Tabula Rasa (19 page)

“Stop it!” I said more firmly, pushing his hands away. This man
had the power to halt my degree in its tracks. He could fail me, and
then the only way I’d have a hope of salvaging my future was if I
reported him. But wouldn’t that be convenient? It would be my word
against his, and with the stakes involved, he could just say I was
trying to get a grade I hadn’t earned by threatening his career.

And since
that party
had become common knowledge all over the
school, I’d be treated like the whore who cried wolf.

“Don’t worry, no one will walk in on us,” he said. As if that
were the problem rather than his abuse of position and the general
grossness of this whole thing. He wasn’t even some sexy youngish
professor. He was old enough to be my father and short and balding
and not exactly fit. How could he pretend surprise that I didn’t
want him or this? Some men only accepted
no
from a woman who
kept her pussy under total lock and key. Because why should a few men
get to have fun with you but not all of them? Forget the fact that
the frat guys I’d fucked had looked like underwear models and had
been my age. Nope. One dick gets in, they all get in.

I used every bit of mental power I possessed to...
WAKE UP, wake
up right now, Elodie! Wake up!

My heart beat wildly as I bolted upright in bed, taking in the
darkness of my room in Shannon’s house. It was safe and quiet. I
didn’t even question why I felt safe in Shannon’s house. I did.
And that was that.

I wasn’t sure if I remembered everything about my past or not. But
I remembered enough. I wondered if the earlier escalation of the
games with Shannon had triggered the unlocking of my most powerful
and vivid memory before the accident. I was beyond grateful that I’d
woken before having to live it over again. My professor had taken me
to a
second location
. Because of course he had. No wonder that
idea had pulsed through my mind randomly even before my memory had
returned.

The campus had been largely shut down for the holidays. And because I
didn’t have anything in the way of family to go home to, I’d
stayed behind in the lab to catch up on some extra work. It had
seemed baffling to me at the time why he’d chosen to switch venues.
At least until we’d gotten to his house.

He hadn’t killed me, obviously, but he may as well have. Because he
liked the kink, too. And if he liked the kink, and I liked the kink,
well then what was the problem? Fuck my agency. I was
that kind of
girl, goddammit!
When he’d finally let me go the next day,
swearing up and down that if I told anyone, nobody would believe a
word out of my filthy whore mouth, I’d packed my shit up and left.
At least everyone was away for the holidays, and I wouldn’t have to
answer any uncomfortable questions.

I’d left my schooling in the dust, afraid to even try to transfer
somewhere else, afraid his vengeance would follow me. I’d moved to
Florida and just lived off the money my biological father—who I
still didn’t know—had given me. He’d been generous. He’d set
me up for life. He’d even paid for school above and on top of the
money he’d dropped into an account for me.

I had thought at the time if only I knew who he was, maybe he would
have done something about the professor so I could finish my
education, but I was sure he wouldn’t want to get entangled in my
frat house sex scandal—not if he couldn’t even handle the shame
of having fathered me in the first place.

In Florida, I’d met Trevor. On paper, he’d looked great.
Good-looking successful doctor. But something had felt
wrong
about him early on. I’d been trying to forget about what happened
at school. I didn’t want to think there was something broken or
wrong about me now—something I couldn’t get back. When I ended
things with Trevor, not long after they began, he started to stalk
me. I hadn’t gotten a restraining order because, hell, what good
would that do? It would just piss him off more, and it wasn’t as if
that piece of paper was a magical shield that could protect me.

The most fucked-up part of all of it was that the accident that
landed me in the hospital involved Trevor chasing me in a car like
the crazed lunatic he clearly was. And then, I’d been entrusted to
his care in the hospital because no one had known any better.

Trevor’s car hadn’t been involved in the accident. I’d gone off
the road. And beyond that, everything was a blank. The brief flash of
him in the white room must have been when I’d woken in the hospital
and hadn’t remembered anything. That must have been when he’d put
his plan in motion.

