Wariness shot into her eyes, she was sure it did, powered by a small, uncomfortable clenching of her gut.
She didn’t want him to hit on her. She was really bad at rejecting anyone. Hated making anyone feel poorly about themselves.
Again, instead of reverting to the hint of temper that he’d shown her earlier, he smirked, again revealing those less than perfect, somehow captivating teeth.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.” Alexa couldn’t see his face then, hidden as it was by the beer bottle. “’Specially when you got a mug like mine.” Setting down his second empty bottle, he twisted the skin of his face into a grotesque caricature, making her laugh.
An awkward silence followed that laugh, instead of the ease that she’d thought would come.
Suddenly, she’d had enough. She’d celebrated enough, thank you very much. She wanted her bed, not the strained conversation of some guy that she couldn’t figure out and who kept her on edge.
So she counted out some change to tip the bartender, lining it up painstakingly next to their empty bottles and glasses. She thought that she saw Eugene frown, just a slight glimpse of his face altering drastically from a smile out of the corner of her eye as she untied her cardigan from her hips and slid it onto her arms, but by the time she’d turned back to him his face was clear as sunshine after the rain.
“I’d better get going.” Alexa offered a smile. “It was nice meeting you.” She wasn’t sure that nice was the exact word that she should have used, but it had certainly been interesting.
“Wait. You walking?” Hastily, he donned his faded black denim shirt over the t-shirt that had been equally bleached of color. “I’ll walk with you for a bit.”
She didn’t want him to—she wanted to be free of the incessant need to think of something to say. But he looked so eager, again seeming so excited to just have someone to talk to, that she acquiesced, leading the way out of the dim, sticky, heated bar.
What was she going to go home to, anyway? An empty apartment, her Kindle, a tuna melt? Things that she liked, certainly, but not much of a way to celebrate—all alone.
And right now she wasn’t alone. She had company, even if it wasn’t the kind of company she was used to.
Besides, what would it look like if she said no?
* * *
Voices cut through the soundless air, jolting Alexa out of the black that she was drowning in. She flinched, or at least she did in her mind, because she couldn’t move. She couldn’t move anything. She was glued to the ground where she’d been dropped like a lifeless doll, adhered to the leaves and twigs and dirt with something that felt warm and thick like fresh made jelly, and smelled like the blood that she knew it was.
Oh please God. Please, let it be over. Please don’t let him be back.
The voices were female, though, female and slightly hysterical. She felt hands patting at her, rubbing over her cold, sticky skin, pressing at the pulse under the curve of her jaw and at the juncture where her hand became her wrist.
Talking, talking, all the time talking, but she didn’t know what they were saying. Like she no longer spoke the language of her birth.
Something warm and heavy was placed over top of her, pressing against her, but it was pleasant, not at all like the feeling of his flesh undulating on top of her own. It helped to warm her, a bit, though she truly felt that she’d never be warm again. Not truly warm—not warm and safe.
Alexa wanted to protest when her eyelids were pried open, when the crusted matter there was cracked wide and her fragile orbs were subjected to the blaring white light of what appeared to be early morning.
Was it the next morning? Was it a week later?
She had no idea.
Was she even alive?
She didn’t know that either.
She could feel her pupils pulse, adjusting against the sudden influx of light. She could see colors—great swatches of grass green, of pale, pale blue. Jagged spears of white tipped grey that cut the blue to ribbons, and fuzzy ovals of moving pink and cream that refused to stay in one place.
The pressure on her eyelids was removed, and she was allowed to lapse back into the blessed dark. Before she could entirely slip away though, could escape entirely from the brutal reality of sensation, she heard a voice.
Heard and understood it.
“It’s going to be okay. Do you hear me? It’s going to be okay.”
She didn’t understand. It would never be okay again.
* * *
“It doesn’t look good.”
Alexa didn’t understand.
Whose voice was that? It wasn’t one she knew. And why couldn’t she see? Why was the entire field of her vision an implacable, grim landscape of slate, stretching as far as she could see every which way?
“Rapid papillary dilation, oculus dextra only... no wait, oculus sinistra also.”
Huh?
Thoroughly confused, she struggled to sit up, to open her eyes. Why was she lying down? Had she been asleep? She wasn’t even tired.
Nothing happened. Annoyed, Alexa commanded her brain again to move her arms, her legs, to crunch her abdominal muscles in a sit up. To force the ever quickening flutter of nerves in her eyes to open.
Nothing.
Panic snaked its way into her consciousness, an oily sickness in her gut. It roiled in her stomach like an over-rich meal as she frantically tried to understand why her limbs weren’t working.
“Heart rate’s increasing.” Alexa heard, as if from a great distance, a long, repetitive string of shrill beeps, quickening irregularly before slowing again.
A flash of light, nougat yellow, registered in her right eye, then her left. She opened her mouth to protest, but instead of her own voice, she heard the lower, more moderated tones of a man.
“No pupillary response oculus unitas. Reflexes?” A sharp tap on each knee.
She was getting annoyed. She wanted to wake up.
As the minutes ticked by, however, realization slowly trickled in, water filling a vase full stones.
