Chapter 12 #2
“Yeah.” His eyes jerk up to mine and he smiles, moving his hand at a steady pace as he sews me up. “I really wouldn’t worry about this other guy. He’s irrelevant.”
Was he? “It’s not just about that. I knew him. He asked Gareth . . . you . . .” I take a breath. “Not to say who he was. He didn’t want me to know it was him. He must be someone I see regularly.”
I try not to think about those words too much.
Only one engaged couple comes to mind and .
. . no. Leo and Glen would never do that to me.
Leo is way too in love with his fiancé, and Glen .
. . he and Gareth are like night and day.
They can barely hold full conversations whenever we’re together, mostly sharing nods and shrugs. Who else is there? What am I missing?
“Or it only seems that way. Maybe he has some important role somewhere and doesn’t want to lose his job. It could be anyone, but it’s also no one. No one important.” He studies my eyes closely. “Maybe I’ll remember him, maybe not. But it’s you I know and see now. Only you. Isn’t that enough?”
“I want it to be.”
“Then let it.” He tugs at the thread, biting it off with his mouth, and kisses beneath the blue stitches. “All done. Want to get in the shower?”
“I took one last night.”
“You might want to at least wash off.” He gestures to the blood painting several areas of my skin, and then rubs his fingers in the cum above my belly button.
He sucks his fingers into his mouth. “I don’t think you want me helping you get clean.
If that happens, you won’t be leaving this house for a long time. ”
I choke on a laugh. “Yeah. I can jump in the shower real quick, and then I’ll eat something.”
“How about grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato basil soup?”
“You like cooking for me in death as much as you did when you were alive.”
“I like taking care of you.” He tapes gauze over my wound. “Especially after hurting you.”
It doesn’t scare me as much when he says things like that now, but it should. He could kill me. I’ve seen how quickly he’s taken other’s lives, but he’s trying with me—for me.
“I wish you could come with me to all the fun fall things like you used to. I have to be the third wheel again.” My tone is flat.
“I wish I could too. We can always move or find some way to tell the people closest to us. There are spells that wipe memories clean.”
I consider his words for a moment and then shake my head. “I can’t leave. My friends are here. So is my job and this house we built together. Your gravesite, which I keep forgetting to ask about by the way.”
“What about it?” He gathers all his trash into a pile, separating the needle from everything else.
“How has no one contacted me about your body being missing or the casket being disturbed?”
“There’s nothing to contact you about,” he says, eyes holding onto mine.
“What do you mean?” I lift myself on my elbows.
“I covered all my tracks. Nothing looks tampered with in any way . . . except maybe the dirt is a little lumpy in areas, but I was able to cover most of it with all the gifts you left me.”
“What gifts?” I sit up higher, my face wrinkling when I accidentally move my leg too much.
“I need to get you some painkillers. Nothing too strong, though. I don’t want you falling all over the place at the pumpkin patch, or your friends assuming you’re developing a drug addiction.”
“Gareth.” My gaze calls to his. “What gifts? I haven’t been there to visit you since the ritual? Did I leave candles or your hoodie behind?”
“No. It was nothing like that. A white stuffed bear, pink roses, and a snow globe.”
My heart kicks. “What kind of snow globe?”
“It said . . . wait . . .”
“What is it?”
“It’s strange. It had a white building and said “Little Rock, Arkansas.”
My breaths skip. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I have to show you something.” I clumsily climb off the bed, and he follows closely behind me, grabbing my hip as I start to sway.
“Easy, sweetheart. You shouldn’t be getting up so fast.”
“I’m fine.” I swat him away, darting out to the garage door.
Pain has my leg shaking with each step, but I bear my way through it, not stopping until I’m standing in front of the shelf where the remnants of the snow globe are.
This one’s different than he described. It has two people in front of the state’s shape and flag.
“What’s that?” He looks at me and then the shattered pieces in my hand when I carry it closer to him.
“A gift for someone else. From you. There’s lyrics to a song engraved on the bottom. It’s this thing only you did.”
“You mean like the music box?”
My eyes are stuck on his for a long time. “Yeah. Like the music box.” I flip the bottom piece of the snow globe over, running my fingers over the words.
“Hmm. I didn’t do this.”
“How would you know when you can’t even recall everything from before?”
“I just do,” he says firmly. “How do you know the gift was from me?”
“Because of the song.”
“You said he knew both of us, right? Maybe he knew this was something I’d done for you and thought he’d reach me by doing it for me.”
His words strike me like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t think of that. “This could have been from him,” I hear myself say.
