Page 70 of Possess Me! (I Want You To)

Okay.

“What I’ve been feeling isn’t sadness. There’s no end to it. It’s a black hole. Sucking, sucking, sucking at me. Eating away till there’s nothing left. It’s black, black, black. The absence of light. The absence of feelings in general. Nothingness, in the truest sense of the word.” He swallowed. “Even I can’t paint nothing.”

Funny how I’d so recently referred to myself as a black hole.

Was that how he felt too?

Why?

I was getting tired of not knowing what had caused him to feel this way.

“Because—” Luca cut himself off, his fingers twisting nervously around the wheel as his free hand traced frantic patterns on his pant leg. Swirl, swirl, swirl, jab, jab, swirl. I couldn’t tell what shapes he was forming, but it didn’t matter. I could see the emotion clear as day. Turmoil. Like a hurricane. “Because, I lost the part of me that felt like sun? That gave light to everything inside me.”

I don’t understand.

Fuck. I…wished I did though. I wished I could…what? Help? God, what a stupid notion. I couldn’t help him. I didn’t even understand half the emotions he was talking about.

“Before…” He began to explain, patient as ever. “I was Luca. Sunshine, Luca. I shined everywhere, you know? Lit up emotions, made people laugh, helped my family. Dependable as the sunrise every morning.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and visibly startled when he caught his own reflection. One of my eyes glowed back at him—us— and Luca stared at himself for a beat too long before turning back to the road.

“Growing up we didn’t have much. Mom did her best, and I did too.” He shrugged. “She depended on me to always keep the sun shining. I was supposed to be the golden child.”

How could you lose such an integral part of who you are?

I needed to know.

Tell me.

“I didn’t.” Luca’s voice grew cold and a feeling of shock twitched through my body at the sound. I’d never heard him so…angry before. “It was stolen from me.”

Stolen from you?

“Yes.” Luca squeezed the wheel tight, his free hand shifting from his thigh back to the wheel as he glared at the dark road in front of him. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Okay.

I wasn’t sure what I’d said to upset him. Maybe the whole conversation had been too raw. One thing was for certain though. He would tell me what had happened. I would force him if I had to. And I would rain hell on whoever it was that had hurt him. For the first time in my life I was grateful for the crash-course in murder Lydia had given me when she’d held my talisman.

Luca didn’t speak again for a long time. Not until the radio came to life and Evanescence began blasting loud enough for Hell to hear. Luca jumped nearly a foot in the air and then laughed, a loud barking sort of sound, as he slammed the volume button repeatedly till the damn thing turned off.

His smile was back as he glanced in the rearview mirror again, making eye contact with me.

“Be prepared for that to happen at least a hundred more times on this trip. Fuckin’ death trap.”

He was grinning, and I couldn’t help but think despite what he’d said earlier, he still looked like sunshine.

We only had a quarter tank of gas left when Prudence took pity on me and my loudly growling stomach. We’d swapped places driving when my eyes had started to droop, and seeing him again—solid—after the conversation we’d just had was surprisingly scary.

It made it real.

I’d already shared more with him than I’d shared with anyone else, even Violet. Prudence knew me, and hell. I didn’t even know his last name.

Without prompting, Prudence took the next exit into a big city, chasing the signs that led to an old school diner right off the freeway. Huddled shadowy figures wandered along the dark sidewalks, chain link fences towering high as we peeled into the parking lot, and Prudence put the car in park. I couldn’t help but stare at the tattoos that swept across his thick fingers as he squeezed the steering wheel. My stomach growled again.

On our way through the door, I misjudged the distance between my body and another patron as he was exiting, and we collided with an oomph. “Sorry!” I called after him as he flashed me a smile, and headed into the parking lot.

Shit.

I was more tired than I thought.

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