30. Tangled Thicket #2
“Whether you’re a ghost or hallucination remains to be seen,” Lev whispered. “There you are.” Lev walked closer, careful to avoid any sudden movements, as if Asher was an easily spooked horse.
Asher darted left and disappeared around the corner.
“I’m not in the mood for a game of chase.”
“When are you ever?” Asher called.
Lev rounded the corner at a fast clip—and met the end of a sword wielded by none other than Asher Bloody Blakely, face flushed, chest heaving, the muscles in his tattooed forearms tensing like a bowstring, the blood of his enemies the only thing missing.
“Are you… Are you challenging me to a duel?”
Asher’s eyes narrowed. His hands shook as he pressed the tip of his blade into the soft flesh beneath Lev’s chin.
Silas appeared behind Asher. “Mm. I like the direction this is going.”
Lev bared his palms. “I mean no harm. Be a good lad and put the sword down.”
Silas buried his face in the crook of Asher’s neck and licked the faded bite mark Lev had left. “I wonder what he tastes like when he’s angry and sweating. I bet he tastes like the ocean on your skin. ”
“No.” Asher pushed the sword to the precipice of piercing his skin.
“Baby, that sword isn’t a prop. Please be careful unless you wish to murder me.”
Asher’s hazel gaze bounced to the blade, and back to Lev again.The biting pressure on Lev’s skin lessened, but not entirely.
“Why the fuck does your suit of armor have a real sword?”
“Home protection?”
Asher was not amused, nor had he lowered his weapon. “What Julian said was true, wasn’t it?”
“You remember that, don’t you, Levvy? All those summers?” Silas rested his chin on Asher’s shoulder as he wrapped his hands around the hilt of the sword.
“I asked you a question,” Asher said. “When you answer, remember I’m the one with a weapon. Is it true?”
“No,” Lev lied, then floundered. “Yes. Well, not exactly.”
“Those summers were my favorite. Do you know why?” Silas asked.
Fucking Silas. Lev couldn’t carry two conversations simultaneously on a good day, let alone when the stakes were this high.
“Summers were the longest stretch we had together, Lev, remember? Sometimes I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t bear to waste a single moment.
I was greedy. I hoarded time like grains of sand, thinking I could take those memories with me, thinking I could bring them back, like sunlight in my pocket, warm and bright when things got dark. But it never worked.”
Silas’s biceps flexed, a vein in his slender neck filling as he tried to push the blade into Lev’s flesh. He couldn’t exert any control over the physical realm. They both knew that, and yet Lev almost felt as if Asher had pressed the blade deeper, as if Silas had compelled him to do so.
Balancing on the edge of a blade was an altogether thrilling sensation.
Was this how Silas had felt? Was that why he’d liked to dance on the ledge of Lichenmoor’s cliffs?
Was that why he’d sliced his veins vertically only when he knew someone would find him?
Why he’d messed about with belts looped around?—
“I’d never do it, Levvy. You know I wouldn’t kill you. I’m not like you.”
“Ben could have told you about me…”
Lev’s stomach twisted into painful knots. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
Asher shook his head. “But I want you to reassure me anyway, so I have something to tell myself when my brain is being an asshole.”
Lev inched forward until the blade broke the skin beneath his chin.
Asher’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“I’d sooner fall on this sword than lie to you. If I knew about Ben, he’d be a missing person’s case by now. I’d never have let him touch you.”
Asher nodded, and lowered the sword from Lev’s neck. “Thank you.” He tossed it on the ground where it landed with an almighty clatter—a clever move because the melee distracted Lev long enough for Asher to get a head start.
Lev ran after him toward the chapel. Good.
Twin snakes twined up the sides of the arched fireplace, meeting in the middle of the mantle, mouths reaching for a single apple.
Lev pressed against the apple until the wood depressed, activating the latch that opened the door behind him.
He’d added the alternate route to the chapel on the second edition of Asher’s map.
