47. Cathedral of His Chest
CATHEDRAL OF HIS CHEST
LEV
A steady downpour murmured through the window panes. Lev shivered. He should light a fire, but he’d burned through the stash of firewood in his study, and couldn’t be arsed to pillage firewood from elsewhere, let alone risk waking Asher.
Lev pushed back from his desk, and rested against the cognac leather wingback chair. Speaking of cognac, he pulled out the bottle he kept in the lower drawer and refilled his glass.
He drank and swallowed, and drank again, then tapped the keyboard to wake his computer, and typed a missive to his neurologist and psychiatrist.
While Lev saw both physicians once per quarter, they hadn’t evaluated him in person for some time. Given how quickly his symptoms were progressing, he thought it prudent to ask them to make a house call to Lichenmoor.
Lev had stopped searching for a diagnosis years ago, afraid that if he lost that last evolutionary shred of hope, he’d leap from Lichenmoor’s cliffs.
There was no way to prove ghosts existed, and even if they tested for every psychological and neurological condition in existence, he’d still always wonder.
But he had Asher now.
Not all cases of Alzheimer’s were hereditary, but given Father and Grandfather’s history, it was likely they shared a gene for familial Early-onset Alzheimer’s.
If that was the case, Lev had a fifty-percent chance of inheriting the same gene. Asher deserved that clarity, and Lev needed to know if Silas was real.
Lev’s mind kept circling back to the day Rebecca had spooked and taken Asher to the mausoleum. What if Silas had wanted to hurt Asher when Rebecca rocketed across the field?
What if Silas could hurt Asher? What if Silas had lured Asher out during high tide the day he nearly drowned? What if Silas had caused Father’s death?
God, he sounded mad, but no harm could ever come to Asher. Lev would send him away if he had to in order to keep him safe.
Next, he emailed his therapist to inquire about more aggressive agoraphobia treatment. While he and Asher’s daily jaunts had helped, his progress had stalled.
Asher’s suggestion that Lev leave on horseback had nearly worked.
Lev had been able to leave, but only if Asher rode in the same saddle with him, and while Lev had traveled farther than he had on foot, that was only because a horse covered more ground.
His agoraphobia had chased him and Asher right back inside in about the same amount of time.
Silas’s snide and gleeful commentary upon Lev’s return amplified the humiliation and impotency Lev already felt.
Lev needed to hurry. One day, Asher would feel as trapped as Lev had with Silas. Not to mention, if Asher was in danger, perhaps Lev could leave with him.
Silas materialized in front of the fireplace. “Our Asher certainly has a type—older, prone to fits of anger, sketches younger men when they’re naked.”
Asher had begged Lev to paint him in the nude to reclaim the sensual blend of his passion for art and his passion for Lev.
But Lev had only acquiesced after Asher agreed to let Lev burn the painting after.
While Asher’s trust humbled Lev, he never wanted Asher to fear it falling into the wrong hands as it had with Ben.
Lev shifted his attention back to Asher, asleep on the sofa, dressed in nothing more than the jacket Lev had insisted he wear after they’d made love in front of the fireplace.
“Poor Asher fell in love with his hero only for his hero to be the villain,” Silas said.
Lev didn’t want to be a villain anymore.
Asher was so young, his life a sketch waiting to be filled in. What if Lev could live like that with him? What if he could start over with a blank canvas, one not marred with blood stains, scribbles, and scratches? What if he could have a second chance?
Silas dragged the pad of his index finger along the mantle and frowned, rubbing his finger and thumb together as if checking for dust. Had he left a line in the dust? Lev stifled the urge to rush across the room and look.
“Lie to yourself all you like, Levvy, but I’m the dark truth, the proof of your villainy, no matter how much you try to ignore me.”
Adrenaline and fury spiked in Lev’s bloodstream. He gnashed his teeth together, quite literally biting back his words.
Starving Silas of attention was the only tool he had left.
Silas pushed off the mantle and sauntered over to the desk.
