Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 97525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
It’s so fucked up.
How am I going to be able to look into her face? How can I block out the image of her bent over that couch, her skirt hanging from her waist? Her thighs had shaken from the force of his thrusts. That look on her face when she looked back at him. When she begged him for more. When she told him she loved him.
I can't accurately express how it feels to watch my body, my face, my dick—fuck my fiancée. Before Dr. Terra began recording our sessions, there was a part of me that hadn't believed. That thought that maybe Layana was making it all up. The preferred scenario was that she and Jillian were both fucked in the head, and I was the only sane one. Of course, my parents had also supported the idea. For all three of them to be lying or mistaken was a highly unlikely probability, yet my brain held on to it like a lifeline. The more I thought about it, the closer I came to convincing myself that it was valid.
But then I saw the first hypnosis session.
In that twenty-four-minute video, I saw the high-definition footage of myself—and it was like watching a complete stranger. I moved in a new way. Smiled as if I didn’t have a care in the world. I spoke in trash language with poor posture.
After that, I believed. How could I not? It was a gift and a curse, all at once—because once I realized that this was real, then I also realized that I’ve had carbon copies of myself running all over San Francisco and doing God knows what to God knows who.
There had been two decades where I could have ruined lives, screwed strangers, hurt people, or worse. Maybe I have children out there that I've fathered. Maybe I’ve killed someone. Maybe I met a woman and married her and then just disappeared.
My brain is running on repeat with the scenarios and even the good scenarios are bad, because they are memories and experiences lost forever.
There’ve been moments in the past few weeks where I’ve wondered if maybe Jillian was right to shelter me from this. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.
But then I remind myself that I don’t know what I have been up to. According to Layana, Jillian’s henchmen always kept tabs on me and would move vehicles, provide cash, clean up my messes, and keep me out of trouble.
But what messes? Drunken stupidity or assaults?
The steering wheel vibrates and Layana's photo appears on the navigational display. For one of the first times in our relationship, I silence the call and, as if summoned, an image of her face, eyes closed in ecstasy, worms its way into my head.
That asshole fucked my woman in a way that I haven’t.
Maybe in a way that she liked.
Definitely in a way that she liked.
I already knew what arousal looks like on her skin. I could tell you within seconds how far—or close—she was to orgasm, how she sometimes liked to fight it, to hold it off as long as she could, before it wracked her body. I knew the sounds she made when she enjoyed something and the way she looked when she wanted more.
I knew all of that before I watched the video of him and her. He hadn’t accomplished anything that I hadn’t done before.
I’d made her crave me.
I’d made her lose all control and sanity.
But I hadn't done it like he had. He had fucked her, in every sense of the word. It had been a ravaging—like he needed her body just to breathe.
She had loved it. And loved him. Loves him.
I have to consider the fact that I am trying hard to remove a part of me that she might require.
Her name disappears from the screen, and I can't keep driving forever. Eventually, I'll have to go back and face her, and I’m terrified that I will look at her and see disappointment in her eyes that I'm not Lee.
Maybe she won't, but it's hard to know because we’re so disconnected right now. We're sleeping on opposite sides of the bed and skirting around topics, and I know the emotional distance is on me but … shit. That man—Lee—he didn’t have any emotional distance from her. On that video, in that short period of time, they were closer than we’ve been in weeks, and I hate him even more for it.
I focus on the road and make the engine roar loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
Chapter 85
There is one piece of good news in all of the bad. Brant's hypnosis has not brought any other personalities out to play. Lee is, at the moment, the only soul between us and normality.
Now, I have to stop screwing around and do what needs to be done. The plan is for me to do a clean and stern breakup with Lee—without involving his penis this time—and then ignore him for the next five or ten sessions. We believe that will be long enough for him to give up and sulk off into a corner of Brant's mind where he may never resurface again. Dr. Terra says a DID mind creates alternative personalities to protect the primary, or to act out in a way that the primary won't allow. If the primary can fill that void by himself, the alternative personality may disappear altogether. May. A short word that carries so much weight. Other possibilities ... Dr. Terra won't discuss any other possibilities. He says our awareness of those possibilities increases the likelihood of Brant's mind exploring those paths, seeing them as alternative outs that will only delay things and drive us all bonkers.