Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86340 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86340 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
I stopped the rocking motion my body had begun. Was that who I just met? A man who didn’t know my name? I analyzed. His face. Reactions. Words. My senses. I believed the words that came out of his mouth. Believed that he believed them. It was what had made the entire scene maddening. But if he believed the words he had spoken, if he believed that he didn’t know me, believed that he wasn’t Brant….
Was this the secret? If so, it meant it was real. That this was not a blip of abnormality but a… lifestyle. A forever. I pulled out my phone, dialed Jillian’s number, and damned the consequences.
She answered on the last ring before I lost my nerve to voicemail.
“Hello?” Her voice had aged, or maybe it was just the fact that it was two in the morning.
I cleared my throat. “It’s Layana Fairmont.”
“I have caller ID. I’m well aware of who you are.”
“I just… Brant… he was downstairs in the bar. And he didn’t recognize me.” I closed my eyes and hoped that those sentences made sense. This was the test. Where she either knew exactly what I was saying, or jumped to the conclusion that I had driven my boyfriend insane. Which, from where I was siting, was still a fairly good possibility.
Her sigh told me everything I needed to know. Not surprised. Not irritated. Resigned. Expectant.
“Who was he?”
“What do you mean? He said he wasn’t Brant.”
Another sigh. “I had hoped this wouldn’t happen.”
“Excuse me?”
She was silent for a long moment. When she finally spoke, it was the voice of an old woman. “There was a reason I didn’t want you to go away together. You think I hate you. You think I’m trying to fight your relationship. But you were wrong. I was just trying to keep this moment at bay. Trying to salvage any chance of Brant having some normality.”
“I don’t understand.” The understatement of the century.
“Brant has dissociative identity disorder, DID. He’s had about five different personalities over the last three decades. I wish you’d gotten the name of the side you met tonight. I thought he had improved…” She stopped for a moment, the line going so quiet I worried I had lost her. I glanced at the screen. Cursed the low battery icon that displayed. “I don’t know as much as I’d like. He’s very good at hiding; his personalities are even better. They are still, to this day, hiding from Brant.”
“Hiding from Brant?” I stood. Squeezed my hands into fists and tried to slow the racing of my mind. “He doesn’t know?”
“No.” Her voice had sharpened to a fine point in that one word. “And he can’t find out. His doctors have been very clear on that. His conscience walks an emotional tightrope. Finding out… it would be counterpart to pushing him off the edge of that rope and having him crash. Everything would collapse. His gifts, his personalities… the doctors don’t even know if Brant would be the one to stay in control, in the forefront. We risk, at that moment, losing the Brant that we know—the Brant that you love—possibly forever.”
I sat, on wobbly legs, unable to hold up anything other than my sanity. Pressed my fingers into the lines of my forehead. Closed my eyes and wished for a dream.
The secret. I’d dreaded it. Avoided it while digging for clues.
It had arrived. I had met it. And I wanted nothing but to turn back the clock and recapture the pieces of my heart. They lay, like broken glass, back in that bar, being crushed underfoot by Brant and that woman’s feet.
“It won’t last long,” she added. “Normally he’s only in a personality for a few hours. He’ll switch back soon, depending on how long he’s been out.”
“I’ve got to go,” I mumbled into the phone.
I don’t know what I expected. Jillian to grow a shard of compassion and treat me as something other than a money-grubbing piranha. But she said only three words.
“Keep the secret.”
“Layana?” His voice was confused. I lifted my head from my arms and looked up at him.
My boyfriend stood before me, hands in his pockets, concern in his eyes. Layana. He had said my name, framed by the gray dust of the empty stairwell.
I stared at him, accessing. The wide smile was gone, as was the girl. Summer. I tested his name on my tongue. “Brant?”
“What are you doing in here?” He crouched down until he was at eye level, his hands running over my arms in a method that typically created warmth. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. Okay was about as far from my current state as possibilities allowed. I smiled, searching his face, finding everything there that I knew. Responsibility. Gravity. An unwavering aura of calm. I reached out, wrapping my arms around his neck, breathing in his scent, the hang of smoke still on his clothes. I tightened my grip as his hands slid around my body. Pressed my lips against his neck as I wondered if he had kissed her.