Page 26 of Claim Her

My palm opens, and I see him slightly shift. His response comes in a hesitant, uncertain tone. “It’s from someone I met a long time ago.”

Tears blur my vision as a fresh sob racks my body.

Alec tentatively reaches for me again, but I slide back. “Zara, please. You’re scaring me. What have I done? Did I hurt you?”

I wipe my tears with the backs of my hands. “This was mine.”

“What?”

“I’m Daisy.”

Alec’s eyes widen in shock, his jaw hanging open in disbelief. For a moment, there’s nothing but tense silence between us. Then, I see the second he comprehends the magnitude of what I just said. His shoulders slump. “Daisy?”

“You’re the boy who saved me, right?”

He doesn’t answer, but his gaze drops to the floor. It’s like we’ve been thrust into an alternate reality, and I’m just watching these things happen to someone else.

My whole world shatters into a million pieces, the ground beneath my feet no longer solid. A nagging thought tickles my brain.

Alec felt familiar the first time I saw him. Is this why I was drawn to him? Because a part of me knew he saved me? Because we’re connected somehow?

“I-I can’t do this, Alec.”

He lifts his head to meet my gaze, his face a mask of horror and anguish, and I know I look pretty much the same. “What do you mean?”

“It took me years of therapy to get where I am today. To be happy. To smile again. To laugh. You … you’re going to remind me of that place. I can’t go back there, Alec. I can’t go back to that darkness.”

The naked pain in his expression forces me to look away. Alec doesn’t deserve what I’m doing to him, but I don’t want to return to that kind of mental space, either. Being with him will remind me of it every day.

Alec rises, unable to look at me. “I’m sorry, Zara. I promise you I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

“I know. I’ve always wanted to thank the boy who helped me, so thank you. That night, you risked your…” Another realization dawns on me—something more painful than the last. “Alec, tell me the truth. You didn’t have a scar when we met. Did I … did my escape cause that? Were you punished because you helped me?”

He doesn’t answer, but the look on his face says everything, and it’s like I’m stepping on shards of glass, slicing me with razor-sharp edges.

Alec rubs a hand over his chest, something I’m sure he doesn’t know he’s doing. “It doesn’t matter, Zara. It’s in the past.”

I stand up and grab his arm, forcing him to face me. “It does. You risked your life to save me. You got hurt because of it.”

“And I’d do it over and over again.”

“Who was he? I remember you were sneaking into the room. You weren’t a prisoner like me.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw, and he glares over my shoulder. “My uncle.”

Uncle. I don’t know what to feel anymore. It’s like one bomb after another. His uncle was the cause of it all? “W-where is he now?”

My stomach drops away at his next words. “We don’t know. We’ve been looking for him. So far, nothing.”

“You’ve been looking for him? Wasn’t he at that place where I was kept? Your home?”

His face hardens, eyes so cold that my insides freeze into a block of ice. “It was never my home. And as for your other question, we don’t have any idea where the chateau is. We might get answers there, sure.”

“How? How do you not know where it is? Haven’t you lived there for years?”

“He brought us there and took us out in blindfolds. We know it’s an isolated island. Other than that, we have almost zero information. Anyone who ever knew about it conveniently died. For all our snooping while there, none of us thought of figuring out where we were exactly.”

It’s too much. Everything feels too much—the shock, anger, pain. This isn’t what I signed up for.

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