Chapter 56
His wine is half gone by the time I finally speak. "I've been keeping something from you." I set my glass on the table before us and turn toward him. I don't need to draw attention to the conversation, his focus is complete, as it always is. He follows suit, setting down his wine, his eyes settling on me, the clench of his jaw the only sign of tension. I stare at that tightening muscle and wonder at it, the tic rarely seen in Brant. I swallow, trying to find the next sentence, my hands moving nervously as I attempt to pull together intelligent thought.
"Is this about the other man?" His voice is deadly calm. A calm I have never heard from him but would have expected in an angry version of Brant. Calculated. Controlled. Angry.
I blink. "What?"
"The other man you've been seeing." He says the words casually, but I see the tightness in his face, the stiff line of his mouth.
"What are you talking about?" Of course he knows. The man is brilliant. Can spot minute changes in a hundred pages of code. I haven't exactly hidden my behavior. I figured an absent man can't catch someone who-in his mind-doesn't exist.
"We're both intelligent adults, Layana. Don't play stupid." His voice is harder than I've ever heard it, yet quiet. He isn't a yeller. I swallow.
"Okay. Yes, in part this is about him. Just... bear with me for a minute. I'm getting there."
"I've been waiting for you to tell me. Waiting for you to explain what on Earth I am not providing for you." I can hear the threads of hurt in his voice. Small. Easily missed, yet in the structure of Brant's voice I hear them as loudly as if he is screaming.
"It's not what you think. I-"
"How long has it been? Five months? Longer? I suspected before, but didn't know for sure until we lived together." He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes intent on mine. Analyzing. Searching for truth among so many old lies.
"Two years."
That hurts. I see the flinch in his features. The swallow in his throat, the moisture that comes to the edges of his eyes. He drops his head to his hands. "Is this why you won't marry me?"
"Not in the way you think." I hadn't intended on my relationship with Lee to be the catalyst that started this conversation, but I move on. Let it open the door wider.
"Do you love him?"
I lean closer, hold Brant's hands and force his eyes to mine. "I love you. Everything about this has been about you."
He pulls his hands away. "Stop talking in fucking riddles, Lana, and tell me why."
"I need you to look at me. I need you to listen."
He does. He stops talking, he looks me in the eyes, and he focuses. Loses his ego, loses his hurt, and focuses on my words. Does what Brant was built to do. Analyze and interpret.
I give up the quest for the perfect words and dive in.
"His name is Lee. I met him in Mission Bay. He does odd landscaping jobs out there for cash. He was dating another girl for a large part of last year. I've been sleeping with him off and on for two years. I used to do it at my house, now I do it in the guesthouse. Lee is not his real name, it's an identity that he's adopted." I swallow, then go in for the kill. "Brant, his real identity... it's you. He's a personality your brain created, an identity that you adopt at times. Mostly during times of stress. You have a condition called dissociative identity disorder. It's what used to be called multiple personality disorder. I haven't been cheating on you. The other man... it's you. It's just a different side of you, one who has his own personality."
His expression doesn't change when I stop talking. He just stares into my eyes and listens to silence. Blinks a few times, long intervals between. "I'm thinking," he finally says. "Trying to decide if you are lying or if you sincerely believe what you just told me."
"I'm not lying."
His eyes hold mine. Studies them. Moves slightly as a process occurs behind them. "I believe that you mean what you're telling me," he says slowly. "That doesn't mean you aren't insane."
I smile slightly. "I'm not insane."
"One of us is. I'd much rather it be you." My smile drops.
"You're not insane."
"I'm absent-minded, I'm not living separate lives."
"I've been fucking your other personality for two years. You are."
"Do you love him?" The question, when repeated a second time, has entirely different tones.
"Yes." I blink, tears suddenly present, the wealth of my emotion at an all time high. It isn't fair to love a man in two different ways. One way is hard enough.
"More than me?"
"No."
"You are mistaken." A stubborn stick to his jaw.
"Jillian is the one who told me." A gamble, but those words are the ones that truly get his attention. He turns back to me.
"What?"
I move to the ground before him and kneel, my hands on his knees. "In Belize. The weekend you were going to first propose. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't find you. I went downstairs... and saw you in the bar. But you weren't yourself. You didn't recognize me. Introduced yourself as someone else-"
I stop, his form rising above me, stepping to the side, his hand roughly pushing me aside. Like Lee, not like Brant. I choke back the rest of my sentence.
"You're wrong. You were confused. Probably drunk."
I struggle to my feet, reaching for his hand and miss, frustration spreading through me. "No! I stood in the bar and you told me you didn't know me. You made a fool out of me, made me look crazy. You introduced yourself as someone else. Had your hands all over another woman. I left the bar and called Jillian. She told me." I lower my voice, his gaze finally back on my eyes. "She told me that you've suffered from DID since you were eleven. Since you became a savant. She said the doctor said you must never know. That you might have a mental break, lose Brant and adopt one of the other personas. Your parents, Jillian... they all know. They keep the secret to protect you!" My voice gives out on the last word, the hoarse rasp of the final work breaking the sentence in two.
He steps closer, his hands fisting, the calm stride of his voice no match for the frustration in his tone. "So why then, Layana, are you telling me this?"
"I can't..." I lose my nerve. Don't want to give voice to my selfish thoughts. "Lee... he wants me to choose. What you do in your other lives... I can't ignore that. I can't be your wife and know that when you are away from me, when you are living another life, that you are touching other women. Loving other women. I need you to be fully mine. I need you to love only me. Right now, I have you both. I love you both. But Lee... he wants me to choose. I can't lose him, Brant. I need to find a way to have you both, without losing either of you."
"So your plan was to tell me. To burden me with this."
"A part of me hoped it would be freeing."
"I want to speak with Jillian. I don't believe you."
"How can you love me, want to marry me, and think that I would lie about this?" I stare at him, wanting more, wanting the man I love to recognize the man I can't live without.
"It's inconceivable, Layana. What would you do if I told you that you had another person living inside of you?"
"But I don't."
"That's how I feel. I'm in my head all day long. Have been for almost forty years. Trust me, there's no one else up there."
With that, he turns away from me and heads inside. Less than a minute later, I hear the roar of his car.
I listen to him leave and wonder who will return.
