SLEEPSONG (BoyxBoy)✔️

Chapter 47

"--and then, he let me go, but you wanna know the weird part?" I finally finished, shaking my head in blatant confusion. "I feel weirdly guilty about leaving, and I feel like I don't... deserve the kindness that Woody is giving me, like I did somethin---"

"I've heard enough," Louise suddenly interrupted, and I closed my mouth; she was looking at me with an unreadable glance. "You are, truly, suffering from Stockholm syndrome. You literally just confirmed it."

Confusion and alarm flooded through me as I uttered, "I am? I did?"

"Yes," Louise said, taking a second to yawn before she fixed me with a serious stare. "Listen, the guilt you're feeling for leaving him might - and I say this very hesitantly - might be a bit natural considering how convoluted your relationship is, but feeling as though you don't deserve kindness from others at the same time? That's the biggest symptom."

"But, Louise, it might not be just Stockholm syndrome," I said quietly, and I don't know why I felt that way, but now that I could think clearly, I did. "I've... hated myself for a very, very long time, and I've been sad for even longer. I don't... want to be a vampire. I hate it. I hate what I am, hate what I have to do to keep living, hate everything about it."

"Becoming a vampire wasn't your fault," Louise told me, but I looked away.

"I don't know that," I muttered, and she stared. "I don't even remember how I became a vampire. All I know is that sometime after my nineteenth birthday, I supposedly disappeared from my bed in the middle of the night and went missing for an entire month. Nobody could find me, but the weirdest part is, I don't remember it even happening. There's a huge gap in my memory, a black space where time's just been... cut out."

"Cut out?" she asked carefully, staring at me with furrowed brows. "So, wait, you have amnesia about how you became a vampire? True amnesia?"

"I guess so."

"And... you've never had flashbacks or felt a tickle, like a memory was behind your eyes?"

"No," I muttered. "I don't have flashbacks or anything, it's like that month never even happened. I literally went to sleep on July nineteenth and woke up on September second thinking it was the twentieth of July, and even though I didn't realize it at the time, I was already a vampire when I woke up."

Louise stared at me with her eyes glinting with a twinge of fear. I didn't blame her. I didn't like thinking about that situation either because I literally did not know what had happened to me, and I didn't even know if I wanted to know.

"Well, it doesn't change where you are now, or who you are now," she said after a long silence, shaking herself free of her stupor. "Look. I can't say, with absolute conviction, what you should do as far as Sebastian is concerned, but I can tell you this. Go out and do something fun."

I blinked, confused. "Uh... what?"

"You heard me," she said, nodding at me. "Go out and do something fun. This Woody guy, he's a decent man from the sound of things, and although he may have his own demons thanks to this Nang family situation you mentioned, he saved your life and gave you the opportunity to have some space to figure things out. So, I recommend asking him to take you to a place that's full of humans or werewolves, take whatever pick you think is best, and go have fun."

"You mean, like, dancing?" I proffered, thinking back to my clubbing days when I'd been out on the dance floor, breaking a sweat and feeling great, every part of me tingling, alive... joyful. Full of delight, energy, excitement, innocence, before love had found me and jaded me, warped me, made me so afraid of other people.