Levi
FIVE
It’s two a.m., and she should be well asleep. We both should be. Yet, when my second cell phone vibrates with her incoming call, I tap to accept.
“Sunshine, why are you awake?”
“Sex. That’s the answer.”
My head thumps, trying to decipher what she actually said. “Come again?”
“Sex, Hunter. Sex. It’s so obvious. Dad almost took that from me. His touch—he’s the last to do it. Hell, the first in a while.” That’s a mumbled comment. “I need to replace what he did with someone trusted. But, like, exactly what he did. To shift those memories into another scenario.”
My body takes in her words even before my mind does. What her ideas are. What she’s saying. How similar it is to what she’s already said.
One night, after a couple drinks, she took the bed in my apartment while I slept on the couch.
We ended up messaging one another as our other identities, and, fuck, being told her fantasies when there was only one thin, fragile door separating us made caging the monster nearly impossible.
It was true strength to not touch her after she passed out, when I snuck into my bedroom to watch her sleep.
The entire scenario would blow up my lie, but I’d have her, so damn the consequences.
When my voice won’t betray me, and my fingers dig deep into the mattress to ground me, I grate out, “Do you know what you’re describing?”
“Yeah. Why do you think I’m calling you in the middle of the night? It’s what I’ve been awake reading about. I know the name, understand the terms, respect the boundaries.”
No amount of deep breathing is making my mind process this. “You need to sleep on this and think about it in the morning.”
“I can’t. Hunter, my brain is going crazy.
I can’t sleep, can’t think… I kinda despise the trial.
Before it, I managed to put these feelings aside, to sleep normally.
” She couldn’t at first. There were many nights we stayed up late in my apartment because it’s where she felt safest. “It’s all back, like in the beginning. ”
I place the phone down after switching it to speaker so the call can continue while I walk to the window, staring at my reflection—taut muscles and fists—all attempting to retain control and ignore how she’s petting the parts of me that aren’t completely right.
She’s waiting for a response, so, screwing my eyes shut, I don’t look at the university in the distance when I reply. “You need to work through that with someone you absolutely trust. Like Levi.”
Yeah, I went there.