Page 95 of Possessed By Shadows
Chapter 30
Lukas awoke about three days after he’d been found. He was more than a little groggy, and out of it. His vision wonky and memories spotty at best, but the police and Marshals swarmed. I put my foot down and made them leave when he got too flustered. A perk, as I hadn’t known I was listed as his go to guy for what to do when he couldn’t make decisions. It spoke of a level of trust I didn’t know he had for me. And Dad was pissed to not have been the one chosen.
My mom arrived at the end of the week. I showed up after work to sit with Lukas to find her beside his bed, chatting away. To say it hurt, was an understatement. I mean I got that it was good for Lukas to have visitors, family. But she hadn’t even told me she was coming. Nor had she ever visited me in my long months in the hospital when I’d gotten out of the army.
Lukas met my gaze from where I lingered near the door, and it was a sad expression, like he knew what I felt. I turned and left, having to find another cab since I’d dropped Micah off at home, and Brad and Sky were in the shop.
There was distance between Sky and Lukas. She’d come twice. Sat beside him for a few hours as he slept. Often only arriving when she knew I’d be there as a buffer. Lukas had fucked that up too, hadn’t he? Were he and Sky over? I was more than a little conflicted about that.
I found my way home, sending Sky a text. She was fine. The shop was fine. Get some rest.
Everyone told me that often. Too many nightmares. Memories of that thing taking me over, feeling like my brain was underwater, even though I hadn’t been the one drowning.
I walked in to the sound of the sewing machine whirring. Immediately the tension began to melt away. Precious sat on the back of the futon, her fluffy coat solid and as real looking as Jet who glared at the ghost cat from a spot on the stairs.
Micah paused to look up. His hair pulled back into a ponytail, loose bits falling around his face. The pale brown highlighted his freckles and brightened his blue eyes. He was so beautiful. Why did my vision suddenly become blurry?
He was up and wrapping his arms around me a moment later, reaching up to brush tears from my face. “It’s no big deal,” I told him.
“Yeah?” He didn’t sound like he believed me.
“Did you know my mom is here? She was sitting with Lukas.”
“I’m sorry,” Micah took my face in his hands and kissed me. My lips, my cheeks, the tip of my nose. His touch always tender. He saw me clearly, all my flaws and how I was cast aside over and over, and he still loved me. “Will you come sew with me?”
“Sure.” I didn’t know what I’d work on. The smaller projects were really his thing. I yearned to sit down at my straight stitch machine and design something in a quilt, but I’d finished them all, and Micah hadn’t had time to make more.
He unbundled a roll of fabric from where he’d been feeding it through his domestic machine, which sat kitty-corner to my straight stitch machine, and it unrolled into a large quilt top covered in swirls of colors, stars, and hearts. The dark background with pops of color appealed to me as I reached for the fabric. It looked sort of floral, the prints a bit watercolor-like as they bled into each other, though there were no actual flowers. I could spend a lot of time weaving stitches through the shapes, creating definition and detail in the color and smoother lines in the dark background.
“Help me sandwich it, and it’s all yours,” Micah promised.
I grunted and made my way to the closet for a backing and some batting, mind already a whirl with designs, and the focus distracting me from pain. It wouldn’t stave off the emotions forever. But when I finally sat down with the piece, sandwiched and ready to quilt, I let everything else go. The whir of Micah’s machine behind me, soothing. His presence at my back reminding me I was home and safe and had a family, even if it was one of my choosing rather than blood. I centered the new piece, started in the middle with a section that looked like a swirl of colors blending together into a heart.
“Are we keeping this one?” I asked, thinking for a moment before I began a path through the fabric.
“If you want to,” Micah agreed. “I can’t wait to see what you do with it. I was undecided on the fabrics. Liked the pattern, but got frustrated with indecision on color. Went bright. I hope it’s not too much.”
I loved it. The brightness. The wild structure of it feeling familiar. And as I began to guide it through the machine, creating swirls of my own, using thread with rainbows dyed into it, I imagined it in our space, adding color and more life, not unlike the crystals that hung near the windows that refracted light across our space during the day.
They helped keep our area clear of the slugs for now. That and working to constantly cleanse the negative energy that I seemed to absorb from around me. The sewing helped too. All my frustrations and pain vanishing for a while beneath the creation of art. Time with Micah settling my soul. I’d face the demons of my past later.
Lukas was an asshole. No way around it. Sitting beside him in therapy, listening to him hash out a lifetime of struggles he hadn’t bothered to share with me, had me seething. The fact that it was just the two of us and his therapist, that I couldn’t have Micah beside me in that moment, made it hard to shove back the pain and anger.
“You’ve seen stuff since we were kids?” I interrupted his story about encountering the ghost of a friend who’d died in a car crash when he was sixteen.
“Did you ever see Stephan after the accident?” Lukas asked.
Stephan had been a jock on the football team with Lukas, while I’d been more of a music and art nerd. I hadn’t known him all that well, other than his occasional bullying when Lukas wasn’t around. “No.”
“I saw him a lot that first year,” Lukas said quietly. He was wrapped up in a weighted blanket and sitting in a comfy chair across from me, while I had taken the opposite corner of a small sofa. The therapist sitting across from us, her face kind, but focused on Lukas. I wasn’t sure I liked her. But since she wasn’t my therapist, and I was only here at Lukas’s request, I figured I wouldn’t have to see her that often. “He stopped coming around shortly before graduation.”
“Did he talk to you? Do any of them talk to you?” We probably sounded crazy, though to her credit, the therapist didn’t remark or change expression.
“They never talk to me,” Lukas sighed. “At least not where I can hear. It’s why I have to use the equipment.”
It had been almost a month since finding him half dead. His physical recovery was slow. He tired easily, and was showing signs of permanent damage from the concussion. An occasional stutter, sometimes he’d stop midsentence, forget what he was saying, or even blackout. The hit to the head should have killed him. The fact that it didn’t…I was grateful and still frustrated with him.
“And you couldn’t have said something?”