“Asher?” Lev asked the dusty darkness, trailing his fingers along the cold and slippery stone bricks as he navigated the passageway in the dark.
Asher had left the door ajar, and Lev dropped his hand and wiped the grime on his slacks as he headed toward the sliver of light—or rather, not exactly light. The remaining dregs of daylight had dwindled fast.
“Was this necessary?” Lev grumbled as he emerged from a door ordinarily hidden by elaborate wood casing and a statue of the Virgin Mary.
He ducked out from behind the statue and flicked the light switch, surprised some of the wall sconces still worked.
Asher waited in the first pew like a parishioner early for mass.
When Lichenmoor is yours, you must promise me you’ll leave it to rot , Silas had said.
After his last stint at Hallowed Saints, when he talked of the future, it was one that only Lev existed in, but Lev would have dismantled the chapel brick by brick if that would have saved him. Instead, he’d killed him.
The ocean murmured through the open windows as the tide crept back out to sea. Before Asher, Lev had felt crushing claustrophobia when high tide turned Lichenmoor into an island, but now high tide brought reassurance because Asher couldn’t leave.
In the hazy glow of dimming bulbs and twilight, Lev walked down the center aisle with the same dread of approaching an open casket at a funeral.
“May I sit?”
Asher scooted over.
“Watching you with that sword was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. Perhaps you can incorporate it in the bedroom.”
Asher scowled. “You can’t flirt your way out of this.”
“Are you certain? I’m not even trying that hard.”
Asher’s scowl deepened.
“Sorry.” Lev inhaled and exhaled a brief sigh that left him empty inside. “The art retreat was indeed a charade to bring you here. It was manipulative and wrong, but it’s not as sinister as Julian thinks.”
Asher’s shoulders sank. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“No, love. It’s better than good. I was so enchanted by your art, I created all of this,” he waved his hand in an airy circle around the decrepit husk of a church, “for a chance to watch you paint in person. I wasn’t searching for a companion, let alone a twenty-five-year-old to have my way with.”
Asher pushed his black waves back from his brow. “Then, why?”
“We’ve been over this before.”
“Go over it again.”
Lev sent a silent prayer for leniency to the neglected Christ on the crucifix.
“While the retreat may have been a farce to lure you here, I fell in love with you, Blakely, sight unseen, because I saw your soul inside a single painting.
“My intentions were purely artistic at first. I’d wanted only to know you more, to root around in your head and see what made you paint like that, but once you were here, and I saw you—not just the physical beauty of you—but your humor and wit, your dark disposition, your brilliance at the canvas, your vexing curiosity, I fell hard. ”
Lev swallowed and dragged his palm over the bite of his beard. “Our chemistry is intense, but I want you for more than your cock, for more than your art.”
“If you wanted me here, why did you pick apart my art in front of the others?”
“I… I was trying to protect you.”
He couldn’t confess that he’d been frightened to see Asher asking about Silas in his sketchbook. Or that he’d feared hurting him, feared wasting Asher’s younger years.
Asher crossed his arms over his chest, entirely unmoved. “Why not invite me personally? If you’d shown up at one of my exhibitions, I’d have done anything you asked.”
“If I’d only invited you, you’d hold all the power. I don’t care to bare my neck to strangers, even if I’ve already fallen in love with their work. Especially then. ”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to my career?
You’ve marked me as your pet in front of six of my peers.
Melody is low-key famous on social media, and Chuck will tell everyone.
No one will believe my art is what you see in me.
No one will respect me as an artist when I’m overshadowed by your favoritism. ”
“Fuck what people believe. You don’t paint for them. You paint for yourself, and that’s why you’re so brilliant at it. Paint what you like and the people who understand you will find you, because if you paint what you think the world wants, no one will understand you at all.”
