The Memory Auction That Destroyed Us All Chapter 03

The Memory Auction That Destroyed Us All Chapter 03

“Claire. I need you to change your application. You can’t drop your standards because of me.” She snuck a look at Ethan and then back at me. “Because of us.”

Two girls chasing each other through a sun-filled room. A boy on the couch watching them both, half-smiling at nothing.

The sound of that laughter broke something in Ethan.

That rainy night was the nightmare he’d been living inside for a decade.

He’d gotten to the scene fast. He found me sitting on the road, holding Sophie’s body. He grabbed my shoulders.

“Claire, did you see the driver? Tell me. Tell the police. Right now.”

The next second I dropped Sophie’s hand and walked away.

Eighteen questions. The police looked at me and shook their heads.

Ethan had started out blocking the families from getting to me at the station. Then he’d begged. Then he’d turned cold and said things he couldn’t take back. He’d found me safe houses when the families tracked me down, apartment after apartment, trying to keep me one step ahead of them.

The day the acid hit me I thought I saw Ethan’s back as he walked away.

After that he stopped trying. He had someone deliver a letter and then he left the country.

“Claire. I hate you. Sophie hates you. You were born to be abandoned. That’s what you deserve.”

“One day I’ll make you talk. One day you’ll give Sophie justice. Count on it.”

Every line of that letter ran on hate.

I sat under the overpass and took a bite of the bread roll I’d taken from a dog’s mouth. My eyes didn’t have anything in them.

Ethan let out a slow breath and nodded.

“Fine, Claire. You want to die to protect this person? I’ll give you that.”

The auction house director tried to grab his arm.

“Mr. Ethan, if you keep pushing the extraction, someone is going to die in that chair. Even if you stop now, she’ll spend the rest of her life with brain damage. You don’t need to do her any more favors.”

Ethan’s look shut him up.

“Favors?”

“Sophie is dead. The moment Claire decided to cover for a killer, she forfeited her right to walk away. The fact that she’s still breathing at all is something I gave her.”

“She won’t talk. So she dies.”

He turned back to the console and maxed out the current.

Every probe connected. Every connection fired at once. The metal heated against my skin. The burning reached the base of my skull before I could make a sound.

Some of the families turned away.

“Not one second without something on that screen. Keep it running.”

Ethan’s eyes were fixed on the monitor, red at the edges.

The skin around the probes was splitting open.

Then Ethan dropped.

He went down to his knees in front of the examination table. His hands were shaking when he reached up and moved the blood-matted hair away from my face.

“Claire. If that crash had never happened, I was going to ask you to marry me. Ten years ago. You were going to be my wife. Sophie was going to be your family.”

“Why. Why did you throw all of that away for the person who did this?”

Fifteen years I had known Ethan. I had never seen him cry. Not even when Sophie died. He had grief, he had rage, he had hatred, he had all of it.

But not this. Not whatever this was.

He was falling apart on the floor in front of me, pressing his forehead to my cold fingers.

His hair was right there. Close enough to touch.

When he was hurting I always wanted to reach for him.

I almost did.

Then the screen behind us lit up again.

One of the families shot to their feet.

“That’s the car. That’s the car from the crash. Look.”