Moore is not a resident of Aynsville. It appears he is visiting the town, but police are not commenting on his reasons for being here. They ask that anybody who has any information on the shooting to contact them as soon as possible.
“You’re alive.”
Alannah pursed her lips and touched Jeremiah’s name on the monitor with one finger.
“I can’t lose you again.”
She read the online story a second time but there wasn’t any information she didn’t notice the first time. It didn’t look like anyone would consider her a suspect, since there wasn’t enough of a description to identify her.
Liberty Hospital was only a mile from her apartment. She remembered it from when she had lived in the town. In fact, that was where she and Savannah were born.
By the time she arrived at the hospital it was mid-morning. The sun was shining, making it a perfect autumn day. She wanted to keep that perfect feeling alive.
Alannah went to the reception desk and smiled at the middle-aged woman sitting there. The woman appeared tired as she frowned. It seemed to Alannah that she would always look that way.
“I’d like to see Jeremiah Moore, please. Can you tell me what room he’s in?”
“Moore?”
“Yes. He was admitted here four days ago.”
“I know who he is. Are you a relative?”
Alannah hesitated. “I’m . . . we’re going to be married.”
“You’re engaged?”
“Yes.”
The woman (“Christine” according to her name badge) stared at Alannah.
“How long have you been engaged?”
Alannah could imagine the nurse putting the word “engaged” in air quotes.
“Is that really important?”
“Just a minute.”
Christine picked up a phone and dialed a number. She spoke too softly for Alannah to hear what she said.
“Wait there.” The nurse pointed at a chair nearby.
Within two minutes, a police officer arrived. He was the opposite of Christine: young, bright, and attentive. His hand wasn’t far from his gun, which made Alannah reconsider if this had been a good idea.
“Ma’am? You’re here to see Jeremiah Moore?”
“Yes.”
Alannah stood up and faced the cop.
“And you are his fiancée?”
“Yes.”
“You may be the only person in the town that knows him. One witness indicated she thought a woman shot him.”
“It wasn’t me.”
She knew she sounded defensive.
He turned to the nurse and lifted an eyebrow. She was just replacing the phone.
“He says he’d like to see her.”
The officer asked her name and address. She was glad that he didn’t ask for any identification. It’d be hard to explain why she said her name was Alannah when all her ID said Savannah.
Once he was satisfied he had what he needed, he walked her down a series of hallways to a private room. He opened the door and entered with her.
Jeremiah was in a wheelchair. Even so, he was smiling and leaning forward, as if he’d been hoping for a miracle and that miracle had just walked through the door.
“Alannah, it’s you.” His voice was soft, and that meant he was happy. She’d knew all his moods from the slightest change in his voice.
She ran to him, wanting to jump into his lap, but held back at the last second.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Hold me.”
She did. She leaned in and put her arms around him, letting him decide how strongly to hug her. His chest was bandaged heavily.
“Oh, God. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you,” she said.
“Me too.”
He held her face in his hands and kissed her lips, tasting her.
They kissed and hugged and didn’t have to say anything for several minutes. At some point, the police officer left the room.
Finally she sat in a chair beside him and held his hand.
“I met your sister.”
“Yes, she told me.”
“I’m glad. She looks like you, but the second you came in the door I knew it was you and not her. There’s something about you. You’ve always been so quiet and gentle. I love that about you.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand.
“I’m so sorry I left you.”
“Where have you been?”
Alannah shook her head. “It’s a long story, for another time. I’m just glad we found each other again.”
He nodded.
She asked, “Do they have any leads on who shot you?”
“Not as far as I know. They don’t really tell me much. I couldn’t help, because I didn’t see anything. I can only guess it was some crazy person.”
“Probably.”
“When can you leave the hospital?”
“I think it’ll be on Sunday.”
She nodded. “Three more days. I’ll be looking forward to that.”
She kissed him again and then just held him, loving the feel of his body touching hers.
* * *
Three days later, she was there. She’d actually been in his room almost non-stop since that first visit, only going home to sleep.
She didn’t allow Savannah to have the body and certainly not the little boy. Savannah seemed to understand, not sending out any concerns. The boy was irritable, and Alannah kept having to push him back down. There was no way he could overpower her to take control while she was awake, and even when she slept, he was too immature to be able to do it. Most of the time, at least.
* * *
Jeremiah waited and when Alannah came to visit him on Sunday morning, he was as happy as he could ever remember. He was leaving with the girl he loved.
He could walk well, but he took it fairly slow on the advice of the doctors. They didn’t want him ripping open his wound.
The bullet had scrambled his chest but somehow missed anything vital. His left lung had been grazed and some blood vessels were severed, which had led to a huge mess, but he was thankful that no serious damage was done.
