I felt like I might fall to pieces at any moment in front of a man who was almost a stranger but I couldn't drag myself back to my room because Sanny was there, waiting expectantly for me to tell her things I didn't want to tell myself.

I cradled the warm mug against my chest. "Can a vampire make you feel things you don't want to feel?"

"Your eyes are the door to your soul. If you open that door to a vampire, he is free to enter your mind and take control of your feelings, your body, of everything you are."

"Does that mean he could make me do things I don't want to?"

"Yes, though you can fight back as long as he hasn't drunk your blood."

I thought about how I was drawn to Dae the moment he looked into my eyes at the concert, how I felt that pull again at the Singh's party, how I followed him willingly into the bedroom at the club.

Was any of that by choice? Or was it all him?

"At the club, he-" I hesitated. "He said he'd promised me...things...he would give to me.

Promises he made years ago when he attacked my family. I was five then. What could a little girl want from a vampire?"

Brandon didn't answer, his expression still devoid of any emotion.

I chose the worst person possible to spill my feelings to, but now that I'd started I couldn't stop.

"He talked like I was alone, like I didn't have family or friends to care about me, but I did. He's the one who took them away. How can he say I feel abandoned? He's lying. He's trying to make me want him. He has no idea what I've been through since he took my-"

I touched the fabric of my nightgown, right where the onyx used to rest against my chest. Dad's men turned up no trace of it when they searched the remains of the building. My fingers drifted to the scar that served as a constant reminder of who I lost that night to the stranger at the door, the man whose gaze drew me like the tide, until I was drowning in the ocean of his demands...

I loved you, cricket. Don't ever forget that I loved you.

The mug slipped from my hand. A memory roared to life-my brother Jordan reaching out for me, reaching as the lights of the apartment blazed behind him, no, as a halo of fire surrounded him-

An arm grabbed my waist. Brandon spun me away from the counter as the mug of coffee shattered on the floor, a spray of hot liquid and splintered ceramic flying in all directions. Not a drop touched me; I was sheltered by my bodyguard, who crouched on the ground, my body curled safely against his chest.

After a moment of stillness, I whispered, "I don't want to remember."

Brandon tried to draw me to my feet. I was too weak to stand. He lifted me in his arms. Then he carried me into the hallway. As we neared the study door, he slowed.

"Not my father," I begged him.

Brandon hesitated, then kept walking down the hall. He took me upstairs. Sanny was asleep on the bed, having finally given into exhaustion. Brandon laid me down beside her.

As he went to the door, I murmured, "Don't."

He paused.

"Please don't leave."

He took the chair from my desk and set it at the foot of the bed. When I drifted off a little while later, he was still there, watching over me.