43. When a Mind is Lonely
WHEN A MIND IS LONELY
ASHER
D ays bled together as they settled into a routine of making art and making love. Rain became a constant presence, a cozy underscore to their existence as each passing day grew darker and shorter, and frigid gales blew across the moors.
Lev still walked the shore every morning. Alone. Asher had asked if he wanted company, but Lev always declined. Suspicious, given Lev followed Asher from room to room like a shadow—if shadows were loud, and horny.
The only perk was an uninterrupted chance to call Theo. Asher had voiced vague concerns about Lev’s absentmindedness and solo conversations over the last few weeks. Theo was equally perplexed.
Mental illness was the most likely cause, but he’d just seen his psychiatrist—virtually—and spoke with his therapist every two weeks. Lev had been transparent about his renewed efforts to overcome his agoraphobia and Asher was so fucking proud of him .
Under the guidance of his therapist, Lev had built a stepladder of goals to accomplish, starting with crossing through the gate, walking for one minute, and so on until Lev left Lichenmoor to shop for groceries, then for longer durations.
Lev’s first attempt had failed, and his second. Asher had escorted Lev to the gate each day after. Lev had made little progress, but it took immense bravery to keep showing up every day in spite of his fears, and Asher always made sure he knew that.
After nearly three weeks, Lev had managed to cross the threshold of the gate, and made it a few steps forward before anxiety forced him back. It was a huge win, the farthest Lev had been in years.
But Lev’s strange behavior had increased since then. He talked to himself more and more, but only in soft whispers when he thought he was alone, or that Asher was sleeping. He stared absently for longer periods, as if listening to someone else, and was more distractible, in general.
Lev had promised to discuss it with his medical team, but Asher wasn’t privy to those conversations. If he kept getting worse, Asher would have no choice but to confront him, even if he was afraid of Lev’s answer.
On a rare clear day, Asher climbed to the top of a turret facing the beach, armed with a decent pair of binoculars he’d found in a box of 1970s outdoor and camping equipment in one of Lichenmoor’s abandoned rooms.
When he peered through the lenses and saw that Lev was, in fact, walking, he felt like a total asshole for spying—until Lev skidded to a stop in the sand and swirled around, face warped in rage.
He threw his hands out and yelled at someone who wasn’t there with so much venom he spat saliva, then he dropped to his knees and sifted through the sand with his bare hands .
What was worth shards of icy sand forced beneath his fingernails?
When Lev returned, the rims of his eyes and his nose were pink, but the cold wind was a more likely culprit. Still, what had Lev been searching for?
Asher feigned shock when Lev came in. “What happened to your hands?”
“I thought I saw a shell, but it was only a bit of plastic.”
“I don’t need shells. I need you safe.” Asher kissed Lev’s blanched fingers, and poured him a cup of tea to warm his precious hands, so talented with a brush, so gentle with Asher.
Then he made breakfast.
“Alright there, Blakely?”
Asher looked up from his plate and found bluebonnet eyes watching him.
“I should be asking you that.” Asher dipped his toast in the goldenrod yolk of the eggs he’d collected from Lichenmoor’s hens.
“You’re not eating.”
“I’m eating. I was just thinking.” Asher bit into the toast. “Mm.”
The rustic sourdough bread was delicious. Lev claimed the starter was as old as Lichenmoor.
Thanks to a mix of Lev’s praise, and fussing, Asher had overcome his nervous stomach. If he didn’t eat, his anxiety would worsen as caffeine and adrenaline surged through him.
Plus, he wanted to make Lev proud. Asher folded his bread in half, sandwiching his egg inside, then took a bite.
Lev sipped from his teacup, still watching.
Asher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What?”
Lev lowered his cup, revealing a flirty smile. “You’re a very good lad.”
Asher flushed. Lev’s praise still made him blush, no matter how generously Lev dealt it out.
“You said you were thinking, Blakely. What about?”
The love Asher had for Lev propelled him to risk his displeasure now.
“I don’t want you to walk out there alone anymore.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s too cold. What if you slip on ice and hurt yourself?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s…” Lev trailed off, gaze wandering from Asher’s face to something behind him.
Goosebumps crawled over Asher’s skin. Sound traveled in Lichenmoor. Asher hadn’t heard footsteps or creaking floorboards. Outside, naked branches still drifted with the wind and scratched at the windows, but inside the room was so quiet, time had stopped.
