Chapter Twenty One #2
Sure enough, on the other side of the parking lot, was a clearly marked police car. Luis still couldn’t help looking around nervously.
“It’s going to be okay,” Julien said, stepping up beside him. “Karim would never let anyone hurt you.”
Karim was suddenly at his other side, radiating menace. Luis ducked his head with a hot, pleased flush of gratitude.
Still, Luis’s feet were heavy as they started to climb the stairwell toward his apartment. No one was in his apartment, but a part of him still dreaded opening the door and finding his mother there again. His breathing went unsteady, his palms sweaty.
Key in the lock, Luis pushed the door open slowly.
The light was on. He never left his lights on.
“Someone’s been here,” he said.
Karim pushed past him, taking the lead. “I don’t hear anyone inside, Julien?”
But Luis was seeing the evidence all over. A book that had been on the counter that was now on the floor. His laptop was open when he always closed the lid. One of the drawers of his entertainment center was ajar.
“No one’s inside,” Julien confirmed.
But his bedroom light was on. Luis started in that direction, heart pounding. Had his mom been here again? Waiting for him?
He paused at the threshold of his bedroom. He knew before he even saw it what she’d done.
He stepped into the room and found the guitar stand empty.
She’d been trying to take it the last time she’d been here, and Luis had interrupted her. She’d come back to finish the job.
The cruelty of it cut him deeper than he expected. He had no way of knowing if she’d taken it before or after the church, but it felt like revenge for his escape. One last way for her to make it hurt since he’d slipped her control.
“What’s wrong?” Karim asked at his side.
Luis sniffed. There were silent tears dripping down his cheeks. He stumbled over to the bed, dropping down on it, a rush of white noise in his ears. His shoulders heaved, and suddenly he was sobbing.
Karim, who’d followed him to the bed, wrapped his arms tightly around him. Julien appeared in the doorway, concern writ all over his face. Luis couldn’t get enough air into his lungs to speak, he just clung to Karim’s shirt, burying his face there.
The waves of it crashed over him. The sickening cruelty, the viscous vindictiveness.
She’d never loved him, he realized in that moment. His mother had only ever wanted to change him, remake him into her own ideas of who he should be. Erase the things that made him, him.
And when she was confronted with the reality of who he was, all she wanted to do was to destroy him.
What kind of a mother was that?
No mother at all.
He crumpled further into Karim, who only held him all that tighter.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered in Luis’s ear.
The tears went on for a long time. Long enough that Julien joined them on the bed, taking up the other side, a gentle hand rubbing up and down Luis’s back.
He was sweaty and congested by the time he was done, but the crest of emotion had passed, drained out of him like a poisoned wound finally lanced.
Luis understood now that there was nothing between him and his mother that he could save. No repair that could be done. They were far, far past that line, and they could never go back.
The guitar was such a small thing compared to trying to kidnap him, but it hurt, in some ways, more. She didn’t need to take something he loved, but she had. She’d done it to hurt him.
“Sorry,” he croaked as he pulled out of Karim’s neck. There was a huge wet spot along his collar when Luis rubbed his eyes. Karim only looked at him sadly.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Julien asked.
“It’s–” and then his throat clamped up around the words. He cleared his throat and cast a hand in the direction of the empty stand. “My mother was here. My guitar–it’s–she’s probably destroyed it already. I’m sorry. It just meant a lot to me.”
Their eyes went to the empty stand.
“Luis, I’m so sorry,” Julien said. “I remember you telling us it was your prized possession.”
On his other side, Karim made a sound like a growl.
“I–yeah,” he said.
Karim’s face was a tight fury, the muscle in his jaw standing out. His hands were curled into fists in his lap.
For some reason, seeing his anger helped. Luis wasn’t the only one upset by what had happened. It was nice that Karim was upset for him. Luis had always secretly liked Cassie’s rants about his mother; they'd made him feel less alone, like his feelings weren’t stupid or misplaced.
“I’m going to have to move,” Luis said. The thought had been creeping up on him in the last two days, but now he was speaking it into being.
He’d never be able to come back into this bedroom and not think about this moment, about her coming into his private space and taking the one physical object most precious to him.
She could’ve ruined a lot of things in this apartment and he wouldn’t have cared. She’d known exactly what the guitar would mean to him.
“Yes,” Julien said simply. His hand was still rubbing up and down Luis’s back. Luis leaned into the touch.
He lingered there a minute, then took a deep breath and stood.
“I’m going to pack my things. I don’t want to stay here,” Luis said in explanation.
Both vampires stood, Julien calm and attentive, and Karim doing his best to suppress his anger. Luis looked between the two of them, unspeakably grateful that they were here.
“How can we help?” Julien asked.