The Memory Auction That Destroyed Us All Chapter 07

The Memory Auction That Destroyed Us All Chapter 07

The road was closed. There was no one else out there. The cars behind never saw it coming until they were already in it.

And I was standing right there. I saw all of it.

The screen showed me smiling, and then not smiling, and then running.

Running toward the wreck. Tearing at the driver’s door with bare hands, not caring that the bent metal was shredding my palms open.

“Sophie, please. Please be okay.”

“I’m coming. I’m going to get you out.”

Nothing that hits hard enough to fold a car in half leaves the person inside intact.

I finally got a corner of the door open. I reached in and took Sophie’s hand.

Ethan lunged across the room and killed the power.

The screen went dark. The auction house was completely silent.

He walked to the examination table. He stood there looking at the probes still buried in my skull and he looked like someone who had run out of everything.

“Claire. Don’t be scared. I’m getting a doctor right now. It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”

He took the restraints off carefully, one by one. When he reached the head brace and pulled it free, the blood that came with it made him go still for a second.

Then he bent forward and threw up.

He hit the floor with both fists.

“Why didn’t you tell me. Claire. Why didn’t you just tell me.”

Sophie’s attending physician pushed through the crowd. He’d been there for years. He’d been waiting for this to end.

“She did it to protect Sophie. Whatever was left of Sophie after she was gone.”

He took a breath.

“She did it for you too.”

He threw the medical file at Ethan’s chest.

“Sophie was in love with you. You never looked at her that way. Every time you turned her family down, they made her pay for it. And her home life was already.”

He stopped.

“So Claire kept the secret. To protect Sophie’s name. To protect her family’s secret. And so you’d never have to know you were part of why Sophie couldn’t stay.”

He reached past Ethan and pulled all four probes out of my skull in one practiced motion.

“Don’t touch her.”

Ethan’s voice came out wrecked.