“It’s easy for you to say that when you’ve already achieved your dreams, when you’re high above a glass ceiling I will never break through.” He talked through gritted teeth. “You have the luxury of painting for the sake of art without worrying about how much paint costs.”
Lev scoffed. “You think I dreamed of this? To be alone here, haunted by abandoned art? By all the people I’ve lost. The only choice I had was to be what my father wanted.”
Sadly now, all spite spent, Asher said, “You’re proving my point. You’ll always be Lucian Marks’s son, and I’ll always be some young artist you had your way with for six months.”
“That’s not what’s going to happen.”
Asher shrugged. “The past speaks for itself.”
“It doesn’t have to.” Lev dropped from the pew and kneeled in front of him. If he didn’t fix this, Asher would leave and Lev wouldn’t survive it. “Inviting you here under false pretenses was wrong and cowardly. I should have been honest with you. I’m so sorry.”
Perhaps it was the church, or perhaps because Asher was more than a false idol he worshipped. Lev wanted to repent. He wanted to atone. To accept his punishment.
“What are you doing?”
“Groveling.” He tried to smile, but it hurt too much because he’d manipulated Asher the way Ben had. “Your art may have brought us together, Asher, but it’s you who’s brought me to my knees.
“If my selfish actions have damaged your career, I promise I will fix it. Whatever happens between us, I will get your work into the right hands, and ensure you never have to worry about the price of paint again.”
By the right hands, he meant himself.
“You idolize me so, but I’m a coward,” Lev continued. “I shouldn’t have lied about why I brought you here. By doing so, I robbed you of your autonomy exactly as Julian strives to do with his infernal fussing.”
God, he’d ruined everything. He’d wanted to be good for Asher, to be safe for him always, and he hadn’t been truthful.
Lev bowed his head. “I didn’t expect to fall in love with you, but I did, and it’s terrifying.”
Asher’s hand fell to his hair. “Why?”
“I don’t deserve to love again, let alone love someone as precious as you. My heart is a tangled thicket of stinging nettles, one I wish you’d never stepped foot in. I fear loving me will strangle you.”
“Look at me,” Asher said.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t watch Asher tell him he was done.
Asher stroked Lev’s hair. “You love me?”
“I believe I said falling.”
“Look at me,” Asher repeated, tugging Lev’s hair until he lifted his head.
At first, Asher said nothing, searching Lev’s face. What was he looking for? The truth? Something worth staying for? The villain inside him?
Lev counted the gold flecks in his irises so he could paint them if Asher left. He opened his mouth to apologize again, to declare all the reasons he was hopelessly besotted.
Asher’s eyes softened and his legs widened.
Hope fluttered in Lev’s chest. “What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you space to grovel.”
“Thank you.” Lev rushed forward, still on his knees, and hugged Asher around the middle, burying his face in his lap.
“Tell me more,” Asher said. “Tell me why.”
Lev turned his head and rested his cheek on Asher’s thigh, looking up at his lad ardently, in exactly the position he’d wanted to start the night. “I suppose I should start at the very beginning. Silas?—”
Asher’s brows darted together. “Silas?”
“I know it sounds like a terrible way to profess my love—falling in love, I mean—but I do have a point. Please bear with me.”
“Okay.” Asher raked his hand through Lev’s hair again, fingernails grazing his scalp as if Lev was a pet he found comfort in.
“Silas used to hold how much he loved me against me, as if it was my fault that I didn’t love him as intensely, as if he resented me. I’d never understood.”
Asher’s hand stopped. “You resent me?”
“No, baby. Never. May I continue?”
Asher nodded.
“I loved Silas, but I’d never felt as if I’d forfeited all power to him, as if I’d die if I lost him, as if any moment apart made it hard to breathe, as if any harm that came to him would make me bleed. That’s how you make me feel.
“To hell with pretenses. I’m not falling. I’ve already hit the ground.” Lev braced his hands on Asher’s thighs and straightened his spine to look at him properly. “I love you, Asher Blakely.”