The cops still had no clue who had shot him, and that bothered him. He’d heard rumors at the hospital.
“It was that girl, for sure,” some said. “She matches what that witness said, and he doesn’t even know anybody else around here. Who else could it have been?”
Jeremiah wanted to tell the whisperers to shut the fuck up, but . . . but, he didn’t have a better alternative as to what happened.
He tried not to think about that.
As they drove to Alannah’s place, she pointed out the schools she had attended and the people and other places that had some connection to her. He loved hearing every word. The town was much smaller than any place he’d ever lived, but he could imagine living here with her forever.
When they got to the apartment, Jeremiah was surprised to find that Alannah had planned an elaborate dinner consisting of sautéed scallops laid out on a bed of linguini cooked with mushrooms and a white wine sauce. It’d been a long time since he’d had such a nice meal, and he savored every bite.
Later, they ended up in bed together. Alannah was careful not to hurt him. She told him to lie on his back and she lowered herself onto him.
It felt so good to feel him enter her. It’d been so long, and at times he figured he’d never again be with a woman, since she was the only one he’d ever wanted.
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, and his last thought was that he’d never been happier.
Chapter 26
2020
It was morning twilight the next day when Jeremiah awoke. He felt Alannah’s hand stroking him and smiled. He was already hard and wanted to make love to her again, and it seemed she was just as interested.
“Shh . . . ,” she whispered when she realized he was awake. “Just let me do this. Relax.”
He nodded and closed his eyes again, enjoying the feel of her hand. He felt as aroused
as the first time they had made love last night.
“I’ve missed you,” she said. “I’ve thought about fucking you every day for the past four years.”
He barely heard her. She was rubbing him harder.
“I’m close . . .”
“Don’t you dare come without me!” She let go of him and leaned over to kiss him hard on the mouth. Her tongue slid inside and played with his. He reached over and felt her hard nipples, wanting to suck them but not wanting to break the kiss.
After a few moments, she moved to kiss his chest and he rubbed her hair.
“I love you,” he said.
He could feel her nod as she moved down his body, kissing him all the way down until she took his shaft into her mouth and sucked. She pushed down as far as she could and let him feel the warmth of her mouth surround his cock. Her hands cupped his testicles, although he wasn’t paying much attention to that.
He clenched the sheets, trying not to have an orgasm. It wasn’t like her to be so aggressive, but he loved the change, and he remembered back to those few occasions years ago when she was more aggressive than normal.
“I want you inside me,” she said.
Alannah climbed on top of Jeremiah and lowered herself onto him.
He could see her beautiful body and he loved it. He wanted to be with her forever.
She stared at him and smiled, a broad, captivating smile. He loved the way her hair bounced on her, how her cheeks were so lovely, and her eyes . . . well, they were more honed and sharper than normal, but that may have been the lighting.
Still . . .
She started to move up and down on him.
“I’ve missed fucking you. I forgot how good it felt,” she said.
She groaned and bounced harder.
The night before, she’d been gentle, soft and slow, as she usually was. This morning, she was hard and looking out for herself. He could see in her eyes that she wanted only her own pleasure.
She pushed down hard and held him deep in her. He felt an amazing rush of pleasure as she somehow squeezed his cock over and over with her pussy.
He wanted to come. He needed to.
Jeremiah reached around her to reach for her ass and pushed her down even harder.
“Ooh . . . Squeeze my nipples.”
He did as he was asked.
“Harder. Hurt me!”
Jeremiah was reluctant but squeezed her nipples harder. She groaned again and he increased the pressure.
She leaned back as she came, and that excited him even more.
“God, I love this!” she screamed.
It was the scream that was the last clue. Alannah just wouldn’t do that.
He looked up at her and into her eyes.
“You’re . . . you’re not . . .”
She moved up and down on him again and laughed. “You love it!”
He couldn’t help himself. He was coming and he grabbed at her body again, wanting to feel her all the way down.
Part of him wanted to stop, didn’t want to betray Alannah, but his body wouldn’t let him. He came, the longest orgasm he could remember, and it was pure pleasure.
But at the same time, he felt horrible. When he was spent, he relaxed and stared at the face looking down. She was still smiling.
“Thank you,” she said. “I really did miss you.”
“You’re Savannah.”
She just laughed again. “Took you a long time to figure that out, didn’t it?”
He stared at the woman who was a twin to his soul mate. He still couldn’t believe that he hadn’t realized it wasn’t her.
His cock had softened but was still inside the awful sister.
“How could you do that?” he finally asked. He moved her away from him and she stood beside the bed.
“Not a big deal.”
She stood there, defying him to disagree. He just shook his head.
“Where is Alannah?”
“I’m going for a shower.”
She turned and left the room and disappeared, slamming the bathroom door behind her. He heard her lock it.
