Page 76 of Shattered Hearts

We hang up our jackets, and I sit in a chair in front of the desk Gage and his dad use to fill out paperwork and do research. I like the look of the sleek Mac on the desktop, and it remindsme I wanted to learn how to use a laptop and go online. The idea seems trivial, now that my memories of Quiet Meadows are surfacing and Ingrid’s missing, news Rourke is involved in this whole mess somehow, and someone blowing up Gage’s truck.

He hands me a cup of coffee sweetened with vanilla creamer, and I wrap my hands around it gratefully. Maybe the caffeine will perk me up. I feel depleted, like I’ll never have enough energy.

Instead of sitting in the chair behind the desk, he leans against the edge, close enough our legs touch. I rest my hand against his hard thigh, needing the connection as much as he does.

“Tell me what they were doing.” I don’t want to hear, but I need to. What they were doing to me at Quiet Meadows is the key to everything. Why would they want me to tell them details of my life that they would already know? Why didn’t I know the answers?

“They were torturing you. They would ask you a question, you wouldn’t know the answer, and they would shock you. Maybe with a stun gun, I don’t know. You cried and begged them to stop. Eventually they did. By the sounds of your screams, you couldn’t take anymore.”

I fight the chill that runs through me. That part of my life is done. I’m safe now. “Did I say why? Why would they ask me those questions? Why would they punish me if I didn’t know the answers?”

“You said something at the end, but I couldn’t make it out. Something about a drug working? I don’t know, Zarah.” He pauses. “I recorded it.”

“What?” Coffee sloshes over the rim of my cup and soaks into my jeans.

“I filmed it. On my phone. I thought maybe one day it would be evidence.”

“I don’t want to see it.” I can’t live through that again.

“You don’t have to. Christ, I don’t want to watch it either. Seeing the real thing was fucked up enough. You were saying all the lines—yours, the doctor who was testing you, the nurse. They played music? To keep you calm?”

“They would play my mother’s favorite classical music.”

“How would they know she liked to listen to it?”

“I don’t know, but someone knew because they would play it every single time. Sometimes it did what they wanted it to do and I would disappear into the music, pretend my mom was still alive.”

“I need to tell Zane.”

I shoot off my chair and the rest of my coffee flies onto the carpet. “No! He’d never get over it. He would never forgive himself. All he knows is that Ash drugged me to keep me quiet. That’s enough, that’s more than enough. Gage, please,” I beg, turning my eyes to him, “please, don’t.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to keep him from finding out. Some fucked up shit was going on there, and they could have been doing it to more patients than just you. We have to find out what they were doing and why.”

“I agree, but Zane doesn’t have to be involved.”

Glaring at the floor, he says, “I don’t like it. He should know and he should be held accountable. You were in there because of him.”

I gather my courage and say the hardest thing I’ve ever said in my life. “If you tell him, I’ll never speak to you again.”

He meets my eyes, his hazel irises shooting fire. “You’d choose your brother over me?”

I lift my chin. My jaw wobbles but I won’t let the tears out. If I cry, it will ruin the strength I need to put behind the word. “Yes.”

He stares long and hard, so long I think he’s going to tell me to get out, and I would. I would walk right out of here holding myhead high. Zane and Stella mean everything to me, and I won’t betray them for a man I met only a few months ago.

“Okay. I can respect that, but if he finds out, and thiswillget out, even if you don’t want it to, you can’t blame me.”

“I will if it’s your fault.”

“That’s not fair. I filmed it. Zane’s going to see it one day, Zarah. If that’s your way of thinking, it will always come down to me.”

“Then delete it.”

Gage crosses his arms over his chest. “No. This is bigger than you or you wanting to protect your brother. If we can find out what we need to know without Zane seeing it, fine, but until then, I’m hanging on to it.”

As much as I hate it, I see the need to keep it for evidence. “Then email it to yourself and delete it off your phone.”

“Done.”

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