Take A Walk (A Hunter Hayes Fanfiction, Book 5 of The Hardships Saga)

Chapter Twenty-One

"Yes, Elle. I'm sorry," said Julia gently.

"It's my fault," she breathed. "It's all my fault, I wish I could've stopped it but I couldn't..."

"You couldn't've stopped it, dear," said Julia. "Now, tell me. What does it feel like, when you're trying to remember what happened before you saw your father and after you were looking at photos?"

Elle tried to think. Her mind hurt trying to even recollect what had happened after seeing that photo of Gabriel and Ivy at their wedding. Everything became fuzzy, dark... and everything in her told her that she wasn't remembering for a reason. It was too much. On top of all that had happened to her with Frank... which, come to think of it, she couldn't remember much of either. She just knew that it hurt afterwards.

She realised something in that moment.

"Frank," she breathed.

"What?"

"Frank. It was him. It had to be."

"And you know that how? Do you remember?"

Elle shook her head. "I just... I just know."

"Elle, you need to tell me the whole truth. You need to tell me everything."

"There's nothing more to tell. I just know. It's Frank. It's got to be." Elle sounded sharp, and Julia sighed as Elle set the empty mug of tea on the table. "Thank you for the tea. This was fun."

Julia was looking at her. "Elle," she asked slowly. "What's Frank got to do with anything?"

She considered telling her. But no. Telling her meant more people would know. Telling her would mean more people might die. If more people died, that'd be another death on her back. She couldn't handle that, too. Not on top of everything else.

"I don't remember," she responded coolly.

"You can't lie to me."

"I'm not lying."

Julia looked her over for a moment, then sighed. "You're sure you can't remember?"

Elle nodded. "I don't remember," she repeated. And technically, it was the truth. She couldn't remember much of it at all, now that she really thought about it. It just hurt. That was all she knew. She just knew that she hated the feel of his hands on her body, and she hated how he looked at her with lust in his eyes.

"Okay. Send Ivy in first, then I'll talk to Cassie."

"I'm sorry I couldn't-"

"No, it's okay. We'll get some doctors in to make sure, but I'm at least ninety-nine percent sure that you're suffering from dissociative amnesia. Common in patients with trauma. And whatever you saw that night was certainly traumatic."

Elle nodded silently. But dissociative amnesia... what exactly did that mean? She'd heard the phrase thrown around a lot over the past couple of days, but had no idea what it meant. Did it mean that she couldn't remember something because she just... didn't want to? But that didn't make sense. She did want to remember. She wanted to bring Gabriel's killer to justice, and she wanted to prove that she was innocent.

She had done no wrong in this. She knew that.

She went to Cassie. "Cass, you can't tell them about Frank. Please, you can't."

"What?" asked Cassie. "Why the hell-"

"Because telling him is what caused Gabriel to die, I'm telling you," she whispered. "I swear on my life, I swear. It has to be Frank, but we can't tell them why we know it's him. You can say that it's because he asked for my hand in marriage, but I... I can't... we can't risk him killing someone else. I can't let it be Drew or Adrian or someone else next."