Now that she was gone, Jeremiah felt a rush of guilt. How would he ever explain to Alannah that he had made love to her sister? Would she forgive him?
And how could he be sure it wouldn’t happen again?
A stray idea crossed his mind: maybe it had happened before. She’d said she missed him. He pushed the thought away, not ready to deal with it.
The room was getting lighter as the sunrise brought life to another day.
Jeremiah found his clothes and dressed. He didn’t know if he should wait around or leave, but he wanted to find Alannah. It was important that he talk to her before Savannah did.
The apartment was small and he heard the shower as he paced in the living area. There were two old armchairs and a damaged coffee table, probably second hand. A small TV perched on a bookcase. The armchairs were not positioned in that direction, making him wonder if they ever used the TV.
The bookcase was filled with notebooks, all identical in size. Most of them had black covers and a spiral spine, like notebooks a college student might use, but smaller.
He took one from the bookshelf and flipped it open.
It took him no time to realize these were journals or diaries shared by Alannah and Savannah. The entries mostly alternated.
What he also noticed immediately was that the handwriting of the two girls was identical.
That puzzled him.
He grabbed some other volumes at random, years earlier than the first one he looked at. Although the writing style had changed a little over a decade, the girls still wrote identically.
“How is that possible?”
Jeremiah put the books back and saw a smaller stack of books on the bottom shelf. They were heavy hardcovers with titles like The DID Bible, How to Live With DID, and The Clinic Psychology of Dissociative Identity Disorder.
He had no idea what the topic meant until he read the jacket of the first one.
Once called a Split Personality and subsequently Multiple Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identify Disorder is one of the strangest and rarest of psychological situations.
Two, three, or more individual personalities sharing the same body can be waved off as nonsense by those unfamiliar with the situation, but it’s a real and very scary phenomenon.
This book will help patients and their friends and families cope with this strange condition.
“What the hell?
He flipped through the book, but none of it felt real to him. How could one person have more than one personality? That was crazy.
The noise from the shower stopped and he put the book back.
Is it possible?
Savannah opened the bathroom door and walked to him. She was wearing a bathrobe loosely tied in front. Jeremiah could see most of her breasts and he found himself staring.
She laughed. “Like what you see?”
He blinked. “You’re trying to tell me that you and Alannah are both here, right? Can she hear me?”
“No, she can’t. It’s like she’s in a coma now. We refer to it as sleeping. We’re both real in every way. She may have an empathic feeling for what is happening now but she gets no real information. That’s why we have those.” She pointed at the diaries. “So that we each know what the body has been up to while the other is in control.”
“The body?”
She shrugged. “What would you call it?”
“I want to speak to Alannah.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Savannah walked over to the window and looked out.
“I’m not sure I want to hand over the body right now.”
“I need to talk to her.”
She shrugged. “I think you should go now.”
“Why won’t you let her talk to me?”
She shook her head.
Jeremiah felt frustrated and all of a sudden, a swell of anger overcame him. He recognized the fe
eling from the years when he couldn’t control his temper, and he immediately felt like he wanted to just fucking hit the bitch and force her to let Alannah out.
He marched to her and grabbed her upper arm, turning her around.
“Hey! Let me go.”
He shook her hard.
“Let me talk to Alannah. I need to talk to her, not to you.”
“No!”
Without any conscious intent, Jeremiah found his hands on her neck, squeezing. His head felt like it was going to explode with rage. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but at the same time there was no way he could stop. His hands squeezed harder, and Savannah gasped and choked, trying in vain to push his hands away with her own.
Her eyes were wide and begging him to stop, but he only squeezed harder.
“Alannah, please come out,” he said. “I’ll stop if you come out.”
Her voice was dull. “If she comes out now, she’ll never share the body again.”
Savannah tried to kick him but he was pushed against her and she couldn’t gain any leverage. Her flailing was ineffectual and as he kept the pressure on, the fight left her and her arms dropped. Her eyelids started to close and—
Then she gasped with newborn energy.
The eyes were different. They were confused and scared, but Jeremiah saw the gentleness behind them.
He let go of her immediately and caught her before she fell to the floor.
Alannah choked and gasped for air. He helped her to sit on the couch.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I lost control and thought that was the only way I could find you again.”
She coughed. It took her several minutes before she could breathe easily again.
“What happened?” she asked.
He didn’t know exactly how to answer. He was too ashamed to talk about how he’d made love with her twin earlier, even though that was really the start of what she needed to know.
“I saw the books. Your journals and the texts.”
“Oh.”
“Savannah wouldn’t let you talk to me. I lost my temper with her and—well, you’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
Jeremiah could see that she was a totally different person. The girl he loved was back. She was sweet and loving and shy, and he needed to protect her against everything. Even her own sister.
Soul Mates Page 16
