Page 93 of Until You Found Me

How much longer until she is completely replaced by someone else?

How much longer until he doesn’t recognize her at all?

The changes are tangible, growing like wildfire while her soul breaks apart at each new memory, leaving a fresh crack among the rubble. Soon there may be nothing left.

A part of her wants to save him from this downward spiral and run while he sleeps. Leave a note and cut him loose so the trauma of whatever the hell is happening to her won’t get a chance to scar him too deeply. Even thinking it feels like a betrayal, no matter how hard she tries to convince herself itwould be for his own good.

She cannot abandon him now. Not after everything they’ve been through together.

Then, there’s the fact that she’s determined to give him her spare kidney and she can’t do that if she disappears.

Tessa does not, for a single second, allow herself to use love as a reason to stay, if only because she isn’t sure he can keep loving her once her transformation is complete. Instead, she focuses on the only goal that feels somewhat attainable; not unraveling while the rest of her past tramples her like an elephant.

She pulls her coat closer and watches the dog trot through the snow, leaving pawprints behind only visible in a slim beam of light from the porch. He eats a weed sprouting through the powder and frolics while inhaling mouthfuls of winter white. How blissful that simple life must be, she muses. That dog lives in the moment, unbothered by the past or the future. She wishes she had any idea what that felt like. Even with her past wiped clean, her future always looms heavy.

Memories haunt her and grief suffocates her, defying time’s mercy, leaving only new wounds.

Rose, the house fire, the husband whose face she can’t see but whose marks still burn her skin. She gets snippets while she sleeps. While she’s eating. While she’s lying in the dialysis bed with Logan. While she’s kissing him and tasting the ash of someone else’s tongue in her mouth.

Reality bleeds together, and she’s starting to fear she might be going crazy for real this time. It’s easier to stop telling him every detail because they grow too wild to comprehend or too horrifying to say aloud. Thought she would keep the truth of how she planned to kill that man one day to herself,but offering him that mental image might have been a gift if he took it as a chance to leave. He didn’t.

The next thing may push him over the edge, though. Or the one after that, or whatever else comes after that. She can hardly stand herself lately. How can she expect him to see beyond the constant damage? So, she shields him, wading through the maze alone, seeking something useful in her nightmares.

A name. A face. An address.

Logan tells her it’ll come soon enough now that the gates are open and maybe he’s right, but she needs it over before she isn’t strong enough to handle another second of the journey.

She needs a smoke and wishes she grabbed one before coming out here. Picks at the hem of her coat instead, wrinkling her nose as memories of her own behavior that morning compete with older ones struggling to break free. Despite her need to run and save Logan from the fallout, she wants him more desperately than ever since her past started flowing freely. Her body yearns for a reminder of the life she’s created here with him. For a grounding, physical tether to this world, when everything else is trying to whisk her backward. Her need to use him as that tether, right or wrong, has almost won more than once.

She needed to feel like herself again when she straddled him in bed and to reaffirm their bond before it began to evaporate. So she chased it as hard as she could, unprepared for the shift that slung her into the deepest recesses of her mind and allowed someone else to take control.

In a matter of seconds, Logan vanished, and she found herself back in that house, straddling a man who had left her with a split lip and bruised ribs. She needed to please himso he would go to sleep happy that night and she could spend the rest of it in the kitchen alone, looking at photos of Rose and crying tears into the worn paper. Muscle memory kicked in and reminded her to be bold and persistent. He likes it when she tries hard, when she pretends to be eager, and when she pulls out all the tricks she’s learned over the years to make him come hard and fast.

The moment she realized she was using those skills on Logan she was horrified. She’d been so close to breaking his trust and stomping across his boundaries, and she sniffles on the porch steps while guilt and shame cascade down her cheeks. Doesn’t matter that he’s forgiven her, she hasn’t forgiven herself. This little house of cards they’ve built is crumbling, she thinks, and it’s all her fault.

The dog wanders to the edge of the woods to chew on something and she sighs, calling him back. He’s found a dead animal maybe, or a toy buried in the snow. Whatever it is, his attention is fixed and her calls are ignored.

A migraine begins to tease the edges of her subconscious. Lack of sleep while her mind works in overdrive hasn’t been kind to her and she clutches her head while moving toward the dog. She needs some Advil before—

There’s a crunch of footsteps behind her and she imagines it must be Logan coming to make sure she’s okay. She might walk right into his arms and weave under his coat like a heat-seeking leach. She is needy and vulnerable and he is the only one who can quiet the voices in her head, but those footsteps gain speed and turn aggressive. Her breath catches deep in her lungs when she turns, and a gloved hand slams over her mouth before she can scream.

The funny thing about memories is that before they becomea clear picture in her head, they are tack-sharp in her body. Every time he held her while she struggled until she learned that resistance was pointless twitches through her muscles forcing them slack. It’s easier if she doesn’t fight. It’ll only hurt more if she makes him angry.

“Make a sound and I’ll snap your neck right here. Then I’ll kill that asshole you’ve been fucking.”

The gun in her pocket pokes at her side as he forces her around so her back is to his chest. It offers the hope and encouragement she needs to jolt herself back from the woman she used to be into the one she’s grown into, but her execution still needs work. It’s one thing to practice these moves with Logan and another thing entirely to use them on the man who’s tried to kill her.

When she throws her head back to connect with the soft tissue of his nose, it’s enough to startle him. She isn’t practiced enough to keep going until he drops, though. Her legs are like jelly and her arms shake with adrenaline she can’t harness. She used her one move and her brain can’t supply the next in the heat of the moment, but grabbing the gun is simple enough and that’s exactly what she does.

The commotion pulls the dog from the snack left out to lure him away. His bark is quick and his bite even quicker. He latches onto the enemy’s leg and pulls hard, but she’s already in a struggle for the gun and even the two of them working together can’t overtake the man fighting them. Cursing and crying out, the attacker shifts the gun barrel and fires a shot into the darkness.

A pained squeal from the dog has her heart sinking because he is silent and unmoving after that. She only has a fraction of a second to mourn him before a sharp twist of her wristrids her of her only weapon and a closed fist to her face leaves her dazed.

He grabs her again, dragging her close, his breath hot and sour. “Why won’t you just fucking die?”

It’s the same thing he said to her after she pulled herself from the bathtub. That familiar phrase tugs her toward the past as he drags her into the darkness. It knocks loose all the cobwebs until she sees his face clearly for the first time.

“I’m not letting you ruin this for me again,” he snarls, hauling her by one arm across the ground. “Shoulda gone quiet in that tub and none of this would have happened.”

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