Page 8 of Marked By Shadows
I loaded a small cooler full of food behind the passenger seat. The bed and breakfast offered two meals a day, but I needed to make sure Alex kept eating, and hated the idea of shoving fast food into him. He wasn’t a picky eater at all, for which I was thankful. So the chest full of sandwich supplies, fresh fruit and veggies, and a couple of bento boxes would hopefully get us through the drive. The cottage had a small kitchen not unlike my own. Which meant I planned to stop at a grocery store near the hotel.
The hardest part of the day was getting Alex to leave Jet. He spent a ridiculous amount of time with the cat in his lap while he crocheted roses. He didn’t have the sewing it into a round flower part down, but could race through the four rows and cast off like a pro. He liked to have his hands busy. And unlike most guys or people I’d ever known, he didn’t need to fill the silence with chatter. Alex rolled back and forth from petting the cat to crocheting roses while I ran around preparing things from lists. His calm presence was enough to keep me from pulling my hair out.
“Where is the convention again? Houston?” Alex asked as he got in the car with his faux leather bag filled with crochet hooks and random yarn balls. I’d found a tutorial online this morning to teach him how to make an amigurumi dragon. It was a bit on the cutesy side, more a child’s toy version than something an ex-soldier might covet, but Alex had been fascinated and already completed the round section of the body. Nothing about this trip stressed him out. When asked, he said it was because he trusted me and knew I’d point him in the right direction. While that was more stress, it was also comforting to know he had faith in me.
“We’re staying north of the city, near Conroe, not far from the Sam Houston National Forest.”
That made Alex stop and look at me. He frowned. “National Forest?”
“Yeah, you know, where trees grow?” I half joked. “Did you know the planet is covered in like 700 million acres of forest?”
“We are not camping,” Alex clarified. I didn’t think he had an issue with camping, more a concern I might vanish again.
“No. We’re in town. Though the hotel backs up to an area of trees, it’s not officially part of the National Forest. That’s a couple miles away. Our group didn’t want to stay in the city, and a lot of area outside Houston is oil rigs and fracking. Freya’s place specializes in crafters. She does a lot of quilting retreats, and the like. So she’s close to the city, without being on top of it.”
“Sounds… interesting?” Alex finished, obviously less than enthused with the idea we wouldn’t be staying close to the city.
“You don’t have to go. I can drop you off at Lukas’s.”
Alex narrowed his eyes at me. “I’d like to go. Didn’t realize this thing was so expensive. Maybe we can work out a way for me to pay you back on the drive?” He got comfortable in his seat and shut the door. I checked over the contents of the back again, then double checked to make sure the door to my place was locked. Sky would be over later to install herself as guardian of my cat.
When I got in the driver’s seat and adjusted it until it was comfortable, Alex was working on his dragon.
“Cost?” He prodded me again as I turned the car on and guided us out toward I-10 which would take us out of the state and directly into Houston. We would have to divert north once we got into Texas, but that was a few hours away.
“This was already planned, so you coming along is not costing me any more than it already did.” Except the ticket to the convention.
“Convention?” Of course Alex had looked up the cost.
I sighed. “I’ll take crochet roses in exchange for the ticket cost. Technically, since you’ll be learning about stuff that helps Simply Crafty, I should be paying you for your time.”
Alex scoffed. “Paying me to have fun?”
I couldn’t help smiling. He really did enjoy the job. Loved all the weird little nuances that made up Simply Crafty as a shop, and a lot of its customers. He also seemed genuinely interested in crafts and fabric. He enjoyed the history of the tours, but was less enthusiastic about the haunted aspect of it, for which I didn’t blame him. Sometimes we saw or felt things that sparked more questions than answers, and Alex seemed to be really good at capturing something unexplained on camera. His photos had gone viral, even being featured in major television station commentary.
“There will probably be a lot of boring sewing chatter,” I told him.
“I may not understand it, but I find your sewing stuff fascinating. I’ve watched a few quilt videos. They make it look easy, cutting squares into other shapes, but I’m sure there’s more to it.”
“It’s a bit like the game Tetris,” I said.
“I can see that. Maybe I’ll see if I can take a class when we get back. Teach me some basics. Videos are okay, but I need some hands on to really start.” He waved his hands at the crochet project in his lap. “Wouldn’t have known what half of this meant if you hadn’t showed me.”
“Crochet is really about getting your hand placement correct.”
“Lots of things are about getting your hand placement correct,” Alex teased, making it sound somewhat suggestive.
I smiled at his ease. He continued to focus on his crochet work.
“Let me know if you need your space,” Alex said. “We don’t have to be stuck together at the hip. You are not obligated to show me a good time. I love being with you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t exist if you need a few hours to yourself. If you meet some hot guy at the convention, however…”
“Ask you to join in?” I teased.
Alex’s face turned pink with that telltale flush of his. It was sort of empowering, how small things I did turned him on.
“Really?” I teased him.
“I can’t help that I spring boners every time you bring up sex. Note that it is not the idea of you and some random other guy. It’s you and me. I’m glad we’re in this cabin thing. I don’t like the thought of everyone else listening to us.”