by Vivian Lux
"Did they say anything else?"
Teach nodded, looking him in the eye. "That's all, before I heard the gunshots. I demanded to know who the fuck they were and they only said this was a warning. And that they're watching."
Guilt knotted his insides. "They're watching," he repeated dully. "Who are they watching?"
"That dumb Ingrid bitch, I assume," Crash bellowed.
Case's mind raced as panic took over. Lexi had been in Ingrid's apartment when Case had come to collect. If Ingrid was being watched, then Lexi would have been seen.
Lexi.
Terror splashed in his stomach.
Chapter 31
Lexi
"Dad."
"Yeah." He didn't turn his gaze from the TV.
"Dad!"
"What?" He was irritated, but I was too angry to care.
"Dad, do you remember the Ericssons?"
He punched the volume down on the TV and the quiet rang in my ears. When he sat back heavily, I knew he remembered. But he was a cop. He wasn't going to admit anything. "Who are they?"
I stepped into the living room, deliberately planting myself in his line of sight. I had left Ingrid's apartment right after Case did. I needed to talk to my father. Face to face.
I planted my hands on my hips. He made a dissatisfied grunting noise.
"Casey Ericsson. You remember him?"
"Yes, Alexandra. I remember him."
"Do you?"
"Of course I do." His defensive tone softened slightly.
"What do you remember?" I challenged.
He crossed his arms. "I remember my eldest daughter's first love," he said softly.
I stepped back slightly, furiously blinking back the tears that his gentle tone had brought. I hadn't expected him to be gentle.
"And you remember what you did to him?"
He blinked. "WhatIdid to him?"
"I told you never to tell anyone. And you immediately did."
He exploded in a sigh. "Alexandra, you have got to be kidding me. I expected this kind of behavior when you were fourteen, but you're a grown woman now. Surely you realize you did the right thing? The caseworker told me it was one of the worse cases of abuse and neglect she had seen in her career."
I stepped back again, my heel bumping up against the entertainment center. One of the worst cases. The scars on Case's stomach, now tattooed over, but never truly gone. Wounds that would never truly heal, inflicted by the person who was supposed to love him most in the world.
"I know," I sighed bitterly. "I saw."
My father leaned back on the couch, regarding me with that laser like focus that never failed to unnerve me and send me babbling like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar. "So you saw that you did the right thing in telling me."
"I know," I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper. "But Dad, there's something I need you to do for me." He arched an expectant eyebrow at me. "Please," I added hastily.
***
The house was quiet. It took me a moment to realize that was what I was hearing. Silence so deep it made my ears ring.
It had been a long time since I had done this, just lay on my tiny bed and let my thoughts drift. My dad had said he'd do what he could and actually got right up off the couch as he said it. I don't know where he ended up heading off to after he made the phone call, but he looked proud and pleased to have a mission. The rush of affection I felt when I heard him pull away in the old station wagon took me aback.
My mom was out Christmas shopping in spite of the existence of online stores. She had dragged a sullen Sarah and a skeptical Mary to the mall with her on the promise that they'd get something out of it. I couldn’t believe they fell for that same trick. I had done too many onerous chores, only to find out that my reward was the "sense of wellbeing that came from helping my mother."
When she asked me to come, I swallowed, ready to lie and beg off. But as my mind raced through my usual Rolodex of excuses, I found I couldn't come up with any that seemed compelling enough.
I looked her directly in the eye when I said, "Thanks Mom, but I think I'm just going to stay here."
She had stood in front of me and I swore she looked smaller than she had a second prior. Her face twitched several times with unreadable emotion. "Okay, Alexandra," she finally sighed. "We'll see you later."
I felt my hands tremble, wanting to take back my words and do my duty. I stood in the hallway, watching them all go, torn between jumping for joy at the knowledge that I had said no to my mother without causing a national incident and calling for them to wait for me.
But when the door slammed shut and I heard the silence that remained, I knew I had made the right choice. I slowly trod up the stairs and flopped face first into my bed.
I could still smell him on me. My skin had absorbed his scent, my smell mingling with his smell. I breathed in deeply, inhaling that ambrosia and my heart swelled with my lungs.
A thousand thoughts jarred my head, each one demanding attention first, but the loudest cry came from my body, begging for me to remember the feel of his lips on my skin. I rolled over and touched my sides lightly, delighting in the slight tenderness along my ribs where he had held me too close. There was a small twinge from my shoulder, reminding me of his teeth against my skin. My scalp tingled, begging for the memory of his hands in my hair and my whole body broke out in goosebumps to be reminded.
I heard the rush of blood in my ears, louder still in the silence. I opened my mouth and moaned out the frustrated desire. My fingers wanted to go down, my hand wanted to be clenched between my thighs. My whole core beat in throbbing rhythm, wanting more than a memory to sustain it. My body wantedhim. It was a need to great to be ignored.
When my fingers slipped down below my waistband and into the crease of my soft folds, the heat they found nearly scalded me. I let one slide inside, slowly, just a little dip into the wetness that was growing slicker by the second. The fantasies I had conjured of him were nothing compared to his reality. My childish dreams were nothing compared to the meeting of the two of us as woman and man.
