Prophet Reborn (eBook)

Paths to Healing

Alec shivered. Blood rushed through his head as Lucas leered in his face. Barren tree branches cracked the overcast sky, and Alec found himself bound to an upside-down cross, bleeding from stab wounds and a bullet hole as Lucas spoke. It wasn’t exactly what he said when Alec had first lived through this nightmare. This time it was apologetic in tone, an excuse. “We had to do this. It was written. I made you who you are. I saved you.” And with that, Lucas plunged a knife through Alec’s heart.

He startled awake, hyperventilating. Cleo startled awake too. She rolled over and caught Alec in an embrace, spooning against him and whispering in his ear until he found his rhythm. “I’m right here, hon.” She continued with soft hushes, a mother soothing her child out of his fear until Alec shrugged out of the hold as if she was suffocating him. Alec scooted to the edge of the bed and sat there, shoulders hunched as he straight armed the mattress, his fingers clawed into its edge. The act of rejection was killing her. Every time. Cleo gave him a moment anyway before she posed the rhetorical question. “Are you alright, now?”

Alec glared over his shoulder. Stupid question, the glare said. He reached for his phone on the hotel suite’s nightstand to call home, Cleo’s cue to leave the room. Otherwise, she was going to lose her shit. She hated herself for being the other woman, the one whom Alec sought comfort from when he was on tour and away from home. She slipped out of bed and felt Alec’s eyes follow the sway of her hips as she sauntered to the bathroom to quietly do her business and listen to the one-sided conversation.

“Hey, Jake,” Alec said in a forced upbeat tone. “I thought you had school… Jake? Are you still… Lindy… I’m just checking in… Yeah, yeah good flight.”

Cleo flushed. She rinsed her hands and found her toothbrush. She and Alec had talked about Jake’s increasing desire to shut Alec out of his life, and she imagined that the kid’s quick pass of the phone to his mom was proof. “I thought maybe lessons would help,” Alec said once. “One on one with the guitar. Or maybe a drum kit because of Paddy. But he just pushes me away.”

Cleo stared at herself under the harsh bathroom lighting and wished she could be as cavalier about her relationship with Alec as the kid was. She felt sorry for Alec and his woes as a father, she really did. But she understood Jake’s side. It was hard to heal from a traumatic experience when the man who inadvertently caused it was barely holding it together himself.

“I wanted to say something,” Cleo heard Alec say. “But he passed me off.” Then, “No, no. He doesn’t want to talk to me,” followed by a self-loathing laugh. Cleo scrubbed her teeth. She paused when she heard him speak up again. “What,” he said. “What do you want me to do from here?”

Cleo took the moment to spit before the last of the conversation snagged her attention. “Lindy,” and that was it. Cleo rinsed her mouth. She checked to make sure the smile on her face looked genuine, then ventured back into the suite. Alec had his head in his hands, phone abandoned in the tangle of sheets at his waist.

“So how are things with the wife and kid?”

Alec pulled himself out of whatever despair he might have been floating in and filled in bits of the unheard conversation. “Jake starts school today so, you know. Lindy worries.”

“He’s a strong kid, hon. He’ll get past this.” Alec shrugged at her remark as if trying to convince himself that it was true. Then he pushed out of bed and slipped into his boxers. He set a path for the mini bar where he found juice and vodka to mix together. He downed it in one gulp, then rummaged through the little refrigerator for a second round.

“Hon, that’s not going to help—”

He cut her off with another glare and a stern finger. “Don’t.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t not. “Packed full of nutrition, hon. Breakfast of champions—”

“—I’m not judging you, alright?” He found the right bottle, then snapped open the cap and poured.

Cleo held her tongue. She was judging him, it was true. She let him take another gulp and then brood as she busied herself with fashion. She wanted something comfortable for the day’s rehearsal, comfortable but clingy. And then it slipped out; the casual judgment that she couldn’t keep in check. “How many commandments have you broken? Five? Six?”

“Rule number one? No other Gods before me. That one’s a safe bet.” He raised his glass and downed the rest of the drink.

Cleo laughed because it was funny. An atheist could never break God’s first commandment. He had her with that one, and probably the one regarding idols. She went through a mental checklist of the other eight and decided that Alec was lucky to have atheism on his side. She continued to poke through her suitcase.

The vodka freed Alec’s pent-up frustrations. “I didn’t ask for this. People make me out to be some kind of… savior. I mean, what the actual fuck? And I just go with it, I’m leading them on because, I don’t know. That’s what they want. And I do it to support Lindy and Jake…And that doesn’t matter because they’re not happy. And I’m not happy. And—Jesus Christ, he’s—the fucking prick is…” Alec caught his breath, and Cleo thought he was ramping down.

But no. He whipped his empty glass across the room. It struck the TV and shattered, the screen cracked. Before Cleo could follow up with something stupid like, breaking things isn’t going to solve your problems, hon, he turned his back and hugged himself. One sob hiccupped out of him before he held the rest at bay.

Cleo headed for him. She hated these moments. Alec had always suffered from anxiety, and she had been able to overlook it when they were younger and irresponsible during their days as rock and roll punks with an agenda. Then he got shot, and Belinda and Jake returned to his life, and Cleo and Alec’s friends-with-benefits relationship reverted to just friends. Until recently.

But this anxiety was fueled by something different. Part of it still stemmed from the trauma left by his brother, but now it was compounded by fame and responsibility, a responsibility to live up to the image that others wanted but that he failed to have faith in. Part of it was that, but this was something more. Cleo wrapped her arms around him, and he struggled out of her embrace. He didn’t like to be touched unless it was on his terms.

And that was getting worse too.

“I’m sorry,” Alec said. “I’m not being fair to you. I know that.”

“You know?” The relationship had escalated into an affair only recently, and Cleo hated herself for allowing it to happen. She loved Alec. Okay, no. She did, but he was her mommy fix. She felt stronger when he was scared and needed comfort. Come to me, hon. Mommy will make it better. And when they had their arguments that led to bitter name-calling and the requisite fuck-yous while on the road with Josiah’s Healing Tour, those ended with rough makeup sex. Sex that left Alec spent and able to sleep and that left Cleo whole.

Sex with the anxiety-burdened, always-terrified mess that was Alec Lowell left her feeling whole. That had never happened with Marcus or any other lover. But it didn’t matter. It justified nothing, not when it came to the woman Alec really needed in his life. And Goddamn it, he was messing that up too. Cleo followed up you know? with, “Do you think I like being the thing that’s tearing you and Lindy apart?”

“She doesn’t know—”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Alec fell silent. Cleo had struck the right nerve. “I know you’re still scared, hon. I know it’s the only reason why I’m here.”

“Don’t,” he said again.

“Don’t what? Walk away? We’re using each other. And I know Lucas is still in here.” She tapped his temple. “I can’t change that. I want to, hon. I want you to get past it, but what can I do?”

Alec kept his eyes cast to the floor until he posed a different question. “Do you still think about Mark?”

“Fuck you.” She thought about Mark every day.

Alec turned away, wounded. He checked out the remaining selections in the mini bar. “Stop,” she said, preventing him from grabbing another bottle. When he pushed her aside, she lost her balance and hit the floor.

“Oh, shit,” he said. When Alec reached down to help her to her feet, Cleo pushed back in kind.

“I’m alright! Don’t bother.”

They stood apart like rivals before a street fight until Alec broke. “When did I get so god damned needy?” He added a shrug to that, again with the self-loathing laugh.

Cleo stepped in, wrapped her fingers around his head; he allowed it this time, and she met his forehead with her own. “You are alive. We both are, by some miracle. And I know you...