Page 84 of A Divided Heart

“You haven’t been honest with me,” he says, and it’s not said in anger, but in observation. “You have a stronger connection with Lee, potentially more so than with Brant.”

I shake my head. “That’s not true it—” I pause. “Ever since we told Brant the truth, he's been more distant. What you have seen with me and Brant—it isn't normal. It will go back to normal once we figure out how to get Lee to go away.”

“Are you sure that is what you want? For Lee to go away?”

“I’m sure that it’s what Brant needs.” I don't trust myself to say anything more than that.

“Today was not a good day, Ms. Fairmont.”

“I know.”

“I am sorry.” He twists in the stool so that he is facing me and presses his palms together between his thighs. “I imagine it is very difficult for you to love two men that are inside of one body.”

I am close to crying and I have already degraded myself enough in front of this man today. “I have some work to take care of. You’ll finish up with Lee and give Brant an update?”

He nods. “Certainly.”

“Thank you.” I walk stiffly to the door and let myself out into the hall. In between my legs, some of Lee dampens my panties and I need to clean myself up, but I can't bear the idea of washing him off.

Chapter 84 - Brant

Motherfucking shit damn asshole. The expletives stream through my head like lines of code, and I don't know why Dr. Terra let this go on without stepping in and stopping this shit.

Jesus, I hate myself. If there was a way to kill myself—this part of me—I'd do it. I’d rip that motherfucker out of me and beat him to a bloody pulp.

I accelerate out the driveway and don’t look back. I left Dr. Terra and went straight down to the garage, avoiding the areas in the house where Layana might be. I don’t know what I will say when I see her. I can’t right now. I'm too afraid of how I will look at her, given the anger and the disgust that is radiating through my chest. What’s horrible about it is that the disgust is as much for me as it is toward her. That was my body doing those things to her. My voice, saying those things. Me.

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 hadshakenfrom 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 shelovedhim.

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.

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