This wasn’t a dream. This was real.
Alexa tried again to speak, and again and again. There was no sound besides the one reverberating off the shadowy confines of her mind.
She was screaming, but it seemed that no one could hear her.
She howled until even her inner voice was hoarse. As she quieted, her mind—her only companion, it seemed—turned over what she’d heard, what she’d experienced since ‘waking.’
She was in a hospital, or something like that. If they were testing her reflexes, then why couldn’t they see her responses? Why couldn’t they tell that she was awake, just unable to speak, to see, to ask?
“Any word on an ID yet?” Another male voice, this one lighter and somehow more smooth.
“No. The patient had no identification on her. No purse, no wallet, not even a credit card.”
Wait a minute. That was wrong. Completely wrong. Alexa never went anywhere without her purse, a small piece of battered leather that she’d had for years.
And patient? Patient of what? Why did she need to be here?
What had happened to her?
“What do the cops say?” This came from a woman whose voice reminded Alexa of the burnt ochre and gold sunrises at home. Home, yes, home. Was she home?
No, that wasn’t right. She had her own apartment now. She loved it. She loved freedom. Love painting. Loved life until...
Until what?
Bearing down internally, she tried again, with all of her strength, to spit out the words that were choking her.
She just wanted these strange people to realize that she was awake, that she could hear them. She didn’t want them to keep poking her flesh, shining lights into her eyes, or strapping monitors to her skin.
Why couldn’t they hear her? Why couldn’t she talk?
And what was that haze of red that was wafting on in, the curling tendrils ominous in their undulating shades of scarlet, crimson and claret?
&nb
sp; It was—oh, God. The pain. The pain. Like a million tiny, deathly sharp blades, not stabbing but slicing, all at once, through every single bit of her flesh. Melting on through layers of derma and fat, muscle and bone.
As her breath caught, rasping painfully in her inexplicably swollen throat, Alexa heard the faint, staccato song of the beeps again. They raced, faster and faster, before pausing once, twice and slowing, sliding towards silence. She tried to shut out the pain, to breathe through it, but still she heard the busy bee hum of panicked voices, of shouted words, of things she didn’t recognize.
A sharp sting in her right hand, then a lovely cool began its slow trickle, heavy and so fat with wet that it dampened the pain, bit by bit. Numbed the senses.
With its arrival the desire to speak, to yell and scream her existence, faded. She no longer cared about why she was where she was, or who was around her. Didn’t care why she was trapped, an active mind in a body that wouldn’t respond, no matter how loud she screamed.
Didn’t care that her thoughts were decidedly hazy, disappearing like smoke in the sun.
Oh, that cool. So thick and sweet, deadening her veins and everything that they touched.
She didn’t want... she couldn’t... she needed to...
It all faded to grey.
* * *
Alexa woke up in the early hours of the morning, shuddering and gasping for breath. The pale light of an early morning sky filtered in through the open window as she clawed her way across the covers to Nate, cold tears spilling soundlessly down her cheeks.
Waking instantly, Nate opened his eyes, took one look at her face, and opened his arms. Soundlessly, Alexa moved in, huddling against him, every part of her icy cold.
His arms were strong around her as, finally, her body relaxed and she drifted back into a fitful sleep.
* * *
And so it went, days drifting into nights, drifting into days. Alexa ate when she was fed, bathed when Nate nudged her into the shower, slept more than was healthy.
But bit by bit, she began to feel more... normal. Not like the person she’d once been, but... better. Life was going on, never mind that she didn’t want it to.
She tried her best to avoid her mother, not sure how she felt about being lied to in such an extreme fashion. But Tracy refused to return home, instead renting a small condo in town, bringing food and books and anything else she could think of to entice her daughter back into the land of the living.
This was an interesting turn of events, because the one decision Alexa had been able to make, was to stay in Florence indefinitely. She’d made the decision on her own, and in another strange twist of fate, overheard Nate on the phone the very next day.
“No, Hannah. I’m not coming back to Los Angeles.” By now, Alexa knew what had happened to cause the shadows in Nate’s eyes. A few more minutes of eavesdropping, and she understood that Nate was speaking with the widow of his former partner.
“No. This is for real. I have a new home.” A pause. A definite smile in his voice. “Yes, there’s a woman.”
She would never have asked him to stay for her. And she would never have imagined that he would want to, not after what he’d seen of her since her world had shattered.
But understanding that not only had he stayed through her lowest low, but that he still wanted her? Wanted her enough to stay here?
It wasn’t the entire reason that she started dressing herself in the morning, started feeling hungry for food, for conversation, for life.
But it definitely helped.
The shattered memories came back, bit by bit, day after day, often with frustratingly huge gaps in between. They were hard, and they made her wake up screaming in the night, but Nate was always there, arms and heart open wide.
Alexa had been aware, on some level, that Ellie and Gabe had indeed returned home the day that she’d discovered the truth of everything. She also knew that Nate and Tracy had kept her sister away until she was able to deal with it. But sometime after she started to feel better, Ellie managed to sneak up the stairs to the apartment.
