Protect Her: Part 10 Read Online Free

even made it all the way down the stage’s steps. My father swept me up into his arms and twirled me around the way that he used to when I was much younger. My mom’s face was lit up with joy, and she clapped as my father completed our spin. “She’s here in my head too. She’s told me things.”
    “Whatever she told you is bullshit,” Riley said. “Don’t believe a word she’s said.”
    “You aren’t listening. She’s here in my head because I invited her in.” I saw Riley’s mouth drop open. I nodded sadly. “She knows everything, Riley. She knows because I accepted her three years ago.”
    “What?” I knew that it was going to take a few moments for Riley to grasp what I was telling him. I knew exactly what that felt like having been in the same position not too long ago.
    “It was when Bruno Proctor’s goons hit me over the head and dumped me in the Calamata Bay. We assumed that I drew on Eva’s powers to save me, but that wasn’t quite right. Apparently she had helped me out other times over the years because I would call on her. This last time, I guess she’d had enough of the freebies. She wanted out.”
    “She can’t coerce your acceptance,” Riley said.
    “She didn’t though. The circumstances I found myself in at the time were not of her making. But I asked her for three years. So I would give myself over after three more years of living as myself.”
    “You remember this?” Riley asked quietly.
    “No, that place in my memories is still a black hole,” I said.
    “Then she’s making it up,” he sputtered.
    I put my hand on his arm. “Riley, she’s in my head. She’s in here with me. How could she be there if I hadn’t accepted her in? She’s been waiting for the time we agreed on to elapse, but she knows and sees everything that’s happened to me since then. She knows about you and me. This was my fate. It always was my fate.” My father set my younger self down, and she was talking excitedly to the two of them. I wanted to get closer just to remember what that conversation was, but I didn’t dare. I felt that getting too close would somehow distort the memory, so I continued to watch on the periphery.
    “Take me somewhere else,” he said. “Show me another memory.”
    There was only one place I felt it necessary to go before I let myself wither away. It seemed only fitting that I would take Riley there with me.
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER THREE – RILEY
     
    I was still trying to process Paige’s revelation when the world shifted around us again. We stood in the street outside a house that looked almost identical to all of the houses around it. I felt as if I had seen it before, but I couldn’t remember where. As I slowly spun around, it seemed as if we had landed in Anywhere, USA.
    “Where is this?” I asked. I needed time to think. I wasn’t going to let Paige just give up. It was clear to me now why she hadn’t fought back. Eva had her believing her fate was inevitable. We’d see about that, but I had to approach the whole thing carefully. If she got too upset, she’d be able to kick me out. I couldn’t have that.
    “Flagston, Texas,” Paige said. She stared at the house in front of us. “We moved here three days before my fourteenth birthday. It was during the middle of the school year, and I was so mad at them. I had just found out that I got the starring role in the spring play at my old school, and then they whisked me away to this drab, dreary place. I hated the idea of starting over. Again.”
    Flagston. That rang a bell, but I didn’t have time to think about it further. I was focused on the despondent woman in front of me.
    “You were fourteen when your parents died,” I said. I had a bad feeling about where Paige had brought us in her memories. I wanted to experience the happy ones with her, but I sensed that she wanted something else from me.
    “I was,” she said. She stepped forward and opened the gate. She motioned for me to follow her.