Run To Me (Lazarus Rising #4)(37)

She heard Jay step closer.

“I wasn’t trying to kill him. Dammit, Willow, will you please look at me?”

Her head lifted as she pulled in another deep breath.

Jay flinched when he saw her face, and her heart just stopped. He hates me. He fears me. He—

“Baby, you’re crying.” He rushed across the room. Climbed into the bed with her and yanked her into his arms. “I’m sorry.” He kissed her cheek. “I just said containment because things were so out of control. He did something to you. You weren’t responding. I didn’t want you fighting with the others. I couldn’t have you hurt. Couldn’t let you hurt them.” He kissed her again. “I’m so fucking sorry. We’re going to figure this out. I’m going to make this right. I’m going to make you—”

He broke off, but she knew what he’d been about to say. I’m going to make you right. “I don’t feel right.” Her temples wouldn’t stop throbbing. The dull ache nagged at her. She lifted her fingers and pushed against her temples. “I don’t know what happened.” Her voice was so low. “Did I…hurt you?”

His fingers slid up. Moved to her temples even as her hands fell. He began to gently massage her, moving his fingers in soothing circles, and her breath whispered from her. “No, baby, you didn’t hurt me. The guy wanted you to shove my fears at me and immobilize me, but you didn’t. He was trying to control you, but you didn’t give in to him. You stopped.”

She had?

His fingers kept sliding in those soothing circles. Warm, strong fingers. He massaged her in silence as the moments slipped by. Some of the tension eased from her body, and Willow felt her shoulders sag as she seemed to sink into him.

“Tell me what you know about him,” Jay urged her.

Her heart ached. That strange burn again. “He was…Wyman. I recognized his voice.”

“The guy changed his appearance, got a nose job, did something different with his jaw. Dyed his hair, lost weight, but, yeah, that was definitely Wyman. He came out of his hiding spot for you, just like we thought he would.”

A shiver slid over her, and Willow burrowed even closer to Jay. “Because I was the control experiment.” That was what she’d been described as before. She’d been kept in isolation, while the other Lazarus subjects had been together. At least, the subjects in Sawyer’s lab had been together, anyway. They’d gone out on missions for the government. They’d been tested, studied.

She’d been locked away and seemingly forgotten.

“I think you’re a whole lot more than that.” A new note had entered his voice, but his fingers never stopped their careful massage. Her temples weren’t hurting any longer, but she didn’t tell him that. Willow didn’t want him to stop. She liked having him that close. Liked pretending…

I just like pretending. Hadn’t he once told her that everyone pretended?

“How did you feel when you saw him?” Jay pushed.

She bit her lower lip. “I was scared.” That part she remembered. “I’d had another bad dream.” And that was odd. “I-I don’t have dreams like that. Not typically, but it was the same dream, coming back at me, and—”

“Are you sure it was a dream? Maybe it was a memory.”

She licked the lip she’d just bitten, a quick, nervous swipe of her tongue. “That’s what scared me. I was afraid it was a memory.”

“Was Wyman in that dream—that memory?”

“No.” She was definite on that. “Another man was. Someone who knew me. Someone who’d been looking for me.” Willow swallowed. “I think we were lovers.”

She felt his body tense.

“He said I belonged to him.” The words felt wrong. Goosebumps had risen on her arms.

“You have a lover out there? Someone looking for you?” His voice was different. Harder. Colder. But he was still moving his fingers in that careful massage.

“I told him it was over.” Her eyes closed. “But he said it wasn’t. That we weren’t done.”

Silence.

“I was afraid of him.” Her stark confession. “That’s why I went downstairs. And I saw Wyman, and for just a second, I felt…” Now her words trailed away because this was the craziest part of all. For just a moment, she’d felt, “Safe.”

“Safe because of Wyman?”

She knew that didn’t make any sense. “Everything got so mixed up. I can’t even remember what happened next, but I can see myself on top of you, with my fist pulled back.” Now she eased away from him. Moved to face him. “I’m so sorry.” She was. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why—”

“I think he triggered you.”

Her stomach twisted. “What?”

“I think he used some kind of mind control on you. He said something, and it was like a switch had been flipped inside of you. You fought his control, but for a moment, he was definitely in your head. Wyman told you to attack, and you flew at me.” The words were quiet, oddly calm, and his gaze was steady. She looked for fury. Judgment. Disgust.

There was nothing. She couldn’t detect any emotion at all in his gaze. That scared her.

“When you saw him bleeding on the porch, what happened then?”