“I don’t mind the silent treatment,” he grinned. “If I’d known sex was all it would take to stop you from being so sassy all the time, I’d have made my move a lot sooner. Give the girl an orgasm and she’s finally complaisant.”
“Complaisant? Did you get that off your word-of-the-day calendar, caveman?” I smiled, jabbing a sharp elbow into his stomach. He let out a smalloofas I connected, though my arm probably took most of the brunt from colliding with his steely abs. I fought the urge to rub feeling back into it, not wanting to look like the weakling I totally was.
“You’ll have to come over to my apartment and see,” he said with a wink. I’d never been to Finn’s apartment –I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about the fact that this god-like specimen of man actually had a bed and a toothbrush and maybe even a damn word-of-the-day calendar somewhere out there. The thought was staggering.
“Maybe sometime,” I murmured noncommittally.
“After my show tonight,” Finn countered decidedly. He hadn’t invited me or asked if I would be going – he simply informed me that I’d be there, as if my plans for the night were predetermined without any necessary consent on my part.
Overbearing caveman.
Casting a look at the microwave clock, he winced. “Speaking of, I have to get going. It’s already past three and we have a rehearsal before the set. We go on at nine.”
“At Styx, right?” I confirmed unnecessarily.Apiphobic Treasonrarely played at any other venues on campus because Styx was one of the few places that could accommodate such a big crowd. On a good night, their shows drew in over two hundred people.
Finn nodded, then leaned down so our faces were aligned and brought up both hands to cup my face. Staring into my eyes, he shook his head back and forth so our noses grazed lightly before tilting his head and giving me alight kiss goodbye.
“I’ll see you tonight, princess,” he whispered against my lips.
“If you’re lucky, caveman.”
“Oh, I’m lucky,all right,” he returned cockily, eyes twinkling as he no doubt remembered how veryluckyhe’d gotten both last night and this morning. I rolled my eyes as I watched him walk out of the kitchen, but even my exasperation with him was starting to feel forced. If I were being honest with myself – which, let’s face it, was a rare occurrence – I’d have to admit how happy I was feeling at that exact moment.Iwas the lucky one – and ‘lucky’ was definitely not something I’d ever considered myself before now.
My heart literally fluttered in my chest as I heard the distant click of the front door closing, marking Finn’s departure. He’d only just left, but I already found myself checking the time and counting down the hours until his show tonight, when I’d see him again.
I barely recognized this girl I was becoming, and I knew it was all because of Finn.
What in the hell have I gotten myself into?
Chapter Twelve
Cliff’s Edge
“And you have no memories of this boyother than those from your dreams?” Dr. Angelini asked.
If I’d been expecting her to express shock or even mild surprise at my revelation of the sad-eyed boy in my dreams, I would have been sincerely disappointed – her face was utterly unresponsive as she leveled me with her clinical stare.
“I don’t havemany clear memories from my time in the foster system,” I admitted. “Until now, it’s mostly been fuzzy images. Sometimes, a particular smell or taste would trigger a vague memory, but nothing has ever been this vivid before.”
“When you say vivid—” Dr. Angelini began, seeking clarification.
“When I have one of the dreams, it’s like I’m six years old again, reliving things in real-time. It’s so real – more real than almost anything I’ve ever felt.”
Mymind reeled through a series of images: the hands of two lost children clasped tightly; a swarm of fireflies meandering through untamed bracken; the dark night sky, swirling with stars far beyond our reach.
I looked away from her unflinching stare, steering my gaze out the large windows over her shoulder. She had a great view – I wonderedabsently whether she ever took the time to enjoy it. It was hard to imagine Dr. Angelini looking anywhere other than inside the skulls of her patients.
“Do the dreams upset you?”she asked.
My eyes drifted back to her face, which, unsurprisingly, was blank of any true emotion. Despite her unruffled serenity, I could see the alertness in her eyes and knew that she was highly focused on everything I was saying. The mind hidden beneath that smooth blonde chignon was constantly analyzing and evaluating, picking apart everything I said and inferring the things I’d purposefully left out. More than once, I had to remind myself that this torture was self-imposed – that it wasgoodfor me.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But not because of what happens in them. It’s more upsetting because I feel like I don’t even know my own mind. I suddenly have all these memories I never knew about, just locked away in my subconscious – it makes me wonder what else I’ve forgotten or blocked out.”
“The human mind is a complex thing, Brooklyn.Even after decades of research and despite the revolutionary development of brain imaging machines, we still are virtually no closer to understanding how the brain functions, let alonewhyit works the way it does.”
I noddedin agreement; I’d taken Pysch 101 freshman year – none of this was news to me.
“And memory is one of the most mysterious and complex mental processes of all,” she continued. "We really don’t know how the brain stores and recalls information; all wedoknow is that memories are rarely brought to the surface randomly. Typically, there is a trigger of some kind, which creates a mental association between a current sensory stimulus and one that has been stored away in the mind.”