I’d never fallen in that pirate ship. Trevor must have carefully
placed me there and waited for me to wake up into the sinister
reality he’d manufactured for us. All those scars... they’d been
fresher than I’d wanted to admit when I’d first caught my
reflection in a mirror. Probably injuries I’d sustained in the
crash. And that strange weakness when I’d woken up in the ship...
it was probably from the coma and not using any of my muscles for
however long I’d been out. I was sure someone had moved my arms and
legs to try to keep atrophy at bay, but I still would have needed
physical therapy. No wonder I’d felt so weak and helpless and
confused when I’d woken in the forest.

I scooted back down under the covers and tried to close my eyes
again. I’d had nightmares before at Shannon’s house, and I’d
gone back to sleep. But somehow I knew this was different. Before,
I’d been a broken glass object held together by the glue of my lack
of memory. But now there was no glue. I wanted to go back to before,
when all my mind held were missing, gaping holes of lost stories. I
wanted the blank slate again. It was safe and comforting.

When I closed my eyes now, all I could see was that night with
Professor Stevens in his house, tied down to a bed in his basement...
his belt tearing through belt loops and then leaving red welts across
my bared flesh. No wonder the first night when Shannon had tied me to
his bed had caused that sense of panic I couldn’t quite nail down.
It was as if a whisper of the memory was already working its way
through, trying to protect me from a repeat experience.

In some ways, I was grateful things had moved forward with Shannon
before I was in possession of my memories. After, I’m not sure I
would have had the courage for it.

I got up and slipped out of the room. Down the hall, the white cat
lay just outside Shannon’s door. She hissed at me as I got close. I
couldn’t bring myself to open the door. I was afraid of how he
might react to me barging into his private space.

If I didn’t want him, would that change anything? Would he just do
the same as my professor had and fuck me for being
that kind of
girl
in the first place?

But hypotheticals hardly mattered. The fact was that I
did
want him. I wanted him so much it made my teeth hurt. I’d never
wanted another human being the way I’d wanted Shannon. And now that
I had my history back, I could say that with some authority.

I thought back to our last time together earlier in the night. I
tried to determine if his body inside of mine had created any lasting
trauma... in light of my new memories. But I couldn’t find any.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to go in there. Shannon hadn’t
invited me to start sleeping in his bed like his girlfriend or
anything. Whatever thing he felt for me, it was something new to him,
and visiting him with my problems would likely only push him further
away. After all, feelings were only really desirable if they were
good, and Shannon was still so new at any feelings at all. Maybe he
would determine human entanglements were far too much trouble—that
I was too much trouble—and just shut the whole thing down.

Finally, the white cat became annoyed with my pacing back and forth
in indecision to the point that she was ready to do something about
it. She stood up and let out that long, insane Emergency Broadcast
Meow—the one that could probably wake the dead with its length,
volume, and insistence.

Shannon stomped over to the door and ripped it open. “What!?”

I jumped, and the cat fled.

His tone softened. “Oh. What is it, Elodie?”

I shook my head and turned to go back to my room. “Nothing. It’s...
it’s nothing.” What the hell was I going to say to him? I didn’t
know even now the full extent of what he wanted from me. But I was
pretty sure what he wanted wasn’t to have to become my therapist.
He wouldn’t know what to do... how to erase this, fix this, make it
all go away. Assuming he wanted to.

As far as I was concerned, losing my memory was perhaps the best
thing that had ever happened to me, and even the ugliness of the
theme park months with Trevor didn’t erase the soundness of that
basic principle.

Shannon caught my hand and pulled me back. “What is it?”

Could there really be concern in his eyes? Concern for my welfare? Or
did I just want it to be there? Was it a fake emotion he’d
practiced with the dedication of a theatre major, or was there the
kernel of something genuine behind it? Weren’t even actors so good
at faking an emotion because they understood how it felt to begin
with?

