What She Forgot (What She 2)

One minute I’d been happily chatting with Aubrey, and the next—BAM! I’d crumpled like a paper doll as darkness crowded the corners of my vision. And that was the last thing I remembered.

I desperately wanted to roll so I could bring my arms out from where they rested beneath me. But I couldn’t. I blinked again, waiting for the haze to clear from my eyes. The room was shrouded in shadows, but I could see. Not much, but I could see.

What surprised me the most was that I knew this room. I knew it, because it was mine. She’d taken me to my own little cottage in the woods. It was empty, aside from a few pieces of cozy furniture and some throw rugs that were scattered around, just like I’d left it.

“I know you’re awake,” the voice said from across the room.

I groaned and rolled onto my side, wiggling my fingers so I could bring some life into them. “Who are you?” I asked, although I already knew. Or at least I thought I knew. “Or should I ask which one are you?” I said the last more to myself than to her. I didn’t know if she was Megan or Riley James. I was completely confident that she wasn’t Marley. Marley was sweet and kind. She didn’t pay really big men to incapacitate women and throw them into trunks.

Now that I was on my side, my fingers were starting to wake up, and tingles shot up my arms to my shoulders. My chest still hurt where the guy had hit me with the taser, but I’d had worse wounds. I’d recovered from those too. This was nothing.

She grabbed a chair, set it a few feet away from me, and straddled it so that she was facing me. “Megan,” she said. “Nice to meet you. Again.”

“Always a pleasure,” I replied.

She shook her head. “You really are a smart ass, aren’t you?”

“I do try.” I began to work the zip ties that held my hands bound together behind my back. She’d used the tough kind, the kind I wasn’t going to be able to get off without some work. “Where’s your hired hand?”

She gestured vaguely toward the door. “Outside. Waiting for Will to come and rescue you.”

I snorted. “You think Will is going to come and find me? He doesn’t even like me.” I knew that wasn’t the truth, but I didn’t intend to show her all my cards right away.

“I think he more than likes you,” she replied, her tone soft and…hurt? “I think he’s falling in love with you.”

“I’m not a very lovable person.” That much was true. I knew it.

“I didn’t think you’d be much of a threat when I first met you, you know? I really didn’t think he’d fall for you. He has been in love with Marley for so long.”

My head jerked up. “You know about Marley?”

“I know everything.” She waved a hand in the air like she could brush my skepticism away.

“Is that why Marley has been gone so long? Because you’re in control?”

She puffed out a heavy breath. “Marley has been gone for years because she’s spineless. She could come to the forefront if she really wanted to.”

“That’s not necessarily true.” When my sister, Lynn, had been gone while other personalities took over, she sometimes tried and tried to come back, but couldn’t push through. In fact, the last time she’d left, Mason had to be almost fatally wounded before she came back. She’d sensed that he was in danger, and pushed through, but it took a lot of work. “Maybe Marley is just scared.”

“She’s scared of everything.”

“Maybe she has a reason to be scared. Whatever trauma caused all of you to show up, it happened to her, right?”

She tilted her head to the side. “What trauma?”

“Marley protects you from the past. She hasn’t even told you what happened to her.” I knew. I knew because I’d read about it in Will’s secret files.

She scoffed again. “Nothing happened to her.”

I nodded my head, and I began to work the edge of the z

ip ties that bound my wrists against the sharp edge of my watch. It was slow work, but it was the only thing I could think to do. “She was taken against her will and raped over and over by a bunch of young men her first year of college. That’s when you came to the forefront.”

She jumped to her feet. “That never happened.”

“It never happened to you. It happened to her.” I worked the bindings on my wrists, and finally felt a small pop as one of the zip ties came free. I didn’t let her see. I lay there instead, still pretending to be helpless.

“You’re lying.”