Reality Bites - Wattys 2018 Shortlist

Chapter 74 - In His Eyes

Dimitri had insisted the men clear the table and wash the dishes while Lissa and I chatted. Somehow Adrian had excluded himself, and so Lissa and I were playing with the bond while he looked on as the other four guys washed the dishes and reset the unit.

It seems the more we used the bond, the more we were able to control it. For instance, it was much easier to block each other now. Well actually not even blocking per se. More like putting up a mental 'do not disturb' sign. That was a huge relief for both of us. We were also discovering that there were different layers of our thoughts. The very topmost layer was like an open channel between Lissa and me. I just had to think a thought to her, and she'd respond. It didn't give us access to anything else the other was doing or thinking. Kind of like a mental walkie-talkie.

Just under that was a superficial layer of thoughts. The little observations and random thoughts that flitted across one another's minds. They were easy to tap into. It was almost like tuning a radio – if I wanted to, I could tap into that superficial mental self-chatter in Lissa and she with me.

'Honestly, Rose – I didn't realize you even curse in your thoughts' Lissa giggled through the bond. 'And you spend a lot of time having random thoughts about Dimitri's body.'

I just smiled at her and shrugged.

The deeper layers were trickier; some of them were memories, and they were harder to access. I could do it if Lissa were thinking about them, but I couldn't just randomly pull a memory from her mind. Also on that mid-level were our emotions and inner debates. So when I was in that level, if Lissa felt an emotion I could feel it too. But it was still 'read-only' – in that, I couldn't control those emotions, just feel them.

The deepest levels, as far as we could tell, were where we held our self-doubts, fears, most significant memories, our very strongest emotions and most firmly held beliefs. That's where Lissa held her memories of the night of the crash, and it's the level I'd inadvertently given her access to the night when I thought I'd lost Dimitri. It felt highly invasive to be accessing one another on that level, and it also required a lot of concentration and focus. We did discover it was easier if one of us made a conscious decision to show the other something on that level. But it was disturbing, and neither of us liked doing it. We mentally agreed to not go to there without permission unless it was an emergency.

As for being sucked into one another's heads, that hadn't happened since the infirmary. We discussed what had happened and came to the conclusion that with the bond now open, thoughts didn't need to force themselves through - and when one of us had a thought or feeling which was strong, it was easier for the other to block it.

Of course, Lissa had barely been able to block my thoughts the night of the farmhouse attack and not at all later in the infirmary.

'I think when something that huge happens – when one of us experiences emotions to that extreme – the other is always going to feel part of it,' Lissa said. 'And that's OK. We are bonded after all.'

I nodded, hugging her. She didn't need the bond to know how I was feeling right now. Loved up and supremely peaceful. Content. Of course, a full stomach tended to do that to me.

'And you think about food a lot as well' Lissa mentally muttered.

We looked at each other and just cracked up. I was nearly crying I was laughing so hard.

"What are you two laughing about?" Adrian asked, perplexed.

"Lissa's listening in on my random thoughts. Apparently, I swear, think about Dimitri's body and food a lot. There's gotta be a way I can combine those three things for an interesting evening," I joked.