Page 54

Chapter forty-four

Annabella

A nnabella

A bright shard caught my eye, pulsing with a warm golden light. A sparkle. Something about it pulled at me. I moved closer, wary but curious. Figures moved inside it, blurry and distorted, like looking through frosted bathroom glass.

Yes. Good. Touch it , Esme’s voice instructed in my thoughts.

I reached out, my fingers hesitating just a fraction before I touched the glowing shard. The second I made contact, everything lurched sideways. The fractured mindscape vanished, and I was somewhere else entirely.

I stood on a weathered dock, unseen and intangible, watching two boys with fishing poles.

Sunlight dappled the water, catching in the ripples where their fishing lines disappeared.

The boys sat with their legs dangling, shoulders occasionally brushing.

One fidgeted constantly with his reel while the other remained perfectly still, watching his bobber with unwavering focus.

“You’re scaring them away,” the still one murmured without looking up. “Dad says patience is key.”

The fidgeting boy—a younger version of Sam, I realized with a start—adjusted his grip for the third time. “Dad also says technique matters.”

A shadow fell across them. “What I say is that neither of you has caught anything yet.”

The boys, Sam and his twin Derek, tilted their heads up in perfect synchronization, squinting against the sun at a man’s silhouette, their expressions transforming into matching grins.

The fishing dock dissolved, and I was slammed back into the broken landscape of Sam’s mind.

“What the—?” I couldn’t even finish the thought. I’d just witnessed one of Sam’s memories as if I’d been there, invisible but present.

The sparkle I’d touched was gone, no longer floating loose in the fractured mindscape.

A strange warmth radiated out from my chest. I looked down. There, fucking inside of me, was a tiny golden glow that pulsed beneath my skin—right at the center of my chest where my ribs formed a cage.

What the fuck?

I slapped my hands against it as if trying to shoo it away. The light flittered up but stayed inside of me.

Fuck! I had turned into Sam’s personal grocery bag, collecting his memories inside of me.

“A little warning would have been nice, Esme!” I shouted.

Another sparkle darted near. This one was larger, and something pulled at me. Instinctively, I reached for it.

This time, I found myself beneath tall oak trees, watching a family picnic.

I recognized Sam and the other boy from the dock, slightly older now, play-fighting in the grass.

The same man from the fishing memory sat on a blanket with a woman.

The woman wore faded jeans and a man’s button-down with the sleeves pushed to her elbows.

A smudge of something—maybe jam or dirt—marked her cheek, but she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

Two teenage boys tossed a football nearby.

The woman laughed, the sound musical and warm.

The happy scene dissolved without warning, reality fracturing like glass struck by a hammer. I was thrust back into the broken landscape of Sam’s mind. Another shard.

I found myself in a dimly lit bedroom. Rain drummed against the window, the sound oppressive. Sam sat on the edge of a bed, mirroring Derek across from him. Their eyes red from crying.

One of the teenagers from the picnic stood in the doorway, his face ashen. “They said it was quick,” he said hollowly. “She wouldn’t have felt anything.”

Derek made a small, broken sound. Sam reached across the space between them, fingers closing around his brother’s wrist.

“What about Dad?” Sam asked, his voice smaller than I’d ever heard it.

“He’s… he’s alive,” the teenager said.

“What happens now?”

“We take care of each other. That’s what happens now.”

The scene shifted.

A living room. Food cartons lay strewn across the floor. On the sofa, Sam’s dad was passed out, snoring, clutching a bottle of cheap whiskey. Sam sat cross-legged in front of the TV, mouth slightly open, totally absorbed by a movie. I blinked. Was that “Return of the Jedi”?

Another shift.

A kitchen, this time. Sam paused in the doorway, watching his three brothers hunched over bills at the kitchen table. He took a deep breath, and deliberately relaxed his features into an easy grin.

“Gentlemen! The savior has arrived!” Sam announced, swinging grocery bags onto the counter with theatrical flair.

“Where’d you get money for food?” Ryan asked, suspicion edging his voice.

“Mrs. Hendricks paid me twenty bucks to clean her gutters,” Sam said, pulling items from the bags with a flourish. “And I may have charmed an extra discount out of the cashier.” He wiggled his eyebrows comically.

Derek looked up. “You didn’t—”

“Relax,” Sam cut in, tossing him an apple. “Turns out Susie Jackson works there now, and she’s still nursing that crush from fifth grade.”

Shift.

I watched a teenage Sam slip through the back door of a run-down house, clutching a small package to his chest. His eyes darted nervously up and down the street.

“Well done, Sammy boy,” a man’s voice slithered from the shadows of the hallway. He stepped into view—massive shoulders hunched beneath a stained wifebeater, face pockmarked, and eyes set too close together beneath a prominent brow. “You’re becoming quite the little runner.”

