“You erased my memories!” I hissed.
“You remember?” He sounded as shocked as I felt.
“I do now.” My chest ached with each sharp breath, but that was the least of my issues at the moment. I paced, trying to get my thoughts to slow down long enough for me to make sense of what was happening.
“Oh, thank God that worked. I don’t know what I would’ve done if it hadn’t.” He laughed and reached for me, but I moved away from him. Hurt flashed across his face, and a pang of guilt landed in my gut.
“I just… this is a lot,” I said, trying to ease his pain. “I need some time to deal.”
His lips twitched with an almost smile. And then I realized I’d said the same thing to him once before, after I’d found out he was a vampire.
Nodding, he shoved his hands into his pockets. Seeing him standing there like that brought on a new wave of emotional memories that were so incredibly vivid and gut wrenching I closed my eyes to shut them out, but it was useless.
We were standing outside Aunt Beth and Uncle Dean’s house. I’m a sobbing mess, and Trent is in front of me, hands in his pockets. He’s as heartbroken as I am, but he’s trying to be strong for me. He tells me he wants me to be happy. I know I can’t be, though, not when I have to leave him behind.
The images hit me, one after another with no reprieve, like waves crashing on the shore without mercy, disrupting everything in its path. The things he’d said to me… It was like I was back there, reliving that moment with perfect clarity.
“I won’t steal the life I know you want. The life you deserve. I can’t be that selfish,” he said.
“You have no idea what I want.”
“I know you want to go to college and travel and have kids… You want to grow old with the love of your life by your side. And one day, when you’re old and gray, when you’ve lived your life and have grandkids and great-grandkids who all love you, only then will you be ready to leave this world behind and see your mom again.”
He was right. About all of it.
“We both know I want to be the guy to give you those things, but I can’t. I’m just the guy who has to let you go so you can find someone who can.”
Too much silence as we faced off, both of us knowing where the conversation was headed but neither of us wanting to say it aloud. But then he did.
“Please let me do this for you, Chloe. Let me give you the freedom to have the life you deserve.”
My eyes snapped open. “No,” I whispered, horrified. No way I’d asked him to do this to me. I couldn’t have.
“Chloe?” Trent stepped closer, his expression full of concern. “Are you okay? Please, talk to me.”
Make me forget.
The words I’d uttered that night slammed into me with the force of a wrecking ball, and all the breath rushed from my lungs. I looked up at him just as the first, fat tear ran down my cheek.
“I did this.” It wasn’t a question—we both already knew the truth. “Oh, God. I did this. This is my fault.”
But I couldn’t deny it any longer. I had asked him to erase my memories. It had been selfish, but it’s what I had needed to be able to move on.
Leaving Keene Valley, leaving my family and my friends, had been hard, but I’d done it because I had to. And I’d been miserable here—I hated school, hated living with my father, hated how people treated me—until Simon spoke to me.
Then everything changed. I had a friend now. I was getting along with Larissa, and I adored Little Frank. I was finally starting to fit in around here, and now that would be ruined.
“Why are you here, Trent?”
My tone was sharper than necessary, but now that I understood who he was and what he’d meant to me, my sadness was morphing into anger. He’d given me a fresh start, and now he was here to take it all away. Why would he do that?
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated and not something we should discuss here.”
Beyond the walls of the room, the party raged, unaffected by what was happening to me. People shouted and laughed. Dance music pulsed in an opposite rhythm of my heart, mocking my pain.
Unease coiled in my stomach. “Maybe it’s not something we need to discuss at all.”
“What?”
“I said, maybe it’s not—”
“I heard what you said.” In a blur, he’d closed the distance between us, his eyes dark and heated as he stared down at me.
A fleeting shiver of fear raced up my spine.
“And now you’re going to hear what I have to say,” he said.
“No, I’m not.” I shook my head.
After so much upheaval—losing my mom, moving to Keene Valley, getting tortured by a sadistic vampire, having my heart broken, moving to Malibu, forced to constantly start over—I was not going to do this again. I couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, but we said goodbye already. This is over,” I said.
I jerked open the door and raced out of the room, pushing my way through the party, knowing the only reason I wasn’t still in that bedroom with him was because he’d let me leave. I needed to find Simon and ask him to take me home so I could have time to process everything I now knew about myself and my past.
“Chloe. Stop.”
I froze, goose bumps