“I’ve had a lot of time on my hands while you’ve been so preoccupied. I can’t wait to show off my new skills.” Silas hopped on the corner of the desk, leaned close, and whispered, “Careful Levvy. One day, I’ll learn how to manifest myself physically. Then what will you do?”
Silas’s threat echoed Lev’s own growing fears that with each passing day, he wasn’t losing more of himself to Alzheimer’s, but feeding his soul to Silas.
Lev drained the rest of his glass and scrubbed his face with his hands.
He closed his laptop and picked up the sketch he’d finished while Asher slept.
The watercolor palette he’d mixed and left to dry was ready to work with. Art was his only reprieve from Silas’s haunting.
He plucked up his brush and began with the base tone of Asher’s skin, searching for ripples in his glass of water each time Silas repositioned his perch on the desk.
“Lev?” Asher sat up, blinking blearily.
“I’m here, baby. Did I wake you?” Lev darted a glance to Silas, but he wasn’t there.
Lev couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d seen him. Had art banished him, even if temporarily?
Asher’s dimples flashed with a soft smile as he pushed his hair out of his face. Lev’s barber visited Lichenmoor once each month, but Asher’s hair grew faster.
Shampooing and conditioning his lad’s hair, then trimming it between visits, had become one of Lev’s most treasured memories.
He’d painted each occurrence, focusing on the delicate details he couldn’t bear to forget—the shade of near-black that warmed into dark chocolate under bright light, the soft swirl of the cowlick hidden beneath his luscious waves, the bottom right corner of his hairline on the back of his neck that Lev loved to kiss.
Asher crossed the room, swimming in Lev’s coat and leaned his hip against the desk. He lifted the drained glass of cognac, and sniffed. “Couldn’t sleep or breakfast of champions?”
“The latter. That’s how I still have all my hair. It’s a secret recipe.”
Asher rolled his eyes, and unzipped his jacket, gooseflesh pebbling over his tattoos, cock already hard. Had the caress of Lev’s coat on his bare skin turned him on, or Lev himself?
“Mr. Blakely, whatever happened to your clothes?” Lev tugged Asher’s sleeve, coaxing him closer, and exposing one shoulder.
As an artist, Lev had always appreciated the beauty of the human body, the sensuality of every frame and shape and texture, but Asher’s shoulders were equally salacious and architectural. Lev wanted to latch his mouth on the curve of the joint and suck.
Asher swallowed, drawing Lev’s eyes down the line of his sternum and around the ouroboros encircling his navel to the cock he longed to suck.
“Mm. You wear this far better than me, but I think I need to see your other shoulder to be certain.” He tugged the other sleeve, and his smart lad caught on, shrugging the jacket down to his elbows.
“What are you painting?” Asher asked.
Lev shifted his palette and glass of water to the side. “You, of course.”
“This is how you see me?” Asher asked, peering closer.
“Your beauty is otherworldly, but I’m only human.”
Lev added a flush of scarlet to the Asher’s cheeks, a mirror image to the blush he sported now.
Siphoning inspiration from reality was a well-worn tool in any artist’s arsenal, but when the muses favored him, Lev traded his cage for a place outside of Lichenmoor where art and life bled together, and reality and fantasy shared the same bed, where a single drop of paint bloomed into an ocean and brushstrokes grew mountains.
“What are you thinking?” Lev said, drawing closer, disturbing dust motes that sparkled in the firelight like fireflies.
“You stole the blush in my cheeks and turned it into art.”
“Yes. Well, you are, after all, a live portrait, my model, my muse since I met you.”
Asher trapped his bottom lip between his teeth.
“You like it when I call you my muse, don’t you?” Lev pressed a thumb against Asher’s bottom lip, slowly freeing the delicate tissue from between his teeth. “Hm?”
Asher shivered, sexy eyes almost shutting as he blinked slowly. “Yes.”
“I thought so.” Lev leaned forward and whispered against the shell of Asher’s ear, “I wish you could trap me inside a painting and take me away from here.”