Sam flinched when the man’s hand landed on his shoulder, fingers digging in visibly too hard. “Just doing what you asked, Gigit.”

“So obedient,” Gigit murmured, his hand sliding down Sam’s back in a way that made my stomach turn. “I like my boys obedient. Not like your brother Ryan. He was always so… resistant.”

The look on Sam’s face—raw revulsion barely masked by terror—made my chest constrict.

Shift.

Another memory pulled me in. A small bathroom. Sam hunched over the sink, trying to stem blood flowing from his nose and split lip. His arm hung at an awkward angle. His breathing was ragged, his body trembling.

The door banged open. The oldest brother—Ryan—stood there, his face a thundercloud of fury and fear.

“What the fuck, Sam?”

“It’s nothing,” Sam tried, the words slurred through his swollen lip.

Ryan crossed the small bathroom in one stride, tilting Sam’s face up to the light. “Gigit,” he growled, not a question.

Sam’s silence was answer enough.

“For fuck’s sake! I’ve been killing myself keeping that fucker away from you and Derek, and you just walked right to him?”

“I wanted to help. We need money, and you’re always working, and I thought—”

Shift.

Sam stood in a doorway, watching Derek pack a duffel bag.

“So that’s it? You’re just leaving?”

Derek didn’t look up. “I need this. I need what the military will teach me.”

I’d never seen anyone look so lost. The look on Sam’s face was one of utter devastation, like he was losing his whole world. I could see the pulse on his neck hammering against his skin. Then he took a breath and forced a fake smile on his face.

“Well, the ladies of Three Rivers will be devastated to lose the second-best-looking Shaw.”

Shift.

A clearing, bodies everywhere. Blood soaked into the ground, the scent so strong I could almost taste it. Sam stood amid the carnage, his face ghost-white, eyes haunted.

“I could have stopped this,” he whispered.

Another man in Council uniform stood beside him, face grim. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have killed him when I had the chance,” Sam said, staring at a little girl no older than five. “I tried to save him, and now they’re all dead.”

His hands trembled as he kneeled beside the child, gently closing her staring eyes.

The memory spat me out like I’d been punched through a wall. I doubled over, gasping, tears burning trails down my face before I could stop them. My stomach churned with what I’d just witnessed.

Oh, Sam.

I wanted to take this from him, take the hurt, and pain and guilt that he felt. I hesitated. What if I did take this from him? What if I didn’t gather this one? Could I protect him from this memory?

I thought about it, really thought about it.

Would I be any better than Lydia and Vivienne if I did this, even if I was doing it to protect him rather than destroy him?

These memories, the good and the bad, they made Sam who he was.

They had shaped him into the person he was today.

Sam, who’d masked his grief and pain and become the brother with the charm and easy smile.

Sam, who’d hidden his loneliness when his twin left him for the military.

Sam, who had protected Mira, who’d protected the lone wolf at the bar, who hadn’t hesitated to take down the mad dog ripper who was attacking me.

I couldn’t do it. I reached out and took the memory inside of me.

Shift.

An airfield smeared with blood and bodies. A werewolf, eyes blazing, a feral monster with no trace of humanity. Sam stood protectively in front of a red-haired woman. No, not a woman. Sofia. My cousin.

I didn’t think my heart could ache any more than it already did for Sam, but whatever this memory was, I knew it was bad.

Sam’s expression… I didn’t know how to describe it.

His features hardened like cooling metal, yet his eyes held such anguish that looking at him felt like witnessing something too private to bear.

“He’s gone, Sofia,” Sam said, voice raw. “That’s not Derek anymore.”

I watched, horrified, as Sam drew a knife, his face hardening into something cold and determined.

“I’m sorry, brother,” he whispered. Then he attacked.

Nothing could have prepared me for the savagery. Derek’s jaws snapping for Sam’s throat, foam flecking his muzzle. Sam’s blade slashing. Blood—so much blood—as each fought to kill his twin.

Shift.

Sam holding two newborns in his arms, a single tear running down his cheek. His finger, so large against their tiny hands, tracing each perfect fingernail.

Shift.

Sam in a room with Calloway and Johnson, staring at my photo, a weird look on his face.

Sam seeing me for the first time, fighting rippers in the street.

Us talking on the rooftop.

His arm around my waist as we moved through the gala ballroom.

His eyes never leaving mine as an orgasm crashed through me.

The memories swirled together like paint colors in stirred water, distinct at first, then blending into something new. Disorientation swept through me as the sparkles, warm within my chest, suddenly yanked me forward. Then my vision cleared, and I found myself in front of a massive oak tree.

The heart-center of his mind-forest, Esme’s voice whispered. Where all his sparkles take root and grow together. It’s the deep-down truth of him that even broken glass magic cannot shatter.

Huh.

A tree. The center of Sam’s mind was a fucking tree.