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I didn’t feel the least bit compelled to balk at having his arm around me, holding me against his chest despite our need to clean up. It was just… quiet.
But of course, quiet always brought along such pesky thoughts.
“Why do you think they let us keep our names?”
From the way he flinched, the immediate change in his breathing pattern, I realized he must’ve fallen back asleep.
“What?” he asked groggily, probably thinking he’d missed some sort of lead-in for my out-of-the-blue – to him – question.
I adjusted my position, pointing my gaze to meet his. “You said you heard my name on the news, right?Dacia Pelletier.Well, Dacia isn’t the most common name. It’s recognizable. So you would think, if the idea was for us to become other people, to so easily slip into whatever role the client demanded… you’d think of all the things they took – everything they made us forget… why would they leave us with our names?”
“I’ve actually read something about that before,” he answered, settling in comfortably again, with his thumb tracing a circle on my bare hip. “Supposedly, it’s tough to convince someone of a new name – like, it’s imprinted on us. You can make them doubt a memory, reshape those memories, alter their entire backstory in their mind. But yournameis too permanently etched.”
I frowned. “What about people with like… true amnesia? Brain injuries and such.”
“That’s a different thing – usually with stuff like that, there’s other damage, to parts you want to keep intact.”
“I think you’re bullshitting me.”
“I’mnot,” he laughed. “Now, I’m not saying it’s true, just that I read it, and it made sense. Stripping us of our names without fucking up our brains beyond repair was too much hassle. So we got to keep that, and nothing else. Because they knew they were gonna fuck us up so bad it wouldn’t ever matter, not for most of us.”
“Why do you say that? That it doesn’t matter?”
He shrugged. “Because… even now, I may know my first name, but what else? I don’t have a surname, a year I was born, a country of origin, none of that. I’m just… here. And what am I gonna do – get a fucking blood test or something?”
“Why not?”
Isaiah’s face pulled into a scowl. “Why, after engaging in international espionage, murder, kidnapping, and whatever the fuck else would I not want to have a blood test?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“Right,” he chuckled. “So… yeah. Limbo is just my state of being, for now. Unless something big comes back to me, which… I doubt. Have you gotten anything back? Like, from your childhood?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Mostly just… fragments. Alicia thinks it’s a slow detox kinda situation. The longer you’re out, the more that comes back. It hasn’t been very long for you, so… just know that it’s coming. And hope that you don’t get back anything that should’ve stayed lost.”
“Did that happen to you?”
I pushed out a sigh. “Not a lot, but… some. The night my father was killed and my sister and I were taken… could’ve gone without that,” I told him. “I kinda stopped doing too much prying, after that. Because really, what good can come of it, you know? I’ve got enough to heal from. And rather spend the time making fresh memories, and just… living.”
“But you don’t want to leaveeverythingback there, right? The time we had together… was that not a wonderful memory for you?”
“Of course it was,” I assured him, shifting positions so I was looking at him head-on. “All of that is still clear as a bell. The butterflies you gave me, the excitement of knowing I would see you, the things you taught me about protecting myself… and the fact that you tried to convince me I was just imagining something between us.”
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, as his hand moved to rest against the small of my back. “I… guess you’ve got a point there. But you already know, that—”
“Wasn’t what it seemed, yeah,” I told him. “But… that doesn’t erase the feeling.”
“I know. So… tell me how I make it right.”
I thought about it for a moment, then leaned in to press my lips to his. “Show me how youreallyfeel.”
* * *
He was asleep.
Again.
Since I’d already woken him once to satisfy my urges, I let him be.
