Page 6 of Marked By Shadows

Alex’s laughter filled the room with warmth and eased something that had frozen in my gut. I was tempted to glance up and see how jealous Lukas might be with us fawning over Sky, but forced myself to focus. Too much in my head. Worries. Lists of things to get done before I left. And now I’d lost another day since we’d been at the police station. I had to admit having Alex back calmed something I hadn’t realized had been raging inside me. Some kind of vibrating noise of unease had taken residence at the base of my spine while he was gone. Strong enough that I felt it all the time, and had to work to tune it out. Only now was it gone, still, silent, but not in a scary way.

I counted through a bunch more rows, winding up roses and whispering the numbers of each stitch. The focus helped clear away the constant buzz of tension.

Alex kissed me on the cheek. I blinked up at him again. We were alone. Both Lukas and Sky gone. When had that happened? I really must have zoned out, but I’d also finished four roses without really realizing it.

“Where’d they go?”

“Home to Lukas’s place. He was blazing with a need to claim her after our teasing.” Alex grinned. “I thought we could use some quiet. I ordered food. It will be here in a bit. Do we need to go to the shop?”

“Brad is handling it today. He’s been working a lot of hours.”

“Time I was supposed to, yeah?” Alex said.

“Yes, but it’s okay. I think he’s trying to earn his independence.”

“From Tim?”

“More general independence. He’s very young.” Brad had not traveled the world like I had. He came from small town Louisiana and hadn’t gotten far. He wanted to see the world, and meet people, which I didn’t think meant good things for Tim. “Not everything is sex work or small-town life. Even if his town is the Big Easy.”

“Alien impregnators have ruined him for everyone else,” Alex said with a completely straight face. “Narwal Dickmaster strikes again.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking back to the shock on his face the first time he’d ever seen them, heard of the elaborate dildo, or that I had an adult section in the back of my shop. “Perhaps. Though new worlds featuring males with giant dragon dicks are an unlikely prospect.”

“Dragon dicks…” Alex said. “We have the weirdest conversations.”

And that was okay. It felt normal, natural, like maybe things hadn’t really changed? I worked through two more roses thinking about a half dozen scenarios of Alex and I working out or breaking up. It was too much.

Alex waved at all the stuff I had laid out at the table. “How about we curl up on the futon? Might be more comfortable.”

I studied him. “Are you mad at me?”

“No. Why would I be mad?”

Because a lot of people hated my silence. Even if it wasn’t a true silence. Part of the way I was raised, to be seen and not heard. Respect and honor were very important to my father. Some parts of the world were the same. Even some parts of the United States, but I didn’t really want to spend a lot of time explaining. So I opted for simple instead. “My head is loud.”

“Is that my fault? Is it loud about me? Do you want me to go?” Alex asked.

“No.” A little tick of anxiety raced through me at the thought of him leaving.

“Okay. Can I help somehow? Make your head less loud?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Do you really want to go to the convention?”

“If you don’t mind me being there, I think it would be fun. I’d like to meet your friends. You can teach me all about fabric.” He said nothing for another minute and then, “Can I hold you? I’d like to hold you if that’s okay.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

He got up and made his way to the futon. “Show me how you do that.”

“What?” I asked, looking down at the mess in my lap, but gathering it up to find a place curled up in his lap. Settling back against his chest, feeling his heartbeat at my back, the anxiety eased almost instantly.

“The magic of how you take string and turn it into a rose.”

“It’s yarn, but okay.” I dug through the bag to find another hook, I only had a thousand of the stupid things laying around, and a spare ball of yarn. “It’s only four rows, and pretty basic, chain stitch, single, V-stitch, double.”

“Sounds like a foreign language. Good thing I excel at languages.” Alex took the hook and yarn, copying how I held things and mimicking until he seemed to get the chain stitch down. It was more about rhythm than skill. “We need fifty-six of these little stitches,” I told him as I got up to answer the door and retrieve the food he’d ordered. It smelled like burgers.

By the time I got back to him he had his chain done, waiting. “Food first?”