Page 120 of By the Pint

Nina, however, was a woman on a mission. “We need to be careful. Tread lightly. I’m just worried about overwhelming him,” she would say, and then immediately contradict herself and tell me to drop a tiny titbit from our past life hoping it might trigger a memory.

She started bringing in scents, human foods, flowers, perfumes, with the same intent, but with mixed results.

Sometimes Casey would say something like, “I hate whiskey,” or “Smells like a gym.” But he was also getting increasingly frustrated and impatient with Nina.

He had begun to realise he was more powerful and deadly than both Nina and I put together, and I would often arrive at his suite to be welcomed by a smashed-up television set, or coffee table. Though, incredibly, he never attempted to hurt either Nina or me. If he wasn’t in the mood to play Nina’s games, he would simply lift her out of the room, and dump her into the porch area.

One time, after Nina had asked him to sniff a Mai Tai, he lost his shit and telekinetically exploded the cocktail and his pint of blood, sending shards of glass and liquid everywhere, then he growled at her to leave the room.

Perhaps I should have been concerned for Nina’s safety, or for my safety, or worried that Casey was exhibiting aggression around us, but I felt relieved and excited.

This was the Casey I knew. As a human. The tantrum throwing baby. The one who screamed at the other wingball players and the refs. The one who confronted me in the hot tub. The one who got so mad at me, he chased me across a mini golf course and pinned me against a volcano.

Real Casey froze. He stared at me. His fingers twitched at his hips.

Shit, I forgot to close my mind before the memory overcame me.

“Show me that again,” he demanded.

My heart was going to explode. “Uh …”

“That was me, wasn’t it? When I was human.” His voice was sharp, not angry, but commanding. “Show me.”

I had no idea what to do. Show him and risk overwhelming him, or not show him and risk angering him. Though, I realised, I wasn’t afraid of him.

“Nina?” I called out, knowing she’d opened the door a crack and was listening in.

“Replay the memory for him,” Nina said.

39.

Dima

My heart beat in quadruple time. I took each of Casey’s hands in mine and gazed into his eyes. “Okay,” I whispered. “Are you ready?”

He nodded, staring right back at me.

“Let me know if it’s too much for you. If you want me to stop.”

He nodded again.

I closed my eyes and replayed the memory straight into his mind.

Us meeting under the moonlight by the golf course. Taking our balls and clubs from the werewolf attendant. Casey almost catching me out when I floated the club into my hand without thinking. Me goading him on the first hole. And the second. Moving the ball with my telekinesis every time he took a shot. Casey getting more and more enraged. The holes in one. The shark’s corpse. The waterfall. Him, finally realising I’d done it all on purpose with the sole intent to wind him up.

I hadn’t been afraid of his temper. In fact, it had excited me. Turned me on. The Casey inside my head pinned me against the fibreglass volcano wall, his arm braced across my chest, his lips inches from mine, his breath heaving. It was the most alive I’d ever felt. Up until that moment.

Real-life-Casey made a whimpering sort of noise, like it was all too overwhelming. I stopped the memory. Probably should have started with a less charged one. The first time we met, perhaps, or one of the nights we chatted in his suite while watching wingball.

“Don’t stop.” Casey moved his hand to my cheek, and my insides turned to butter under a grill. “Did we kiss?”

“Oh,” I said, pathetically. My stomach flipped over itself, my heart tried to crawl inside it, use it like a blanket. My emotions had become more volatile than the pyrotechnic volcano from my memory. “Not then. You pushed off me and ran away. But … we did kiss. Often.”

He thumbed a tear from my cheek.

“You cry a lot,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against mine. “Show me our kiss. Kisses. Show me everything.”

“Show him!” Nina called out, almost before Casey had finished his sentence.

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