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Major was surfing Amazon on his phone, waiting for Liv to come to bed, completely content for once. He had Liv, he felt good, no pesky side effects from his dalliance with the Utopium, and no one at Max Rager seemed to have caught on to what was happening to the zombies from the list. Life was about as good as it could get.

Liv came in from the bathroom and without looking up, he said, "Hey, would it be weird if I got Minor a tiny Seahawks jersey and on the back it said 'Ruff L. Wilson'?" He grinned at the idea.

He was taken aback when her response was to brandish a bottle of shampoo at him and demand to know who the bitch was who was using his shower.

"Uh …"

She didn't even give him a moment to collect his thoughts. "Or did you suddenly switch to Sinful Diva shampoo? 'For the shine that gets him to notice you'?" He couldn't tell if she was offended by the presence of the bottle or the vaguely sexist ad slogan or both.

Major squinted at the bottle. "Oh. That's Ravi's. Smell it."

She did, still frowning, even as she admitted that it did smell like Ravi.

"You okay?"

Liv put the bottle down on the nightstand and shifted the covers to get into bed. "I'm gonna plead temporary insanity."

"Hey, a little jealousy makes a guy feel wanted." He went back to browsing for cute dog outfits. His phone beeped while he was scrolling, and Liv glanced sharply at it.

"Little late for a text, isn't it?"

He looked at her, shutting down the browser. "But let's not overplay it." She'd been possessive in the past, but never suspicious. Possessive could be hot. Suspicious was just annoying.

Liv met his eyes, then looked back at the phone, still appearing distressed. He could see her working to calm herself down. "Right. Sorry. Brain."

"Yeah, I figured." Major left it at that, not wanting to say something he might regret later in his increasing irritation with the way the brains affected their lives. "Come here." He switched off the light and snuggled down under the covers, pulling Liv close, feeling the way her body slowly relaxed against him. They would get through this, she'd eat another brain in a day or two, and they'd move on, he told himself. But it was a long while before he could get his own body to relax enough to sleep.

She wasn't in bed when he woke up, and he assumed she must have had to go in to work early. He wandered down the hall toward the bathroom, hearing a faint sniffing sound as he got close, recognizing the voice as not Ravi's through his early morning fog seconds before he saw her. "Liv?"

Liv was sitting on the toilet seat, fully dressed, with his phone in her hands, distressed almost to the point of tears. "Who's Rita?" she demanded.

The fog dissipated fast, leaving him all too clear on the situation. "You went through my phone?"

"'Yesterday was so hot. Hope there were no security cameras in that elevator'," she read from the old texts, and Major wished to hell he had deleted them. He also wished Liv had never eaten these damned brains, because he was so angry with her right now he wasn't sure he could stay in the same room with her.

"I can't believe that you—"

"Here's another good one," she went on, ignoring him entirely. "'Three rounds in one night! That's my kind of triathlon.'"

Major wasn't about to dignify this situation by explaining. "Give me back my phone."

"'You up?' She sent that one the night that you showed up at my place begging for help. I'm so glad I could be there for you when your booty call fell through. Or did you come to my place after?"

"That's not what happened." Couldn't she see that he had come to her because she was the only one he wanted to be with? Not on these brains she couldn't. On these brains she was barely Liv. Who the hell was he in a relationship with, anyway?

"Oh? Well, should we give Rita a call? Put her on speaker, maybe get some confirmation?"

"No, don't—don't do that." He could only imagine how that conversation would go. What would Rita tell Liv about his other activities? Their sexcapades were hardly the worst secret she could reveal.

"Answer the question! Who's Rita?" Liv was desperate now, really rolling on her jealousy high, and he hated this whole situation more than he could possibly have said.

"She was meaningless! All right? She—she threw herself at me during a real low point. It ended the moment that we got back together."

Major could see in Liv's face that she wanted to believe him, that she was trying to.

"I don't deserve this," he reminded her.

And then she was back, the real Liv, stricken and guilty and ashamed of herself. As she damn well should be, Major thought.

"It's this brain I'm on," she said softly. "Apparently the woman was an unhinged stalker. I didn't know when I ate it."

He wanted to forgive her—he was trying to understand what it must be like to have your mind and your whole self taken over by someone else's personality traits and how terrifying and disturbing that must be. But it was hard not to take this personally, this betrayal of his trust.

"Going through my phone was not okay."

"It won't happen again." She nodded, trying to convince herself as much as him. "I can fight this." She got to her feet, taking a deep shaky breath as she tried to pull herself back together. "I'm already late for work."

She handed him his phone, kissed him quickly, and went by, leaving him with the distinct impression that she was nowhere near as in control as she was trying to pretend. Were some brains stronger than others? Did some tap into unexpected hidden places in her own brain? He wished he understood better how it worked.

Then it struck him—if she was going through his phone, how much longer before she went through his stuff? Before she found the things he carried around to take out the zombies with?

He hurried into his room, unzipped his gym bag, and dug out the trank gun and the list, opening the closet door and keying in the code to the safe he had put in there when he was hunting Julian. He had only just locked it again when he heard her voice behind him.

"You have a safe in your closet?"

Major stood up, refusing to answer the question. "You're back."

"I didn't like how we left things, so I came back to apologize. When did you get the safe?"

"I got it when the giant zombie broke into my place last year."

"Open it. Please," she added, as a clear afterthought.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you just promised you'd fight the brain." That caught her. She blinked and swallowed and looked away. "Prove you meant it."

She wasn't in control, he could see that, but she was trying. Would it be enough?

"I meant it," she said. "I'm sorry."

And then she really was gone, off to work, and Major breathed a sigh of relief and annoyance. He wanted Liv, he did, but could he handle all the other people who took up short-term residence inside her? He wasn't sure. What he did know was that the safe wouldn't be safe for long.

Once he was sure Liv had left the house on her way to work, he unlocked the safe again and took out the list and the trank gun, putting them back in his gym bag for the moment. He'd hide them at the back of the closet in the box of leftover wedding invitations that he had never gotten around to throwing out. He looked at the other occupant of the safe, a small rectangular box, and decided to leave it there. If she demanded to see the safe again, she could see what he kept in there, and maybe it would remind her who she was, and who he was.