This was exactly why I wasn’t a useless ball of human rolled up in the fetal position on the floor all the time. Shannon had the most amazing sense of space I’d ever encountered in another human being. It occurred to me that some measure of his coldness wasn’t garden variety coldness because he was dead inside or whatever, but was instead an expression of trying to project what he would want onto someone else. It just seemed to him like the natural thing to do.
I had the sense that, in general, Shannon didn’t give a damn what other people wanted in any circumstance really, but if he did give a damn, it seemed more likely he’d think about what he would want instead of trying to guess at how other people’s minds and emotions operated.
It was only the fact that what he wanted was so very different from what the general population wanted that someone could interpret it as a total lack of empathy—or at least this was what I kept telling myself.
“What was different about this nightmare?” Shannon asked again.
I hesitated, unsure if I should tell him. But in the end, I faltered beneath his hard, expectant stare. “The other nightmares were about the park. This one was something that happened in my life before the park.”
His position against the supple leather shifted ever so slightly, his calm exterior disturbed by the tiniest ripple... of something. “You remember? Your life?”
I nodded. “A lot of it is still fuzzy, but I imagine that’s probably true of a lot of normal people, too. Nobody remembers everything that ever happened to them. But I remember who I am, and all the major highlights of my life, and all the important things leading up to the accident.”
The thought suddenly struck me that before my memories came back, I had been a pure human expression of minimalism. Just like his house. Simple. Clean. But now I was complicated and messy, and I wasn’t sure how Shannon would take that.
“And this dream...” he persisted... “What happened in it?”
The way he asked the question was as if the option not to answer him didn’t exist. He expected to know. He demanded to know. And yet I knew that if I told him, I would be at least partly responsible for what happened next, because I couldn’t pretend there wouldn’t be something that happened next. Shannon loved to kill people, and he had a whisper of feeling toward me. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where that magical combination would lead. Telling him would be like giving him a big present with a giant red bow on it. I might as well gift wrap Professor Stevens and hand Shannon a knife or a gun or whatever it was he liked to kill people with.
Against my better judgment and my better angels, I told him the dream. Telling it seemed to unlock more details of the memories I’d been trying not to see when I woke, memories that had fled in Shannon’s arms the night before but came roaring forth now that I allowed them.
I squeezed my eyes shut as tears slipped down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop hearing the belt coming down on me. I couldn’t stop feeling the violation that I would have given anything to forget about, and for a brief shining moment in my history, I actually had. Why had it come back after so long? I knew things I’d done with Shannon must have triggered it, but why did it have to be triggered at all?
I’d been hopeful that everything would just stay dead and buried. Some part of my subconscious must have been well aware of how much I wanted to forget and keep the past locked away in boxes I could never open again. Why hadn’t my mind listened? Things had been just fine as they were. It had seemed so unlikely after so long that I’d have to worry about any memories surfacing. But then, I’d never been in the situation to have it triggered by just the right activity before.
“He touched what’s mine,” Shannon said quietly.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that response. It made him seem even more inhuman than he ordinarily seemed—and yet, a deep dark part of me liked that irritated sense of possession in his voice.
It didn’t seem to matter to him that I hadn’t been his back when these events had originally unfolded. As far as Shannon was concerned, I’d been set aside for him from the moment of my creation. And someone else had the gall to touch me. I felt it would probably be unwise to go through the laundry list of men I’d consensually fucked, lest they end up on Shannon’s shit list as well.
I looked up to find his blue eyes burning with an icy-hot intensity I’d never seen there before, and quite honestly hoped to never see again.
“I have to go away for a few days. I have business to take care of.”
At first I thought he meant my professor, but then I remembered he had a job this week. I’d forgotten it in everything that had recently happened between us.
“Will you be okay alone a few days? Or do you want to come with me?” he asked.