“Oh, Alexa.” Ellie stopped just inside the living room, her eyes wide as she took in the other woman.
Alexa, not expecting the chance meeting, just stared. She was not prepared for Ellie to bound across the room and hug her tightly.
“This is all my fault. I never should kept that damn book.” Ellie continued to squeeze, the warmth finally melting the stiffness n Alexa’s limbs. “I never should have tracked your mother down in the first place.”
“Don’t.” Alexa still wasn’t speaking much, and her voice sounded hoarse. “It’s... I think I’d rather know.”
And that was something she was coming to understand. Hard as it was, she knew that eventually she’d been happier, having worked her way through the darkness to the other side, rather than wondering what was missing inside of her.
“Why did you want to know so badly in the first place?” This, Alexa had yet to understand. Ellie had, by her own admission, just barely found out about Alexa’s existence when the accident had occurred. She didn’t quite understand what had driven her sister to look up Tracy and, more, to badger copies of Eugene’s confessions from her husband.
Ellie cast her a strange look. “We’re family.”
Alexa felt her heart sink. “Our father was family, too.”
Sparks flew from the older woman, and Alexa understood that Ellie knew—Tracy must have told her.
“Family are the people who stay.” She looked Alexa in the eye, nodded determinedly.
Alexa turned that over in her head. The people who stayed—that was an interesting definition. And, she thought, so very true.
It had been a week, or perhaps a week and a half, since she’d found out about Eugene Higgins. The worst week of her life. And yet the people who mattered to her—they were still here.
Her mother, though they had some issues to work out. Ellie, though they barely knew one another.
And Nate. Dependable, wonderful, sexy Nate. The rock she could cling to when the storm threatened to knock her down.
“What... what are your plans now?” Ellie cared, she knew, but Alexa also figured the other woman would be interested in knowing when she could open her shop again.
It meant a lot that Ellie had agreed to keep it closed, to stay away and give Alexa some space.
There was only one answer. “I’m staying.” Why, apart from Nate, she still wasn’t sure—shouldn’t she want to be as far away from Eugene Higgins as possible?
But she had a sister here, one that she’d like to get to know. She’d done more painting here than she had anywhere else in the last year.
More than that, though... it just felt like where she needed to be, like the place where she could heal.
“Do you have a place to stay yet?” Ellie asked carefully, and Alexa jolted. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. In fact, she’d kind of just assumed that she’d remain living here.
“I’m sure I’ll find something,” she finally replied. She didn’t want to move. She was comfortable here. And the thought of any more big life changes at the moment made her skin crawl.
Either her feelings showed clearly on her face, or that was what Ellie had already wanted, because her sister looked at her with knowing eyes, and smiled faintly. “You can stay here, if you want. Estelle was your grandmother, too... it’s only fair.”
“Wow.” Alexa had known that, of course she had known that... but the fact hadn’t really sunk in until Ellie had said that. “Thank you, Ellie. Really.”
Yet another tie to Florence. The roots of her family might be dark and twisted in places... but they were still her roots.
“Will Nate be moving in with you?” Alexa noted that Ellie was looking at her very carefully. She deliberately kept her face impassive.
“I... I don’t know.” And she hated the fact that she didn’t know.
He had, in fact, been living here since that horrible, awful day. But Alexa hadn’t tho
ught about whether it was permanent or not.
Probably it wasn’t. Moving in together, officially moving in together—that would be insanity after the short amount of time that they’d known one another.
But Nate had seen her at her worst, and he was still here.
And Alexa now understood that life was too precious, too easily snatched away, to not grab what you wanted, to hold on tight and never let go.
“You know what? I’m going to go find out.” Alexa stood abruptly, dusting her hands on the thighs of her jeans. The sudden movement made her dizzy—she hadn’t been moving much at all the last week.
“Nate’s downstairs with Gabe.” Ellie’s eyes sparkled as she gave her sister a thumbs-up. “Go get ‘im.”
Alexa rolled her eyes, but inside she was grinning. Was this what it felt like, to have a sibling? Someone to tease you, but who ultimately had your back?
She thought she liked it. She knew she wanted more time to discover for sure.
“I’ll be right back.” But right now... she had a mission. A purpose. And she was going to see it out, even if she had to crawl down those stairs.
Chapter Seventeen
For the first time in over a week, the front door to Estelle’s Blooms was propped open, and buckets of flowers were outside in the sun. Alexa noted that Ellie had been busy that morning, replacing what was surely a cooler full of dried out stems with a fresh delivery.
Gabe was standing behind the till, ringing in a customer. He smiled at her as she slowly, shakily, pushed her way out of the cooler.
Nate had been leaning against a shelf full of vases, but the second he saw her, he stood up straight. She held out her hand to indicate that he should stay there, then made her way through the small shop, feeling surer on her feet with every step.
“Hi,” Nate said as she approached the door. The sunlight called to her and, stepping outside, she turned her face up to the sky and drank it in.
With her eyes closed, she felt rather than saw him come up behind her. Before he could pull her into his arms, as he always did, she turned and regarded him with serious eyes.
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