Chapter 45
River
I was such an idiot. A fool really. A lovesick fool who should never have confessed her feelings like that.
Laurie’s stiff-backed silence replayed in my mind on a torturous loop while I drove aimlessly through Manhattan’s pre-dawn grid. Traffic lights flashed on empty avenues slick with rain, and Laurie’s pained expression burned behind my eyes.
My hands choked the steering wheel and I took a corner with tires screeching.
I’d left her sleeping back home, in my bed, guarded by the Leyore vampires keeping watch outside. It stressed me out, stepping away from her for even a moment, but I needed to clear my head. And by ‘clear my head’ I meant kick myself repeatedly for being so goddamn stupid.
Confessing had felt right in the moment—an ache too big to keep caged—but the terror in her eyes afterward snapped me right back to reality.
I’d handed her another weight she had never asked to carry.
I handed her my heart even though she’d reminded me, time and time again, that she was not able to handle it.
I slammed a palm on the steering wheel, then gripped it tight again when the motion sent the convertible skidding.
Stupid. I was so very stupid.
When asphalt gave way to the tree-lined curves of Riverside Park, I pulled over and killed the engine.
Dawn’s first light brushed the Hudson, streaking the faint ripples with purple and gold.
A few parents already occupied the playground, coffee cups clutched in mittened fists while toddlers tottered down slides that dripped from yesterday’s rainfall.
I watched a little girl chase soap bubbles, squealing in delight when they burst in front of her nose. The sight punched a hole in my chest.
Every morning Laurie had to wake to a world that reminded her of what she lost. Street strollers rolling by, toddlers tottering alongside their mothers down the walkway, infants wailing in apartments three floors up. Constant reminders rubbing salt in an unhealed wound.
No wonder she kept her fists up—always.
I shoved my hands in my coat pockets, standing like a phantom at the edge of the park and stewing in a misery I brought on myself. My power hummed at the base of my skull, restless without Laurie’s aura around to mingle with my own.
I’d spent so many hours soothing her nightmares, tempering her spiking emotions; it still wasn’t enough. Not when her heart-breaking past plagued her every waking moment and put her future in jeopardy.
If I could only reach deeper. Push my powers further…
Memories of my grandmother floated through my head, unbidden but not entirely unwelcomed.
She had been a powerful vampire, existing centuries ago, but her many years alive had not made her unkind.
Her stories drifted back to me on the chill wind, and I followed the thought trail—if only to distract myself from the current impossible predicament.
She had powers too, similar to my own. But she’d been able to do more than soothe; she could take—lift the thorns from a mind that willingly surrendered them and mist them away.
It wasn’t like Hunter’s powers; it left no gaps in memory. The subject was not rendered to a blank slate—they were left as a person, feeling lighter than they did before. She could turn memories of the past to faint fog, and clear a way for a brighter future.
It was an ability so rare that my family treated it like a personal mythos.
My mother had believed I could do it too, but I’d never dared to try.
It was too daunting, entering a head like that.
It was too much responsibility, too much pressure, to hold something as delicate as a mind in my hands and trust myself not to break it.
But if I could do it, if I could try—and if Laurie would let me… then, maybe that was the answer.
My spine stiffened and my hands balled to fists in my pockets.
Could it work? Could I push my own powers that far?
Was it worth the risk of potentially wrecking her mind?
Hunter’s brute-force memory scrubbing wouldn’t do the job right; erasing huge swaths would leave Laurie disoriented, maybe shattered further.
But a surgeon’s touch—removing only the shards that cut the deepest—could at least dull the constant pain, muting the horror loop that played every time she closed her eyes.
The idea formed slowly, bit by bit, and my heartbeat ticked up tenfold.
Across the playground the bubble girl laughed again—bright and unbroken. I watched her sprint past, gap-toothed grin stretched wide and carefree. Laurie deserved to smile like that.
Maybe I could help her do it.
I let myself into the house—our home, I’d decided—quietly, like the hinge-squeak might undo my resolve.
The koi glided beneath the hallway bridge, scales flashing pale gold in sunrise stripes, and the familiar smell of jasmine tea reached me from the kitchen, along with Laurie’s distinct scent.
I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, giddy as the idea unfurled in my head—and deeply melancholic at the same time.
Coming home to Laurie had become as natural as breathing, and that realization stung my eyes.
I could not go back to an empty house. I would not return to wandering the hallways alone.
I pushed off the door and squared my shoulders.
I found Laurie at the table in the kitchen, mug cradled in both hands, vacant stare fixed on nothing in particular. She looked up when I stepped into the light.
“Hey,” her voice was soft with sleep but lined by the night’s unspoken rift. She tried for a smile anyway. It wobbled tense and fragile on her lips.
“Hey.” I eased into the chair opposite her, heartbeat climbing. No easy preamble. “Laurie, I want to give you something—or take something, technically.”
Her brows knit together and she slow-blinked across the table. “River, if this is about last night—”
“It’s about your future.” I folded trembling fingers together.
“You keep living with your head turned backward toward the past and I get it. The memories are too heavy and they’re dragging at your heels.
” Laurie stiffened at the abrupt breakdown of her fragile mental state but I pressed on regardless.
“I can’t erase them completely but… I think I can remove the worst of them. Ease the weight.”
Her face scrunched up and she slurped a quick sip of tea before replying with warranted skepticism. “River, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I can take your memories,” I blurted out.
Then backtracked and rubbed at my eyes—and tried to come up with a better way to explain my half-baked idea.
“Not all of them, not like a big mind-sweep or anything like that. Hunter can rip out memories in bulk, but that leaves jagged edges and gaps. I can be… gentle. Surgical. I’ll only take the shards you offer. ”
I swallowed, palms sweating as Laurie’s tired eyes grew wider and wider.
