Black Lies

  I wanted to kick at the support beams of all that he knew. Expose the truth behind all of this. Tell him everything. And see if he survived. See if he stayed.

  I risked losing him.

  I risked destroying his life.

  I risked saving our love. Our future.

  Chapter 51

  Brant

  I am not a simple man. I know that. We all discovered that the summer of my eleventh year. The summer it snowed in San Francisco. The summer the three girls disappeared. The summer my parents bought a computer, and I stopped playing outside. That summer, everything as I knew it changed.

  The simple Apple II processor, set up in my father’s office, unlocked an entire world for me. The introduction to advanced technology took my childhood obsession with calculators and small appliances to an entirely new level. A switch turned on in my mind, and I opened the door wider, letting a pent up sea of ‘what if’ thought processes loose. I dismantled the expensive new purchase, its guts stretching out across my father’s desk, and learned its language in days. My parents were furious, then confused, then saw the genius, and moved me and the computer down to the basement. Gave me a workspace, tools, and freedom.

  I learned at a furious pace. Visited the library, checked out every book on technology I could get my hands on. My interest became an obsession, my passion a madness. The more I learned, the more I unlocked different pieces of my mind and learned of their potential, the further I pushed my intellectual limits. Chaos began to reign in my mind, a complicated race of intellectual competition, as one thought process competed with another, all in an attempt to fight to the front of my subconscious first.

  I worked harder. Didn’t eat. Barely slept. Ignored my parents, became irritable. Spent every spare moment in the basement. It was as if technology spoke the only language that my newfound madness understood. And inside those basement walls the chaos—for one brief moment—stopped. Focus came. Everything else disappeared. I worked in my new home, and my parents called specialists. Discussed me in hushed tones as if I was sick.

  Then, October 12th occurred. Our little family’s version of Armageddon – a disaster of epic proportions. I was taken to doctors. a slew of them. Dr. F was the face that stuck. A constant presence in the carousel of different tests and meds. He was a psychologist, asked questions, examined experiences. Tried to sort through the kaleidoscope of my mind and understand its structure and balance. I told him a hundred stories, walked him through every piece of my past. Everything except what happened on October 12th. On that subject, on that date, I remained mute. It wasn’t a conscious decision, I wasn’t being stubborn or secretive. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t know what happened. It was as simple as that. I couldn’t remember. Or my subconscious wouldn’t let me remember.

  Eventually, life took on a new reality: Jillian and I against the world. I built computers, she brokered deals, and we redefined success. Any deceit we orchestrated… it didn’t seem to matter. Money was rolling in, I was well-adjusted, and my parents believed anything we said.

  I lied for almost a decade, Jillian covering my sins with a smile and words so smooth that I almost believed them myself. Then, the lies stopped, medication fixing all of my problems.

  It’d been 27 years since October 12th.

  And I was now in control. I was in love. I would convince her to be my wife.

  Never better.

  Chapter 52

  1 WEEK BEFORE

  The crash of a plate cut deep to my spine, Lee’s arms sweeping everything off the table in one angry sweep. He was drunk, his eyes bleary, his announcement made by a steady and consistent lean on the doorbell between the guest house and main home. I had pulled on a robe and taken the elevator, the incessant buzz of the bell ringing through the elevator, the only foreshadowing of the train wreck that greeted me.

  “I never wanted this! You wormed your way in my fucking life and now that you have me, you don’t want me!” Lee breathed hard, his chest rising and falling, eyes wide, the hurt twisting his features.

  “Of course I want you. I love you.”

  “But you’re still with him! What kind of sick twisted girl are you? I swear to God, I can’t… I can’t take this. I can’t know that you’re going back and fucking him. It is killing me. I can’t think of him touching you.” He stared at me, his eyes pools of hurt, so much emotion swirling through them. His chest shook when he gasped, and he exhaled hard, his fingers shaking as he reached out, pulled me to him and looked into my eyes. “Tell me you love me.”

  “I love you.” I met his stare and wished that he understood, my own eyes filling with tears.

  “Tell me again.”

  “I love you.”

  He ripped at my pants, pulling the material down with one hand while the other gripped my neck so hard that it hurt. He was frantic, he was needy, and when he pushed inside of me I was not ready, and he was so hard, and I gasped for a different reason but ohmygod I did love this man.

  “I can’t,” he gasped, pulling me to the edge of the table, the edge biting into my ass as his hands held me in place, and his hips started to move. “I can’t lose you, Lana. You are my everything.” His mouth shuddered against my collarbone as he dropped his head, the soft touch of his lips on that skin different than every other piece in this equation and I arched underneath his hands, pushed against his cock and pulled his head against my neck, his mouth following suit, kissing and biting the skin, making a possessive trail and he pulled and pushed and branded me with his cock, the rhythm increasing and I moaned, my hands holding onto his skin, the muscles under my fingers flexing as he fucked me with his feelings.

  Then his mouth opened against my skin and he cried out, a moan of my name, his thrusts slowing as he emptied himself inside of me. Our bodies slowed, his final thrusts hard and deep, and then he stopped. Stayed inside of me while he gasped against my neck. “Tell me.”

  “I love you.”

  Then he picked me up and carried me to our bed. Laid me down and rolled me, so my back was against his chest, his arm wrapped around me, pulling me tightly in. He was so much larger, the tuck of my body putting his mouth against the top of my head.

  “I don’t know what to do.” His voice was blurry and soft in the dark room, words almost lost in the hum of the fan. “I love you too much to leave you. But I can’t do this. It is killing me.” Then he said the words I dreaded, the ones I never wanted to hear but that had stalked me in my dreams. “You have to choose. You have to.”