A tantalizing flush crept down his chest, the kind he ordinarily had only after he climaxed.
“Lev…”
Silas reappeared behind Asher, hands gripping his shoulders.
Lev flinched. “Blakely, be a good lad and come here.” He extended his hand.
Asher’s brows darted together, sparing a single glance to where Silas stood, where Asher couldn’t possibly see him.
Lev dragged Asher closer, nipped the parka back over his shoulders and pinned him safely between his widened knees and the desk.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Asher asked.
“Tell him, Levvy.” Silas leered over Asher’s shoulder. “Let’s see what he says. Maybe that will send him away. Maybe then you’ll pay.”
“He is,” Lev answered after a damning amount of time had passed.
Asher looked over his shoulder and shivered. “What does he want?”
Lev planted his hands on Asher’s hips and bowed his head against his chest.
“He wants me to suffer. He wants me to lose you.”
Asher clutched Lev’s head to his chest. “You won’t lose me.” Asher’s jaw hardened. His spine straightened. He lifted his chin. “Fuck him.”
Silas feigned a gag. “No, thank you.”
Asher ran his fingers through Lev’s hair absently, as if they were so close, comforting the other comforted them both.
“You’ve suffered long enough, Lev.”
“Thank you for trusting me when I say he’s there, and for not treating me as insane as I feel.”
“I’ll always trust you, and you can trust me to take care of you.
Whatever Silas is, we’ll fight him together.
If he’s a ghost, we’ll haunt him with our happiness, and if he isn’t…
” Asher’s countenance turned troubled. “Sometimes the monsters in our heads are the most difficult to defeat, but we will win.”
If Silas was Alzheimer’s, there was nothing to fight; only memories lost with the passing of time.
“I’ve messaged my medical team asking them to examine me here. Perhaps I could try another round of medications.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Which way are you leaning?” Lev asked. “Ghost or hallucination?”
“I don’t know...” Asher trapped his bottom lip between his teeth again. Color flooded the blanched crescent indent he’d left as he said, “Sometimes I think I see him in the shadows, or even feel him.”
Lev’s head snapped up as if he expected to find Silas touching Asher now, perhaps quietly curling his fingers around his throat. But Silas had disappeared again.
“Feel him, how?”
“I don’t know,” Asher repeated, and looked down at his hands. “I feel watched, or like I’m not actually alone. Before I knew you saw him, when you gained that faraway daze, I often felt a strange sense that someone was there. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.”
“Wishful?”
Asher met Lev’s gaze with doleful eyes. “I want Silas to be a ghost so badly that I don’t know if I’m just reaching for proof that isn’t there because I don’t want you to have Alzheimer’s.”
Lev’s heart rended in two. He thought he’d come to terms with the fact that he’d die an agonizingly slow death lost in the catacomb spiderwebs of his fucked up head, but witnessing Asher navigate the same path to acceptance rekindled his grief.
“I understand, and I’m so very sorry,” Lev said.
Asher cradled Lev’s face between his hands. “I’m not sorry. I’ll never be anything other than grateful that you brought me here so I could love you.”
“I’m afraid I’ll always be sorry for the pain I may one day cause you, but to love you and be loved by you is the only time I’ve ever been truly happy, and I’m grateful too.”
Grateful and guilty. Lev didn’t deserve to be happy after what he’d done.
“Did Silas leave?” Asher asked.
Lev nodded gently, face still cradled in Asher’s hands. Vanquishing Silas, even temporarily, was too precious to acknowledge aloud.
“I felt him before, and now I don’t,” Asher said.
“Good. That’s…” Lev’s composure collapsed under the weight of his relief and grief, and something he hadn’t felt since Father had died—hope.
Asher curled over Lev, cocooning him beneath the cathedral of his chest, and in that sublime sliver of liminal space, Lev vowed to sacrifice his soul, shackle himself to Silas, and spend an eternity walking circles in the mist, if only to remember him.
When Lev later checked the mantle, there was no line in the dust to prove Silas’s existence. There was no dust at all.