“I’ve never actually tried it before but… maybe this could work. Maybe it could help.” I fought to keep my voice calm and steady, pouring my resolve into my words. “I want to help you.”
Steam spiraled from Laurie’s mug, frozen halfway to her lips. Silence ballooned, stretched taunt and tense the longer I held her gaze.
“How would it work?” she asked at last, voice barely more than a whisper.
“One memory at a time. We pick something contained—a moment, a snapshot that haunts you. You focus on it. I draw it out like a splinter.” I dared to reach across the short distance, grasping for her hand, but faltered and fell short.
I rested my palm on the table between us instead.
“When it’s gone, you won’t even remember it existed in the first place. ”
Laurie lowered the mug, hand resting on the table inches from my own.
Minutes ticked by.
My palms grew sweaty, my fingers visibly trembling while I waited—anxious and eager—for her reply.
Finally, she exhaled slowly and her eyelids fluttered shut. When they opened again, I read the decision in the set of her jaw.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. We can try.”
We settled cross-legged on the rug in the living room, face-to-face, knees connecting. Morning light spilled across Laurie’s hair in pale stripes and painted her strained expression with golden flecks.
“So.” She fiddled with the sleeve of her sweater—my sweater, actually. She must have swiped it from my wardrobe. “Are you gonna—like, wave a magic wand or are we doing this au natural?”
My frown was exaggerated, comical for her sake. She was nervous—I could feel it in her aura—so she was cracking jokes to ease the tension. “No, I don't need a wand! Just… Here, give me your face.”
I gripped her cheeks and pulled her closer and Laurie allowed the maneuver with only the slightest grimace and a muttered curse.
When she met my eyes, painfully vulnerable under that snark, I drew a steadying breath and rested our foreheads together. Her pulse fluttered hummingbird-quick beneath my thumbs.
“Ready?” I whispered.
Laurie sucked in a breath, and let it out slowly.
She closed her eyes. “Ready.”
I shut my eyes and let our auras braid together, sinking into her subconscious like sifting through layers of sand—and then slammed into a wall.
Slick, obsidian-smooth, bristling with barbed wire emotions.
The impact jarred both of us; Laurie’s shoulders jerked, a hiss of pain slipping between clenched teeth.
“Easy,” I murmured, sliding my palms to her knees in a grounding touch. “You’re doing great.”
I had to hope I was doing okay too. Considering I had next to no idea what I was doing.
Laurie forced a nod, breathing through her nose.
The rigid barrier pulsed—fight-or-flight encoded in memory.
I exhaled patience, letting my empathic current seep into the cracks.
I’m here. You’re safe. Let me in. It wasn’t a command, more like a lullaby thrumming through her head.
Slowly the wall softened—like glass warming to wax—becoming semi-permeable.
Her aura flickered, then yielded, and I slipped through.
Inside, memories floated like icebergs in dark water.
It was overwhelming, and I gritted my teeth to keep myself from pulling away from that cold, desolate landscape in her head.
I fought back tears when I realized that this was what she lived with.
This barren cavern was the state of her mind—her life.
I let Laurie guide me, patient while she picked through poisoned images of her past, tentatively offering the first shard: a memory of stainless-steel tables and latex gloves, her body nothing but a specimen.
I felt her flinch. Beneath my ribs, the same flinch echoed, but I held the thread gently, examining its shape without judgment.
Then, with the lightest psychic tug, I coaxed it away from the core of her mind and anchored it in my own—and when I had it secured, I drew in a breath, cradled the tainted memory, and turned it to mist. I willed it away to nothing.
The images dissipated like smoke in the wind.
Laurie’s breath hitched but she didn’t force me out. Instead, she let out a rattling breath, and pushed forward another snapshot. I reached for it and my mind flared full of uncomfortable images.
Bright surgical lamps, the cold click of restraints, a voice noting vitals like Laurie was inventory and not a human being.
Laurie herself trembled under my palms, but she coaxed the memory closer to me.
I wrapped it in the same velvet focus and drew it out, careful not to disturb memories she chose to keep.
The moment it detached from her mind, it lost its jagged edge.
I spun the shard into mist—tendrils of gray that dissipated into the psychic void.
Piece by piece, we worked—tiny scenes of indignity, moments where her voice had been stolen, autonomy stripped. Each time I lifted a memory free, the psychic sting flared through my own nerves—sharp, then dulled by the mental barrier I’d fashioned for this purpose.
Every snapshot sat like a heavy, crushing weight on my chest. But it was a heaviness I could bear. I could do it for her.
At the fourth extraction, Laurie’s shoulders sagged. Her breath left in a soft oh, and I opened my eyes to find her eyelids fluttering, her body slumping over like a weight had tumbled from her back. I caught her before she folded and held her while she melted in my arms.
“Are you all right?” I murmured into her hair, worried I’d pushed her too far. “How does it feel?”
Laurie took a moment to respond, cheek pressed flush against my sternum. When she spoke, her voice was thick with astonishment, choked up as tears spilled freely. “It feels… freeing. Like I–I can breathe.”
I stroked her back, feeling the tremor of muscles relearning ease. A glow of quiet triumph pulsed in my chest, tempered by the ache her memories had left behind, but worth every painful prick.
“We should stop here for now.” I sagged over her, fatigue catching up with me in a sudden rush. “I think we both need a break.”
Laurie relented without protest and nodded against my collarbone. I tightened my arms around her, and rocked the both of us gently like I did the first time I’d watched her fall apart, and so many times after that moment.
This was far from over. There were still hundreds of memories to sift through, and Laurie had a long way to go—we both did, because we were in this together—but it was a start. It was a flicker of hope. A pinprick of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
A possible future, one where Laurie made it out alive.