  Ten minutes later, his breath evened out. I laid there, his arms relaxing around me, and began to cry. Sometimes getting everything you ever wanted sucked.

  It had been long enough. Any love there was would have to be strong enough. It was time. I needed to rip the roof off all of our lies.

  It was time to pull the roof off of all our lies.

  Chapter 53

  2 YEARS, 4 MONTHS AGO

  The moment Brant turned, in that Belize hotel bar, at 1:43 AM, I knew something was wrong. I just couldn’t place what. Couldn’t figure out why the hairs on my arm stood up. Couldn’t figure out why the noise of the bar suddenly seemed to fade. I stood there, stared at him, and tried to place the problem.

  “Hey.” He grinned. A wide grin that showed his dimple and white teeth and carefree games of football on Saturday nights. When he smiled his eyes carried the gesture, crinkling at the edges, the total effect one of a man who knew his charm and carried it easily. “You look lost sweetheart.” His hand reached forward, cupped the edge of my elbow and tugged me closer, my hand reaching out and touching his shirt. Pushing on it without any force. Just trying to stop my forward motion while allowing my mind to sort out what about this situation felt wrong. My eyes flicked right, to a polo-wearing blonde perched on the closest stool, whose outfit screamed resort employee, her hand gripped around the neck of a beer that I’m pretty sure she wasn’t old enough to drink. His other hand, the one not dragging me into his space, was resting on her bare thigh
. I stared at that hand and wondered why he didn’t move it.

  “Honey.” A call of a name designed to get attention. My eyes snapped up to his face, that wide smile still there, his eyes on me. He had been talking to me. Called me honey. Honey. That was a word I’d never heard roll off his lips. I looked back at his hand. Watched it as his fingers moved. Caressed the skin of her thigh. As I fucking watched.

  I ripped my eyes from the sight, plastering them back to him, my eyes raping every surface of his face, looking for clues. Was he high? Pupils normal. Drunk? Didn’t really look it. He looked normal. If normal had a face that looked nothing like Brant. If normal looked flirtatious and easy-going. Like a man who had friends and watched sports. Like a man whose hand was moving further up blonde tennis chick’s leg.

  I pushed hard against his chest and snapped my fingers at the girl. “You. Get out of here before I have you fired.” She blinked. Looked at Brant. Then back at me. I didn’t wait for a response, I turned to Brant and prepared to give a full ration of every pissed off emotion in my body.

  His face tripped my tyrannical plans. It was irritated, his hand reaching out and grabbing the shoulder of the blonde, pushing her back down on the stool when she went to stand. “Stay Summer,” he said under his breath, the name combined with the action raising my level of pissed to a point I have not reached in… forever. Summer? He rose to his feet, towering above my hotel slippers’ height. “Miss, you should probably be the one to leave.”

  Miss? I gawked at him. If Honey had thrown me off, Miss kicked me into next week. I avoided looking to my right, hating the feel of the blonde’s eyes as my boyfriend made a complete ass of me.

  “Miss?” I sputtered. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  He shook his head, looked at the people next to him, strangers he had never met, as if I was the crazy one in this situation. He stepped closer to me, lowering his voice as he tilted his head down and stared directly into my furious glare. “Did I miss something? Did I do something to you without realizing it?” His eyes dropped, and I flushed for a quick moment when I realized he was staring at the sheer fabric of my top, the robe gaping open enough for him to see cleavage. I stepped back, wrapping the robe tighter, my mouth working, my hand thrusting his cell out, incoherent thought manifesting itself into speech, anger in the form of words, spilling out.

  “I don’t know what kind of sick game you’re playing Brant, but we are through. Take your cell and get your own fucking room.”

  “Brant?” His eyebrows met in a way that I’d never seen but was incredibly hot. The image almost distracted me from the next line of bullshit out of his mouth. “My name isn’t Brant.”

  My name isn’t Brant. The most idiotic sentence that, I could guarantee, had ever come out of that man’s brilliant mouth. I laughed. “Your name isn’t Brant?”

  “No.” Such absolute certainty that, for a minute, I thought I might be the crazy one in the room. “You have me mistaken for someone else.” He held out a hand as if I would have any interest in shaking it. Stared into my eyes. “Who are you?”

  The night had left Crazytown behind. I blinked at him and understood nothing except that everything was broken.

  “You know my name,” I whispered the sentence.

  He tilted his head in a gesture of recollection, then shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. Did we already meet?”

  I glanced from his innocent face to the blonde, her brows raised in an expression that indicated her impression of my sanity. Then my eyes moved, the crowd around us all carrying similar expressions, their perplexed pity fixed on one common source: me. Not Brant, who appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown. One in which he appeared sane, just lost any concept of who he was. No, everyone thought I was crazy. I crossed my arms and pinched my skin, just north of my ribs, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t.

  I looked at Brant’s cell, still stuck out, ignored by everyone but me. Without a word, I slipped it into my pocket, turned, and fled the bar.

  Hot tears slipped down my face, tears bred from confusion, mixed with a side of loss. I veered, seeing a stairwell door and pushing on it, my butt hitting the first step it found, my composure held together until the door shut and I was fully alone. Was this the end of us? Not Jillian, not an affair or disagreement over wedding invitations? This insane middle of the night confrontation with a man who didn’t know my name?

  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.

  He lifted me off the stairs and carried me, like a child, to our room. I curled against his chest and, when he laid me on the bed, I pretended to be asleep. Didn’t want questions, had too many questions inside my own head that might burst to the surface. I laid on the soft pillowtop. Let him drag the blankets over me. Felt the sink of the bed when, a half hour later, his skin smelling of soap, he crawled in. Wrapped his arm around me and pulled my body against his. Heard the whisper of his voice as he spoke in the quiet room.

  “I love you.”