The tingling that each pass of my fingers elicited was both delicious and irritating, I unbuttoned my jeans, and slid them down my legs, marveling at how alive my body seemed to be. The brush of the fabric against the soft hairs on my upper thighs was enough to make me moan again. I flopped back onto the bed, feeling the softness of the sheets against my bare legs, bicycling them over and over again, entranced by the sensation, but desperate for more of it.
"Casey," I whispered, biting into my knuckle. But that was the name of my childhood love. This person, thisman was something else altogether. "Case." The name slipped past my lips in a hiss of desire.
My fingers found their mark again, and this time it wasn't just an exploration. I pressed frantically into the hardened pearl of my clit, tensing the muscles of my thighs to arch upward into my own hand. My hips bucked upward higher and higher as I rubbed frantically. The little darts of pleasure built and built into a crescendo. I squeezed my eyes shut and raked my free hand over my breast, remembering his lips on my nipple as I tweaked the peak.
The sudden wave that hit me was more violent and all-consuming than anything I had felt before. My legs shot straight out as the bolt of pure lightning hit me and burned me from the inside out. With a wordless, strangled cry, I lost myself in the waves of pleasure that washed over me like the sea crashing into the shore. I twitched as it subsided and pulled my dripping finger free.
And then I squeezed my thigh muscles together and gritted my teeth. Because it hadn't been enough. My own fingers knew myself too well. With them I could never experience the shock of Case's body next to mine. This little session had done nothing to dampen the fire of my ardor, it had only fanned the flames.
Restless, I slid from the bed and padded to the bathroom, hoping I could cool myself down with a splash of water in my face. My ears were still roaring with hot, desperate blood, a sound so loud it almost seemed to come fro
m outside of me.
I paused and looked up in the mirror over the sink, catching a glimpse of my wide-eyed, flushed reflection as I did so. The noise was definitely coming from outside of me.
In spite of being alone in the house, I still opened the door to my parents' bedroom with trepidation. Feeling ridiculous, but needing to know, I went to the window and peered out over our front lawn and on to the street.
The snow had melted and refrozen all month, leaving dirty horned mounds where the plow had gone by. The winter wonderland of the few days after the big storm were long gone, replaced with the dreary, gray chill of a normal Philadelphia winter. The sky was a flat nothing, indistinct in a way that made you stare hopelessly into it, searching for a shape of a cloud. Everything was colorless and dreary.
Which is why I couldn't figure out why my gaze was fixed on the beat-up old Jeep with a bad muffler that idled across the street. Its dull, flat paint job fit in with the dull flat world. It shouldn't have stood out to me.
But it did. I stood at my parents' window for several pensive moments before I made my decision and started down the stairway, right before I ran back into my bedroom and put on my jeans, shaking my head at myself. When I opened the front door and stepped out onto my porch, the driver of the Jeep opened the door as well.
At first I thought he must have known what I had just been doing, and that I had been thinking of him while I did it. The thought made me immediately blush before my brain shouted at me to stop being ridiculous. There was no way Case could have known I was just touching myself to his memory. He hadn't been summoned, genie-like, by me rubbing my "magic lamp."
We stood staring at each other for several long, chilly seconds before he finally opened his mouth. "Are you okay?"
I blinked. "Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Everything okay here? Your parents and sisters, they're okay?"
I could tell the reason he was asking was desperately important to him, regardless of whether I understood why he was asking it. "Yes they are."
"You sure? Are they inside?"
"No, no one's here."
"Can you check on them?"
"Case?"
"Just check for me please, Lexi." His voice rose slightly.
"Okay then, I'll go text them, hang on." I darted quickly back into the house and grabbed my phone. I didn't want to set off any alarm bells with my family, even though I didn't know what the alarm was. Quickly I texted my father, "Hey Daddy, should I start dinner?" To Mary I typed a sarcastic little, "How's it going?"
My phone buzzed twice in succession. First to arrive was Mary's angry, "You're a bitch," which made me smile. Then my father's longer and incomprehensibly garbled. "No Need 2 UR Mom said she + girls will B home soon Luv U." What was it with older people and terrible textspeak?
I heard Case's footsteps on the porch and hurried back to the door. "They're fine," I told him, searching his face, trying to figure out what had him so rattled. I held up the phone. "Just checked."
He let out a whoosh of breath, but then immediately grimaced.
"Case should I be worried about something? Worried about you?"
"Don't worry about me."
I wanted to touch him again. My body burned with my recent self-love and having him this close without touching him made the flames leap higher. "I'm always going to worry about you," I muttered, lifting my hand to touch him. "You need to learn how to deal with that."
I was trying to be playful, but his big hand caught mine fiercely and I gasped in surprise. I saw a million emotions play across his face before he lifted my hand and pressed it fervently to his lips. It was such a gentle, polite gesture from such a rough, imposing man. I nearly crumbled from the shock of it.
"I just found you again," was all he said before his lips covered mine.