“Nothing,” I said. “Just... I’m going back to sleep.”

But Shannon wasn’t having it. He pulled me into the bedroom with
him and nudged the door shut behind us, which set off shrill outrage
from the white cat, who by this point had come back only to realize I
was being allowed into the one room in the house she was consistently
barred from.

“Shut the hell up!” Shannon barked at the closed door.

The cat made one last angry snippy yowl, then shut up.

Without another word, he guided me to the bed and pulled back the
blankets. He wrapped his body around mine like a guy who understood
how comfort worked.

And in that moment, I believed him.

He didn’t push or pry or ask for anything, either physically or
emotionally, from me. He just held me and let me sleep. In his arms,
I didn’t worry about Professor Stevens coming back, not even in
dreams. Because if he did, I knew Shannon would fucking kill him
without a second thought.

Chapter Eight

I woke the next morning to a tray of coffee and toast in bed. This
might seem like the most mundane and bland thing. For a normal man in
a normal household, this would be just something moderately nice and
considerate that nearly anyone would do for someone they cared about
if they were sick or had a bad night. But Shannon wasn’t exactly
normal by anybody’s metric. It was huge that he’d broken his
no
food outside the kitchen
rule for me. At least I thought it was.
If I hadn’t been sure before that he truly did feel something
toward me, I was sure now.

I was beginning to see sociopathy as not a black or white—either
you are or you aren’t—kind of deal, but rather a spectrum. On one
end were your serial killers who didn’t have a single thing in
their life that wasn’t entirely for show—every displayed emotion
carefully calculated for the maximum socially appropriate impact.
Then on the other extreme were the people so empathetic that they
were too sensitive to ever watch even a single bit of news on TV
without bursting into tears and being depressed for the rest of the
day.

Most of us lived somewhere in the middle of all this. We didn’t cry
when random people got swept away in a tsunami on the other end of
the world, but we’d be upset if our neighbor’s kid skinned his
knee in our backyard. In a way, human nature seemed to have designed
us for sociopathic indifference toward distant strangers from other
tribes and caring empathy toward our own small group. Toward that
end, Shannon was just extremely fine-tuned for survival.

Being with him made me wish I’d majored in psychology rather than
botany. Knowing with more authority than hunches and mere guesses how
the human mind worked might come in handy here. But if it was like
the other sciences, nobody really agreed on any but the most basic
principles. There were theories and notions and people in this camp
and others in that one. Nothing prepared one for the live study of a
thing or person right there in front of you.

I was beginning to firmly believe that Shannon did in fact feel real
emotions, and not just selfish ones that only pertained to himself
and his own outcome. He might not have a big circle of people he
would protect and defend, but he had one. I still didn’t fully
understand—and I don’t think he did either—how I came to be in
it, but nevertheless, there I was.

And despite his warnings to scare me before going to his parents’
house, I was convinced he felt more than casual disinterest toward
them as well, even if the feelings were vague and not strong enough
to fully quantify. Like he’d said, their parenting had made a
difference in the type of monster he’d grown into. He had to feel
something
with regards to that. Didn’t he? Also, I was
pretty sure if his house were on fire, he’d grab the white cat on
his way out the door.

Shannon sat in a sleek gray chair across the room, quietly observing
me while I had my coffee and toast.

“Thank you,” I said.

He just nodded.

The tray was a simple white porcelain. Plain. Zen. Minimalist like
everything else he owned. The plates were square and white as if
ready for gourmet edible art to be splashed across them to the
delight of some food critic somewhere. The coffee cup was plain and
white as well, steam still rising up off the hot black brew.

Along with the toast, he’d brought raspberry jam. He’d already
slathered the butter on, so that it would soften and melt against the
heat of the bread. I spread the jam on top and poured some cream he’d
brought in a tiny white creamer into my coffee. He knew by now that I
didn’t take sugar, so he hadn’t brought any.