“Yeah. The one he left in front of my gravestone might have words on the bottom too.”
“You’re right. We have to go there. I’ll call Leo and—”
He grabs my face. “Baby. Listen to me. None of this will do either of us any good. This gift was obviously not from me, so how about we let the rest go? Go have fun. Grab us some pumpkins we can decorate together.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” Taking the broken pieces from my hand while cutting his own on the edge of the glass, he moves around me and hits the garage door open. Then he steps outside, tossing everything he’s holding into the large black trash can.
“There.” He pretends to dust his hands off, ignoring the blood dripping to the ground. “All gone. It can be like it never existed.”
But it did. There’s a similar one sitting above where Arkansas thinks his body still lies too.
He went to visit him. He’s been there when I haven’t.
“That’s easy for you to say when—” My words get stuck midway when I have to grab the wall to catch my fall.
My knees are giving out, and Gareth rushes my way, helping me lower myself to the wooden chest next to two bins holding more Halloween decor.
“Careful, love. You lost a lot more blood this time.” He touches my forehead with the back of his hand. “You’re a little clammy and pale. Stay here and I’ll get you some orange juice.”
“Yeah . . .” I press my back to the wall, resting my hands in my lap. “Yeah, okay.”
He kisses my forehead and rushes back inside, closing the garage door before leaving me alone.
I can’t stop thinking about the snow globe in the trash and the one at the cemetery.
He left him a bear and roses. Why did he go there?
Why is he still chasing after my husband, knowing he’s gone? He loved him, didn’t he?
Gareth hurries back, shoving the cup at my lips and encouraging me to drink.
He’s not satisfied until I empty the entire glass, and then he carries me inside, balancing me on his hip as he opens the door that leads us into the kitchen.
Setting me on the counter, he kisses my lips and then reaches behind me, grabbing a piece of paper towel to hold to his hand.
“My blood is turning red.” His eyes lower to the red seeping through the thin paper. “It was black before.”
“What you think that means?”
“You make me more alive,” he says, sounding so sure of himself.
“You don’t know that.”
“I feel better every time.” He looks down at my thigh.
“Not only then.” His fingers brush over my cock and slip down to beneath my balls.
Dragging me closer to the edge, he rubs at my entrance.
I’m naked. He opened the garage door when I was standing there with zero clothes on.
No one was out there, but they could have been.
Lucky for them they weren’t. Who knows what he’d do if someone else looked at me. My stomach flips.
“You look better. Better than me too,” I say between chuckles.
“We’ll have to fix that. We don’t need to switch places.” Turning, he looks around, and then as if remembering where he put something, he goes to the microwave. He heads toward me with a small bowl and a plate of sandwiches. “I wanted it to be ready for when you woke up. I can heat the soup up.”
“It’s fine.” I grab the food from him, taking a bite of one of the sandwiches as soon as the plate rests in my lap. “Man, that tastes good.”
“Wish food tasted good for me too. I miss ice cream.”
I laugh. “It is pretty good.”
“I can always see if I can taste it on you after you eat it.”
There’s a zinging sensation rushing up my back. “Yeah. It wouldn’t hurt to try.”
“It never hurts to try new things,” he says, licking cheese from the corner of my mouth.
Gareth loads the washer and folds the laundry from the dryer as I eat my food.
When I’m done, he sets the basket on the couch and walks me to the shower.
His clothes come off as I’m stepping under the water, and he’s there helping me stay up right as I wash my body, occasionally offering a hand.
It’s nothing sexual, but it feels almost more intimate.
He scrubs his nails into my scalp and I melt against him.
His hand slides down my belly and he nibbles my shoulder, biting off a small sliver of my skin.
He licks at it and sucks it until it stops bleeding.
“We should get out before your skin gets too wrinkled or the water turns cold.”
“I don’t mind the cold so much anymore.” I twist my neck, standing on my tiptoes to kiss his tangy mouth.
“I prefer the warmth myself.” His tongue attacks mine and the water stops pouring over us seconds later. I shiver from the air sticking to my wet skin, and he wraps me in a large towel.
“I don’t want to go anymore.” I look down at him as he dries off my legs. His lips press to one of the globes of my ass.
“You wanted to yesterday. You love this kind of stuff.”
“It’s not the same without you.”
“How about this . . . You go, and I’ll make sure to be somewhere behind you the whole time you’re there. You won’t see me, but you’ll feel me.”
“What if someone recognizes you?”
“I’ll make sure they don’t. You let me worry about that.”
I kneel to where he is, brushing a thumb over his neck. “Yeah, okay. Come be there with me.”