Page 64 of The Lovely and the Lost

“That wasn’t very nice,” I told Saskia. I wondered if she could tell from my tone that I wasn’t feeling very nice, either. Looking at her, I saw her the way she’d looked when we’d found her, bone-thin and bleeding. Someone had dumped her in Cady’s yard because they knew that Cady wouldn’t turn away a stray.

My fingers tightened around the police file in my hand.Myfile. Something unnameable inside me cracked slowly open, something dark and cavernous and ugly.

I read the file.

The writing was detailed. The pictures were worse. My initial medical exam had been intensive. The doctors had documented my injuries, old and new. I’d always thought that the scars that marked my body were from the forest. According to what I read, some were.

Some weren’t.

That truth was like a shard of glass ground into my stomach. Everything inside me threatened to come up. I’d known—of course I’d known—that whatever family I’d had before was probably either dead or didn’t care much if I was. I had to have ended up in the forest somehow. But part of me—the stupid part, the hopeful part, the part that hadn’t looked for answers—had wanted to believe that I was normal once.

That before I’d been Girl, I’d just been a girl.Not a dirty little animal who deserved what happened to her.

“Kira!” Jude appeared beside me and hooked his arm through mine. “I have gathered that Gabriel Cortez is a withholding withholder who withholds.”

Jude thought I was out here because of Gabriel—because Gabriel had lied to me. Misled me.

Same difference.

“In his defense, he just met us.” Listening to Jude’s voice was like looking unblinkingly into a too-bright light. “We can hardly blame him for not realizing how awesomely trustworthy and mind-blowingly nonjudgmental we are.”

Go away, Jude. I wanted to send him running, the way Saskia had done to NATO. But I couldn’t, and Saskia took one look at the two of us and left me to fend for myself.

“I am sure all our questions will be answered in time,” Jude declared. He was always sure. He never doubted.

Jude had never had the underside of his arm pressed into a hot stove.

“Kira?” Jude’s gaze fell on the police file in my hand.

I jerked my arm away from his and stepped back. I didn’t want him to see the pictures.

Stomach hurts.The memory pulled me under.It’s dark outside. I’m hungry. So hungry. Maybe she’s asleep. I can be quiet. I can be small. I can be quick.

I almost make it to the kitchen. Then I see her. She’s facedown on the tile floor.

Not moving.

Blood.The memories started piling on, fast and frantic, spinning. I could only see bits and pieces, but I could feel—running. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. You’ll be safe in the forest.

Hide.

“Hey.” Jude bent down until his face was even with mine. “It’s okay, Kira. Whatever you’re remembering—it’s not real. You’re safe now. You’re here.”

“Itisreal.” I expected that statement to come out garbled, but it didn’t. My eyes were dry, but I couldn’t stand to blink. The thick folder in my hands blurred in front of me. “The sheriff had my file. I have it now.”

Jude sucked in a breath. “You don’t have to read it.”

“I already have.” It was right there on the tip of my tongue to tell him everything, to purge the poison, to bleed it onto him.My biological mother hurt me. Whenever she was drinking—I learned to stay away. The police thought I used to take refuge in the forest when it was bad.

When it was bad…

“Whatever the file says…” Jude’s voice somehow broke through the cacophony in my head. “It doesn’t matter, Kira mine. It doesn’t change anything.”

“You don’t know.” The words flew out of me, living, breathing,angry.

An expression flickered over Jude’s achingly familiar features. Not quite sorrow.

Guilt?