Page 63 of Degrading Her

I didn’t have any sympathy for them. “That was their decision.”

“I just thought I could do it, you know?”

I didn’t know. Any logical person would have been able to see that she was crushing herself under the impossibility of doing it all, and once the passion was sucked out of her life, there was no way to get out from under it.

“I had to do it for my parents,” she said.

According to my research, her parents were healthy. They didn’t need a personal doctor.

“Why? What reason could they possibly have?” I asked.

“Elaine and I loved school. But then she died. And Maisie ran away. So I was the only one who was left. The only daughter that was already in college, that theyneededto be successful, to fulfill their dream of having a daughter who had made it. And I was good at school. I could do their dream,thenfulfill my own.” She wrapped her arms around herself. My fingers twitched at my sides, wanting to hold her. “College was hard. And med school was even harder. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I over-burdened myself—” she paused, considering her words. She lifted her eyes to me. “Youareright. I knew I could never do it. And in a way, I thought that maybe that would give me a way out.” A few seconds passed, then she added, “But now if I fail, it’s all on me.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’ll never be good enough.”

I couldn’t explain it: the pit in my stomach, her shoulders sinking like that, matching my heart. I wanted to hold her. To push the hair from her eyes. To tell her that she was wrong. That it wasn’t her fault.

But she had to do this by herself.

No.Damn it all. I could say what needed to be said. She deserved that.

“You are good enough,” I said, my voice hard.

“You said it yourself. I’m going to fail,” she said quietly, the tears slipping down her cheeks.

“That’s stupid,” I said. “I’m a temporary obstacle. Sure, you’ll lose a game with me. I’m being honest when I say that no one beats me. Not even my father.” I tilted my head. “But you have a chance elsewhere. This isn’t your final stop. You will not fail your dream, Fiona. I can promise you that.”

Her eyes switched between mine until she finally opened her mouth: “How can you be so confident in yourself?”

“I know what I can take.” I put a finger under her chin again. “And I can take you, Fiona. But you? You can’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. Sure, maybe you fail at this. But you’re not going to fail at everything. I know you. I know you don’t stop until you get what you want.”

Her copper eyes searched me. “What about you? Isn’t it bad for you to put that kind of pressure on yourself too?”

For some reason, my mind went to the deaths in our families, and how much pressure it was to live up to what her family lost, or what my family stood for.

“My mother died when I was four years old,” I said. Her jaw dropped. “And my brother? When she died, it was like losing him too. Wilder was never the same.” I bowed my head. “Things changed after that.”

“How did that make you feel?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

But it wasn’t that moment that broke me. It was the years of enduring manipulation from my father. Of realizing that the world was broken. And the only thing that I could do to fix it was to control it. Especially when it came to people like Fiona, those rare gems that didn’t break without one hell of a fight.

And seeing her like this, on that precipice? I wanted to save her, to yank her back from the edge.

“It made me feel like nothing would ever be fixed,” I answered. She nodded, her lips closed, taking in my words. At least my honesty had stopped her tears. “My father died last year.” She swallowed hard. “I was relieved.”

She blinked her eyes rapidly. “Why are you telling me this?”

And for once, I didn’t have an immediate answer. There was no reason to tell Fiona anything about this. But it spilled out, like it meant something to me, when death was nothing. It was simply the final act.

“You can’t let someone else’s death rest on your shoulders,” I said. “Your sister is gone. You can’t make up for her absence by being a doctor for your parents.”

Her lips trembled. “I don’t remember what Elaine was like anymore,” she whispered. “I hate it.”

“I can’t remember my mother’s face.”

“What happened to your dad?”

When I pulled the trigger, the electric energy had pulsed through me, knowing that it was finally over. The bullet went into his chest, knocking him down.

“I killed him,” I said.

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