Painted On My Heart

“Shit,” he whispered, looking down at his hands. They even looked different.

Walking across the bathroom, he berated himself. He wasn’t being fair to himself, but more importantly, he wasn’t being fair to Arik. Why couldn’t he pull himself together?

Kellus reached inside the shower and turned on the faucet, then let the shower warm before stepping inside. His hands went to cover his face and his shoulders slumped as he leaned back against the cold tile. What was he going to do? He worried about everything, and he held so much guilt where John was concerned. Guilt that was eating him alive.

Shockingly, John had survived the removal of the ventilator. While John had developed some responses to pain early on, nothing had really changed for the last several days. Kellus had avoided the hospital altogether, sensing the deterioration in his own mental state. The unrealistic guilt he’d created in his head wouldn’t shake free, but today, he had no choice, he had to go. They were making plans to move John to a long-term care facility, and Mrs. Nickerson had asked him to be there. That was where his latest head-game was coming from. He was no longer as hopeful as John’s parents that time would make everything better, especially with the emergency Medicaid options. The social work team had called him yesterday. He’d offered the money he had on hand to help subsidize John’s long-term care, but it wasn’t nearly enough. It would take everything he had to help Casey and Lisa get John in a better place.

What if he were wrong, and John’s family was right? What if John could pull through this but failed to because of the facility they chose?

“You didn’t come.” At those words, Kellus jerked around to see Arik standing in the opening of the shower. “You didn’t get off.”

“You scared me,” he said, his heart pounding out of his chest as he avoided eye contact, sticking his head under the warm spray of water.

“Why did you lie to me?” Arik asked, staying just outside the spray of water.

“Arik…”

“No. This has to stop, Kel. You’re a shell of the man you were. You have to stop taking responsibility for John’s actions.”

“I know,” Kellus said, frustrated with himself, reaching for the soap. Arik didn’t even know the half of it. He quickly washed himself, rinsed, and then grabbed a towel before squeezing past Arik. He couldn’t face Arik, couldn’t risk seeing the hurt in those beautiful amber eyes. Arik’s pain was all his fault.

“You’re hurting yourself. He’s taken everything you hold dear and happily destroyed you. Then he’s done it over and over again. You’ve got to stop pining for that man.” Arik yelled those last eight words.

“I’m not pining for him. How can you think that?” Kellus spun around, facing off with Arik and his absurd statement. He had no problem in meeting Arik’s direct stare this time as anger began to lick up his spine. Pining for John? Fuck, he was disgusted with himself for ever pushing his and John’s relationship in the first place. He had held John back for fear he’d be the one left behind. Pining was the exact opposite of what he was doing, and he had guilt about that too.

“What else can I think?”

“He was as close to me as my brother. Closer even,” he tried to explain. Reconciling with himself that he had never loved John as he did Arik—this angry, frustrated man, standing nude, fuming at him was his whole world. The depth of all this fucking emotion he had over Arik… Yeah, never about John. He’d been little more than John’s keeper and shortchanged them both by his selfish demands that they stay together.

“Come on,” Arik yelled, throwing his hands in the air. “That man is not your brother. Your parents’ genetics would never produce anything that behaved like that.”

“You’re purposefully misunderstanding.”

“No! I’m trying to understand,” Arik shouted.

The little tickle of anger flared to determination. He liked that so much better than this pathetic, helpless thing going on inside him.

“You don’t get it. You refuse to see it. Just leave it alone,” Kellus said, tossing his wet towel on the sink as he left the room. He was so tired of trying to explain. Tired of trying to always do what he felt was right and ultimately still being wrong. Arik stalked after him as he entered the closet. Kellus ignored him, grabbing his jeans and tugging them on, not bothering to find his underwear before jerking them up over his hips.

“It’s the middle of the night, Kellus. Where are you going?” Arik demanded.

“Away from here.” He had to get away before his carefully constructed walls began to crumble. He held so much inside, trying to please everyone in his life, and it was killing him.

“Seriously?” Arik hissed as Kellus pushed past him while pulling a T-shirt over his head. “There’s no way you know that junkie like you think you do. You’re too good a man to put up with the life he’s led.”