Page 142 of Hunting Pretty

That face—the sharpness of his features, the coldness in his dark eyes—flashed like a nightmare I’d been trying to forget.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push it away, but the image of Adam Donahue was burned into my mind.Why do I know him?

Lisa’s voice asking me what was wrong echoed as if from outside a cave.

She couldn’t help me now.

I had fallen deep into a dark, buried part of me.

My vision blurred, and my recurring dream came rushing back to me, unbidden.

I couldn’t move.

The velvet of the couch underneath me was so cold it felt wet. Heart thudding, I tried to push up off the couch. But I was frozen in place. My mind screamed at my limbs to move but they just lay limp like my body had stopped working.

Panic gripped me.

Why couldn’t I move?

From the darkness a shadow distended and detached, a silhouette. A man.

He walked toward me, his footsteps echoing off the high ceilings.

A ringing filled my ears, high-pitched and relentless, drowning out everything else as if the world around me hadgone silent, leaving nothing but the sound of my own rising panic.

No. Please, not him.

He leaned over me, his face in darkness. But this time, the darkness receded like smoke, the features becoming clear,sharp, angular features carved out of cold, pale skin under slicked-back dark hair.

His thin-lipped smile didn’t reach his emotionless dark eyes; it was more of a mask, calculated and cold.

It was Mr. Donahue—the professor.

“Sweet, sweet girl.” His sour breath swirled around my cheeks.

Fear closed its bony fingers around my throat, cutting off my oxygen.

I tried to breathe.

I tried to scream.

I was screaming.

A scream ripped from my throat, raw and uncontrollable, tearing through the silence of the room. My chest heaved with the force of it, the sound of my own voice almost unrecognizable.

And then I was crying—sobs shaking my entire body, hot tears pouring down my cheeks as I crumpled under the weight of what I had just realized.

Lisa’s arms were wrapped tightly around me, her face pressed against my shoulder as if she could shield me from the truth I’d just uncovered. Her grip was firm, grounding, but it did nothing to stop the flood of memories that surged through me.

“That’s what he didn’t want me to remember,” I choked out between sobs, my voice breaking, the sickening realization settling over me like a cold, suffocating blanket.

All this time, all these blank spaces, these buried memories—they weren’t nothing.

I could feel Lisa holding me tighter, but it didn’t stop the tidal wave of fear and anger crashing inside me.

He didn’t want me to remember.

“Scáth—Ty—killed his father because he was abusing me.”

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