Long seconds passed. Lev’s jaw clenched and his wind-chapped cheeks turned a dark shade of red. What did he see? What did he hear?
Asher reached over the corner of the table and squeezed his hand. He didn’t want this vacant stranger. “Lev?”
Lev’s gaze slid slowly back to him. “I apologize. You’re right.”
“Huh?”Asher blinked. He’d been expecting a fight.
Lev cupped Asher’s cheek. “Perhaps you should escort me back to bed. I am getting older…” Lev huffed a melodramatic sigh.
Asher snorted.
“It’s true. I’m practically geriatric.” Lev lifted his nose and heaved a longer sigh belied by his smirk. “How am I to keep you safe, if I’m holed up with a broken hip?”
“I don’t need you to keep me safe, Lev.”
“Of course, darling.”
“Don’t of course darling , me. There are worse things than a broken hip.”
“Of course?—”
Asher arched a brow.
“Of course, you’re right, darling. ”
Asher rolled his eyes.
“Please don’t fret. I’m nothing like those other men you trawled for at a senior living facility.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Wait. Please don’t be cross.” Lev took Asher’s hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry.”
Lev lifted his gaze, leaving his lips pressed to Asher’s hand. Asshole. Lev knew Asher couldn’t resist the momentary daze of being hit with Lev’s eyes at close range.
“You have my word, Ash. No more solo walks until the frost thaws.” He released Asher’s hand and stood. “Come take me upstairs and give me a bath. I’m old and frail and can no longer reach between my legs.”
“Never say that again.” Asher moved to clear their plates.
Lev lifted a hand. “Leave the dishes. Lichenmoor is far too lousy with nooks and crannies to ever defeat our rodent overlords.”
Asher chewed on his lip. He’d been militant about keeping the castle as clean as possible after finding a mouse in one of the many traps Lucian had left around the house. Allegedly. Asher was pretty sure Lev had blamed Lucian for his own actions.
“If it’s too cold for me to go out alone without you fearing I’ll fall on my arse, it’s too cold for the mice too. Think of their wee little whiskers. It’s a kindness to invite them in. You, of all people, should relate, little dormouse.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“So you say, but we both know you like it.”
Asher glared at him.
Lev laughed, low and husky. “I promise, no harm will come to any four-legged creatures that nibble from our plates while we’re gone. Luna is due today and you know how she gets if you leave her with nothing to do.”
Asher had forgotten. With no obligations, deadlines, or expectations—aside from eating and making art—the days blurred together.
Lev drummed long fingers on the tabletop. “If you don’t stop faffing about and polish my knob upstairs…”
Asher lifted a brow, a nonverbal, You aren’t going to make another bad joke, are you?
Lev nodded sagely. “You’re right. That would have been a joke far worse than the one about you cleaning my crevasses.”
“Crevasses?” Asher threw a cloth napkin at him.
Laughing, Lev caught the napkin midair and tossed it onto the table.
“Enough joking, Blakely.” Lev straightened to his full height and prowled around the corner of the table. “Now, come along and be a good lad.”
Good lad.
The two words were an incantation summoning submission. Asher would do anything to earn Lev’s praise.
After sucking Lev into a stupor, he slipped out of their room and found Luna in the kitchen.
Lev wouldn’t let Asher leave Lichenmoor, afraid he’d never return, so Luna still shopped for their groceries.
Asher’s favorite peanut butter waited in the center of the scuffed butcher block island. “Luna, I think I’m in love with you.”
“I did nothing.”
“Sweet-talking the grocer into making a special order isn’t nothing .” Asher popped a slice of wheat bread into the toaster. “Do you need help?”
Instead of balking, she assigned him the heavier bags with cans and moved on to filling the fruit bowl with pomegranates, apples, pears, and fresh figs .
“You remind me of him, you know,” Luna said.
“Silas?”
Luna’s wispy gray brows lifted. “Lev’s told you about him?”
“A little.”
Her eyes tipped down, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes nearly meeting her smile lines.
“Has he, now?”
She yanked him into a hug, then pulled back, milky brown eyes misting.
“You don’t know how much I’ve worried about what would happen to him if I…. Well, you must have noticed I’m getting on in years.”
Asher feigned shock. “You can’t be more than a day over forty.”
Luna rapped him on the head with the tip of a baguette. “I don’t accept lies in this household, Mr. Blakely.”
