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He'd leaned over and snagged the front of Marcus' shirt before Lauren finished the thought. "What the hell is the matter with you?" Marcus yanked loose, shoved Josh back and came around the counter.
"Stop it, both of you. "
But Marcus wasn't after Josh. Lauren realized it a blink after Josh did. They both lunged after him, but it was too late.
Marcus ripped the framed picture off the wall hard enough to tear a gash in the sheet rock and broke it over his knee. The frame snapped like kindling in his frustrated hands. He tore the canvas loose as Lauren cried out and Linda emerged from the back, her eyes round. Taking the coffee, he dumped it over the now ruined canvas.
"Marcus - " Lauren leaped forward.
Josh picked up the nearest statue, a hefty bronze of a Minotaur, and yanked Lauren back as Marcus turned on her, rage gripping his features. Josh struck him across the jaw with it, knocking Marcus back into the wall.
"Josh!" Lauren tried to move forward again, but Josh held her firmly.
Marcus was breathing hard, leaning against the wall. Blood slipped through his lips, proving the blow had made an impact, not just in the evidence of the blood but in his sudden stillness, hunched against the wall as if he couldn't move, as if frozen by the horror of a Medusa's gaze. A look into his Fate, his life without Thomas.
Josh handed the statue to Lauren. Despite the fact he needed her to be his Mistress on a lot of levels, he didn't assume the mantle of submissive in any way when her wellbeing and protection was at risk. "You stay right here," he ordered her. "Not a step. "
He moved to Marcus. When he got there, he reached out, laid a careful hand on Marcus' shoulder.
Marcus raised his gaze, and it was as if Josh was looking into a hell-filled abyss, all the conflict and turmoil roiling in the green of his eyes. "He's coming back, Marcus," Josh said.
Marcus shook his head. "He'll get down there, and it will all be about his mother and. . . what he has to be. He can't walk away from his responsibility to them. "
"He's not walking away from anything," Josh said firmly. "That's why he is going back, Marcus. Have faith in him. "
"I do. I know who he is, everything about him. " Marcus abruptly straightened, shrugged past Josh and squatted by the mess on the floor. Running his fingertips over it, the layers of now wet paint mixed with coffee staining his hand. "I know him inside like it's my own inside, my breath and bone. This painting. . . it captured his soul. " Is it bad to just stop? Maybe it hurts less. Maybe Emile, Toby and Mike were the lucky ones.
Marcus shook his head again. Stood. "I'm sorry," he said with forced politeness to Lauren, and included Linda and Josh in his gesture. "I can't be here today. Linda, please close up. Don't clean this. I'll do it later. "
Lauren did step forward now. "Where are you going?" Instead of answering, he looked at the statue in her hand and shifted his gaze to Josh. "You hit me with a Royce sculpture? Do you know how frigging expensive that piece is?"
"It's bronze. Something even harder than your head would be needed to dent it.
And I'm not the one who just shredded the painting you paid thousands of dollars for at an auction. "
"Your hand. " Lauren caught it, and Marcus noticed the gash caused by the wood frame, the nails. "When was your last tetanus?"
Marcus pulled away. "Leave it. " He stared down at the wreckage. "It will heal over.
It always does. Doesn't even leave a scar. "
When he was a boy, they'd had a cat on the Iowa farm whose eyes were always messed up, as if the poor beast s
uffered allergies. Upon eventual inspection, they discovered his eyelids grew inward and his lashes were abrading the surface of his eyes. Of course, by the time they figured it out, the corneas were scarred such that the cat lost part of his sight, but he lived a fully functional life anyway.
It occurred to him then that he might have a peculiar phenomenon like that cat.
Perhaps the scars from all of his wounds were on the inside, a protection method that allowed him to maintain his looks, his most potent survival weapon. But somehow, along the way, the wounds had begun to fester. Because of Thomas, his torment and savior both.
He had to make peace with it. He had to go back to the beginning. Where he could turn the wounds into calluses, before he bled to death internally.
Chapter Twenty-Two
As Thomas chuckled and rose, offering his mother a hand up, the cell phone Marcus had given him began to buzz in his coat pocket. He withdrew it as they made their way down the stairs. When he glanced at the display, he started. "Mom, I'm sorry, I need to take this one. "
"Is it Marcus?"
"No. " He flipped it open. "Josh? What is it?"
