Page 49 of How to Resist Prince Charming

But when the realization of what had happened struck him, he bolted upright.

“My parents. They just saw—”

“It’s okay,” she reassured, smiling gently as she smoothed his plastered hair off his forehead.

“Your dad didn’t recognize me. I think I was ten or eleven the last time I stopped going to work with Dad because my brother and sister started begging to come too. So...”

“He was probably too worried about Savannah to recognize your name either,” Braxton agreed. He squeezed her fingers. “Don’t worry. If any of them ask about you, I’ll tell them you’re one of Greg’s exes. My friend is always breaking up with these women, and they keep coming to me as if I can explain what they did wrong to make him not want them anymore.” He shrugged. “It’s a pretty common occurrence, and my family knows all about it. I’m sure I can get them to buy that story if they grow suspicious.”

But Lenna didn’t look so certain. “Your sister saw me in your bed.”

Braxton’s face fell. “Don’t worry about that. She doesn’t remember it.”

That fact defeated him. Sensing his pain, she touched his face. He closed his eyes and sank closer. “I’m sorry about what happened to her.”

He couldn’t speak for a minute. Then he said, “I feel so powerless around her. I know she can’t help what’s happening, but I get so frustrated. I can’t stand her alter ego and only snap when she’s Clara. Then she turns back in Vannah, and I feel guilty for losing my patience. What’s worse, when othe

r people find out what’s wrong, they look at her like she’s some kind of freak. I want to protect her, but I don’t know how.”

He glanced warily at Lenna. “She’s not violent. Throwing those keys at us, that’s as mad as I’ve ever seen her. She’s not...She’s not crazy.”

Lenna nodded like she understood. But he knew she didn’t. She couldn’t. He didn’t even understand it himself.

“People with dissociative identity disorder get such a bad rap,” he muttered. “After all those horror movies about split personalities, they think she must be part serial killer or something. But she’s not. She’d never intentionally hurt a fly.”

Nodding again, Lenna smoothed her fingers over his hair again. “From reading Sybil in school, I always thought people grew a split personality from having a really bad childhood.”

“Yeah, that’s typically the case,” Braxton admitted. He’d learned more about the subject in the past nine months than he'd ever wanted to. “But really, no one knows the actual cause. Any kind of devastating stress can start it.”

“And yet she got it from a physical injury,” Lenna murmured, her eyebrows puckering thoughtfully. “Was it blunt trauma to the head?”

Braxton lifted his face and sent her a guilty look. “Not exactly.” He winced. “I mean, I’m sure that part didn’t help, but...” When he received a confused scowl for his confession, he sighed and closed his eyes. “When she was in the accident, Vannah didn’t immediately fall into a coma upon impact.”

Lenna frowned. “Then—”

“The wreck was her fault. She was talking on her cell phone and ran a red light. Five cars were involved. Four people needed hospitalization and three died. One guy had both his legs amputated. He’ll never walk again.”

Lenna gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.

Braxton nodded. “She says she doesn’t remember the accident, and no one’s told her how it started. But she has to know. Somewhere in there, she knows. Neither of her identities will touch a cell phone to this day.”

“Poor Vannah,” Lenna murmured.

“Everyone at the scene said she was conscious and alert after the wreck. They knew she’d hurt her head. It was bleeding. But she talked and walked around like she was fine. She even helped pull a few injured people from their cars. As soon as the ambulances and police arrived, she collapsed. She didn’t wake up again for three weeks.”

Squeezing Lenna’s hand, he said, “I don’t think she could take the guilt of what she’d done. Her brain just shut down and refused to open again until she’d reinvented herself as someone else.”

Lenna looked pale and shaken as she once again reached for him. “Wow. But seriously, I’d probably flip out too if I knew I was responsible for so much death and destruction.”

Braxton nodded. He buried his face against her neck. Letting out a soft laugh. “I always thought she was a brat. A big pain in the butt. But you have no idea what I’d give right now to have the old Savannah back.”

Lenna’s arms tightened.

“Every time I see her,” he choked out, “I just...I don’t know. I fall to pieces. It’s so hard. She isn’t the girl I grew up with. The sister I knew died in that accident.”

Managing to keep the tears at bay this time, he wiped at his face. But, damn it, how embarrassing to lose it in front of Lenna.

“I don’t know how my parents do it every day. They refuse to send her to an institution. They think they can help her, like they can eventually draw out the old Savannah. But, I don’t know. I can tell it’s starting to wear on them.”

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