Dark Legacy by Anna DeStefano Page B

sanctuary. At least it had been at one time. She looked anything but tranquil now.
    “Your sister was sixteen when she had her first psychotic break.” He eyed Maddie’s reaction to him picking up where their conversation had left off in that morning’s session. “She’d likely been bipolar for years before that. Increasingly altered, according to the records I read. The tendency to disassociate is hereditary, Maddie, but—”
    “Hereditary?” She shrank into the cushions. Then ina rush, she was in his face, grabbing fists full of his sweater. “A tendency to dissociate? Is that really the best you’ve got, Doctor !”
    She pushed him away, stronger than she appeared. Then she stumbled to her feet. When she tried to run, she tripped over the blanket. Jarred caught her before she hit the floor. He broke her fall with his body, then rolled her to her back.
    “Stop it, or you’ll—”
    “Hurt myself?” Her nails dug into his forearms. “Hurt you?”
    “Like Sarah hurt people?”
    The startled fear on Maddie’s face sliced into his heart. “Please,” she begged. “Don’t. I—”
    “Like your sister hurt you and your family?” he continued, hating the pain he was piling on top of the landslide of emotions she was already enduring.
    “St…Stop it.” Tears trickled down her cheek. A violent shiver roamed her body.
    “I can’t help you, if you won’t tell me how this started. I’m betting the two of you were close, before your twin’s condition spiraled out of control. Now you seem to almost hate her.”
    The archived news articles he’d dug up when he should have been plowing through paperwork hadn’t revealed much about Sarah beyond what her medical records told him. But he’d learned more than enough about what had happened to Maddie’s family, to understand why the instant attraction between the two of them had spooked her. Of course letting anyone close again would seem threatening, after losing her sister and her father that way.
    “You didn’t just see what happened when Sarah began to lose herself,” he pressed. He couldn’t believe he was entertaining such an outlandish explanation. But somehow he knew he was right. “You…felt what happened to your twin, didn’t you? Like you felt that patient’s injuries this morning.”
    Maddie’s fingers slid from his arms. Her body fell slack as she withdrew into that mind he wanted—needed—to understand.
    “Somehow,” he added, “you survived what happened to your family. You thrived. Excelled, after a trauma that should have devastated you. But something happened along the way. At some point over the last year, you stopped being able to deal with people and their feelings. With the patients and doctors constantly streaming in and out of the ER. And…” It was difficult to believe. “…No matter how much you’ve resisted my help or Yates’s, I think you’ve known what’s been happening since it started. Because…you felt the same thing happen before—to Sarah.”
    He let Maddie slide from beneath him.
    “I c-c-can’t do this.” She trembled as she stood. Instead of bolting for the door again she slowly headed for the kitchen, her expression a devastating blank. “I tried. I thought I could take the control back. Focus. Get better so I could get back to work…But I can’t. I…need…I need to…”
    Jarred could hear her teeth chattering. But nothing showed on her face when she turned toward him. That degree of internalization could rip a mind apart.
    “Stop trying to handle this on your own.” He reached his feet, too, but he didn’t shadow her this time. He’d already pushed too hard. Too much. Be her doctor, man. Keep her safe. Nothing else matters right now. “Whatever condition you and your twin share, it’s better to face it than keep hiding. Once we’re sure what we’re dealing with, we can figure out a solution.”
    “We?”
    “Together,” he promised.
    Jarred had no business promising her