Sit Still, Look Pretty · Julie And The Phantoms ·

Under Contract

Luke caught a glimpse of panic in the girl's eyes. She furrowed her eyebrows and, before he had a chance to tell her not to worry, she pushed him with all of her might. He fell backward into the room, falling over boxes and something metal that clattered to the floor.

She pulled the door open fully and glanced back at him, her silver eyes searing into his memory, before she took off.

Luke stayed on the floor for a moment, trying to make sense of what had happened, rubbing his chest, a warm tingling sensation spreading through him. His backside hurt, his elbows hurt. He felt pain.

That was new.

In the months since they'd returned to the garage, they hadn't gotten hurt, aside from the jolts of Caleb's Mark. Those had been excruciating, the worst kind of pain he'd ever felt. No pain he'd experienced when he was alive had been as painful as those jolts. However, he hadn't felt anything he'd consider a lasting pain since dying.

Yet, he had pain throbbing through his backside and elbows like he was still alive and had fallen off of a stage backward.

Finding his way back around to the main stage, Luke was still rubbing at his elbows, the pain only just subsiding. When he spotted Alex, he forgot about his physical pain. The expression on his friend's face was clear he was experiencing some kind of emotional anguish. He must not have been able to find Willie.

"Hey, man," Luke patted his friend's shoulder, Alex taking notice of his standing there. He wiped his eyes, sniffling a little. He'd been crying? "Willie a no-show?" he asked, but Alex shook his head.

Willie was there. In fact, Willie was getting comfortable in one of the booths with a couple of men and women. He had his arm around one of the men, while one of the women fawned over his hair. What the hell was happening there?

"Luke, don't say anything," Alex pleaded with his friend. They'd had a pretty shitty last few days, cutting ties with Julie had hurt like a bitch. Luke wanted nothing more than to scream in someone's face about how unfair the whole thing was and Willie had presented himself as the perfect target.

Oh, you want to get close to my brother, string him along, only to ignore him to please a couple of Lifers? Luke strode over to him, a man on a mission, but was stopped by a female ghost, dressed up like one of the showgirls. She was clearly trying to distract him. She was gorgeous! Her jet black hair, her big aqua-marine eyes, her tanned supple looking skin. Luke was mentally still a teenage boy and they were notoriously easily distracted by pretty things; girls, guys, guitars. And any other day, the distraction would have been perfect and would have worked.

But not today. Everything he was feeling was amped, at least ten times, and he was more than just angry. And the longer that anger sat, boiling away inside of him... "Willie!" he yelled, startling the showgirl, Willie and the Lifers, and Alex, who was trying to pull his friend back. "Where the fuck do you get off treating my best friend like a piece of shit?" he shouted, the room falling silent. It was a big room. The silence was thick and heady and if someone were to drop a pin, everyone would hear it. "Caleb might be an evil son of a bitch, but I didn't think you were one, too. Alex deserves so much better than the shit you're putting him through."

"Luke, stop," Alex tried to calm him down, but Luke had only just gotten started. He was seething with an anger he hadn't felt before. It was like someone had filled him to the brim with boiling hot magma that just needed to be spilled or he would explode.

"No, you're too much of a pussy to say it yourself, so I will," Luke insulted his friend, unintentionally. It was the anger. "Your soul has festered as much as Caleb's and it's clear you two were cut from the same cloth," he spat at Willie, venom spilling from his mouth, not words or magma. "You can fuck around with anyone you like, but don't fuck around with my friend's feelings."