But a smile glimmered in her eyes as she sniffed and wiped tears away.
“Lev won’t talk to me about Silas,” Luna said. “When they were kids, I’d take Lev aside, worried how he was coping with the abrupt change of losing his mother to then gain a brother. For a boy who never kept quiet, Lev’s silence made me worry, and when Silas died, it got worse.”
“Lev said you’re the closest thing to a mum he has. Losing Silas was like losing a son. I’m so sorry.”
She winced in a way that reminded Asher so much of Lev, he almost questioned who Lev’s blood mother was.
“Tom and I took a little longer to start a family. Lev was my only child for the first few years after his Mum died. When Silas joined us, I’d already started a family of my own.
“Silas was very quiet and reserved, more difficult to get to know, but yes, I loved him like a son. When he died, my heart broke twice—once for Silas, and once for what Lev had lost.”
Asher’s own heart broke a little too, thinking of Lev losing his mother as a boy, and then the second father he’d found in Wendell, only for Silas to die next.
She closed the fridge. “It was such an unexpected and yet inevitable death.”
Asher’s pulse quickened. Was she going to tell him? The toaster beeped. Asher jumped. Luna passed him a plate and a butter knife, and said nothing more as Asher slathered peanut butter on his toast.
“Did you know about Lev and Silas?”
He was ninety-five percent sure she already knew, but what if he’d been wrong? What if he’d just spilled a decades-old secret?
She sighed and selected a breadknife from the block. “Did I know they were more than mates?” She nodded, and sliced into the baguette. “There’s little that escapes a mother’s eye.”
The scratch of the knife carving into the baguette was the only sound for a minute or two. Asher bid his time with a few bites of his toast. It tasted like home.
“I wasn’t talking about Silas before,” Luna said. “Lev is the one you remind me of. He was always such a sweet, considerate boy, always offering to help.”
“Oh.” Asher didn’t know what else to say.
“I can’t thank you enough for coming to Lichenmoor and being so patient with my son. You’ve been so good for him.”
She cut another slice and sighed.
“Lev isolated himself for so long after Lucian died, I was quite shocked when he planned to entertain guests.”
“Lev blames himself?” Asher said.
“He does.” She stared at him a bit too long before slicing into the baguette again. “After he returned to Lichenmoor, he seldom left his room, and when he did, it was only to walk the shoreline, tend the horses, and work in Lucian’s studio.”
Poor Lev, padding around the empty castle, locked inside his father’s studio, painting the man he’d lost .
Asher swallowed his last bite of toast, and washed it down with a glass of milk.
“Has Lev…” He bit into his lip. “I don’t know. It’s stupid. But have you ever heard him talking in an empty room?”
Asher squirmed under her inspection as she dusted the crumbs off the bread knife and wiped it with a rag, before returning it to the block.
“You mean, have I ever seen him talking to himself?”
“Yeah.” Feeling like the world’s biggest asshole, and idiot, Asher focused his attention on the stem of a fig, twisting it until it pulled away from the top.
She selected a different knife and placed it on the cutting board. “No. I can’t say that I have. Do you mind fetching the chicken sausage in the fridge for me, lad?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Asher rifled through the bag until he found the wax paper packet labeled with Hector’s recognizable scrawl in black permanent ink.
From Beaker.
Lev had found the local family ranch that treated their livestock humanely, but Asher wished Hector would stop including the name of the chickens.
“Thanks, dear. Why don’t you check on Lev while I work on this?”
“I don’t mind helping.”
She didn’t answer. Effectively dismissed, Asher folded the canvas bags and stacked them. “Thank you for picking up the groceries. Hopefully, Lev and I will take over someday.”
“You will. People are like plants. They do better when people speak to them. They thrive in the sunlight. In open air. Lev is a plant locked in a dark cupboard. All he needs is love and care.” She inclined her head toward Asher, “You give him both. ”
Luna’s trust in Asher soothed some of his anxiety, but his fears were too scary for a plant metaphor to vanquish. Asher forced a small smile and turned to go.
“Oh, and Asher?”
He stopped and swiveled toward her again. “Yes, ma'am?”
“When the mind is lonely, it creates company. If you ever hear Lev talking to himself, that’s all it is.”
He hoped she was right. He wanted to be wrong, could still be wrong. But his suspicions and fears hadn’t faded over time. They’d festered. And grown.