That afternoon, for the first time, she opened her heart to the person she loved most.
She had never told anyone, not even her sisters or her mother. Some things flickered through her mind like reflections in water, impossible to touch or see clearly. But for a very, very long time, she had been able to glimpse a corner of that forgotten past in her dreams.
They were dreams of suffering, one after another.
They kept coming back.
Then, whenever she woke with a start, they faded from her consciousness like ripples, leaving behind only a chilling numbness and an endless emptiness.
And that little girl in her subconscious had never been a shadow split off from her.
She was her heart.
She had simply hidden it away, beneath that thick sheet of ice.
"But why did you save me? You knew you might never come back if you went. Under those circumstances, it was practically a death trap with no way out."
After a long silence, Lynn finally asked.
She raised her head, and a host of complicated, unreadable emotions seemed to stir in those beautiful, night-dark eyes.
"Because I still wanted to hold on to something, I suppose."
Because everyone who had ever been kind to her before had died.
So this time, at least.
She did not want her new life to repeat the tragedy buried in her subconscious.
Even if that guy was always bullying her, pressing that remote for no reason, and charging her with the Electric Drill and a screwdriver, he had also torn up that compulsory contract rather than treat her as nothing more than a tool. He had told her there were people in this world who would be kind to her. And just because she had saved him once as part