Chapter 32
Case
He could almost believe it was steering wheel that resisted turning down that street, not him. The Jeep didn't have power steering, and turning the wheel was always a gamble that he enjoyed. So he could have blamed it on his Jeep.
But that would have been delusional. It was his own reluctance that made the turn so difficult. What was most horrifying, he found, was how little things had changed. The house that used to be Mac's was still shrouded in trees, looking like it existed in its own private forest. The house next to it still had the same green Buick sitting in its same place to the right of the garage. If it had been Spring, he knew that the front walk would be lined with red geraniums, just like it always had.
He almost stopped right there in front of that house. Because driving any further would put number 451 in his line of sight. He wished he could drive past it with his eyes closed.
Be a fucking man,he told himself. It's just a fucking house for God's sake. They don't live there anymore.
He pushed down on the gas pedal, flooring it before his nerve failed. He was in front of Lexi's house, with 451 looming behind him like a bad dream. He could feel its malevolent presence as he slipped from the driver's seat when he saw her open the front door.
But then the vision of her crowded everything else from his brain. She was flushed, her eyes bright and shining, her wild curls tousled and untamed. She was looking at him like she always used to look at him, like he was some sort of puzzle that she longed to be able to figure out. And that she wouldn't rest until she had completed it and set everything to right.
The sound of gunshots echoed in his brain and he shook himself, remembering why he was here. Remembering why he had braved the drive to the neighborhood he had been avoiding ever since he was taken from it. "Are you okay?" he asked her.
She was confused, he could tell. But the less she knew about this ugliness, the better. Her not knowing would keep her safe. When she answered in the affirmative, he dared dart a look over his shoulder to her driveway, catching an inadvertent glimpse of 451 in the corner of his eyes. He shook his head and tried to focus.
There weren't enough cars in her driveway. Not enough for two parents and two teenage daughters. If her family wasn't home, that meant they could be in danger as well. Whoever these people were that had shot at them, they had made it clear that they didn't care about who they targeted.
He felt the rush of affection for her when, instead of pressing him to explain himself, she just ran inside and did what he asked when he told her to make sure they were okay. He tapped his foot on that bare pavement nervously, trying to keep his back to 451. But that made him feel like it was going to leap out and grab him.
Perhaps it was better to face it.
Slowly he shuffled his feet until he was facing the seat of his nightmares. The first thing he saw was that tips of long, brown, dead grass sticking out of the snow piles. The branches of the hedge that lined the front window were long enough to press up against the grass and double back. The house was dark, silent.
Abandoned.
Lexi reappeared, her cell phone in her hand. "They're fine. Just checked."
Case's relief was only temporary. Until he saw them all under one roof again, he wouldn't be able to relax. He heard Lexi ask if everything was okay, if she needed to be worried. "Don't worry about me," he snapped, a reflex long ingrained.
Her fingers lightly brushed the sleeve of his jacket, idly brushing the leather in a touch so feather light it should have been imperceptible. But it was as if sparks flew from her fingertips, jolting through his body. "I'll never stop worrying about you," he heard her say from very far away, her voice melting with love. A quirky smile played around her lips and she spoke further. But he was deaf to her words as the realization hit him like a freight train. He had found her again and for some inexplicable reason she stilled loved him. It was the first lucky thing that had ever happened in his shitty life.
I've been dreaming about you for years. I wasted so much time hating you that I nearly forgot how much I loved you to begin with. I lost you and then I found you and now, because of me and my stupid rush to get money, I thought I might l
ose you again. And I just found you again. He didn't realize he was speaking until the last sentence left his lips, but it didn't mattered if she heard him. What mattered was that he hold her. Right the fuck now.
When he bent to kiss her, she stood on her tiptoes to meet him halfway. He caught her quickly, lifting her so that he could taste her lips more easily. Her mouth was scalding hot, searing him with a heat so intense he felt it spread through his body and down to his toes. Her body was almost as warm and when she pressed it against him fully, he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He felt himself harden against her belly and he pushed against her insistently. Wrapping his hands around her ass, he lifted her easily and she wrapped her legs around his torso, gripping him almost as tightly as he was gripping her.
"Case." His name was like a sigh on her lips, but he heard how she used his new name. It didn't bother him. Though his hands and lips knew she was the same Lexi he had always loved, this animal rush of desire was a new thing entirely. Everything could be new.
"Yes, Case," she moaned in answer to his unasked question. Her hot lips found his neck, raining kisses down his throat as she slid back down to standing.
"No one is here, right?" he croaked.
Instead of answering, she grabbed him by the forearms and pulled him over the threshold with such force that he had to grin. He only took one moment to look around and see that the Delaneys' house had barely changed before she was on him again.
Case pulled her sweater to the side and bent his lips to her freckled shoulder. The small noise that escaped her lips inflamed him further, and he moved his lips upward, trailing kisses along the length of her neck until he reached the delicate skin of her earlobe. He lightly drew his teeth across the soft skin and was rewarded with another kittenish gasp. That was all he could take.
He swept her up into his arms, and ran up the stairs two at a time. The last door on the left, that was her bedroom. He lowered her to the too-small bed. She landed with a soft bounce, and then reached upward to pull him down on top of her.