Tears came next, a flood of them coasting unchecked down her cheeks. Alexis ran upstairs to the master bedroom. She hauled out a suitcase from the back of the closet and threw it open on the bed. Postcards she’d bought from Daytona Beach, Florida, lay at the bottom. The thing hadn’t been used since her high school senior trip. She’d meant to send the cards to her brothers. Why hadn’t she?
Awareness pricked her senses, along with a fresh round of tears. A vortex had opened. Then a heavy beat of silence, followed by footsteps thudding on the stairs. Must’ve seen the destruction in the living room.
She scrubbed her hands across her face, but it was too late. The damage was done.
“Alexis!” Reign’s shout reverberated throughout the house.
His footsteps pounded up the stairs and he barreled into the bedroom. He didn’t stop until she was in his arms, pressed against his chest. “Are you all right?”
Define all right.
When she didn’t answer, he eased her away. “What has happened?”
Desperate to make one more memory, she mapped his face with her gaze, then traced his features with her fingers. He captured her hand and brought her fingers to his lips.
“Are you injured?”
Physically, no. Her heart? Her soul? What she had to do would destroy both.
“The living room?” He hedged.
She shrugged. “I did it.”
Surprise showed on his face and she untangled herself from his embrace. “Why?”
“Time to redecorate.”
“Then why are you crying, Alexis?” He traced a finger down her wet cheeks.
“I’m leaving.” She met his confused gaze and had to look away.
“Where are we going?”
She took his hands and removed them from her face. “Not we, Reign. Me. Just me. I’m leaving you.”
Alexis retreated to the closet. She grabbed a handful of clothes, moved around his body, which was rooted to the floor in the middle of the bedroom, and dumped the clothes inside the suitcase.
He grabbed her arm when she tried to pass him and pulled her against his side. “Why?”
“I don’t—don’t . . .” She wanted to say ‘I don’t love you’, but the lie withered on her tongue. She loved him more than she loved herself, and that’s why she had to leave, because she wouldn’t subject him to the same torment her mother inflicted on her father.
What if we have children? A daughter? God forbid. A vision of a dark-haired, blue-eyed little girl snuggled in Reign’s arms brutalized Alexis. A shudder ran through her.
“I don’t love you, anymore,” she whispered to the room because she couldn’t meet his gaze. She yanked free, moved around him to the bathroom. The sudden need for her toiletries took precedence. She gathered an armful of stuff, not caring what items were cradled in her arms. When she spun, Reign blocked her path.
He crowded her, making her back up until her back was pressed to the shower door. He hooked a finger under her chin and lifted until she drowned in the depth of his blue eyes. “Explain.”
What more did he want when ‘I don’t love you anymore’ should have been enough? She jerked away, flustered by his touch and his cool demeanor. “I can’t do this anymore.” She croaked, her throat so dry, sandpaper was a moist towelette by comparison.
He knocked the toiletries out of her arms and hauled her to him. “Can’t do what?” he demanded over the clatter of shampoo bottles and toothpaste hitting the tile.
Even though his fingers dug into her skin, his touch was familiar. So too his scent—wild, woodsy with a hint of the ocean—the height and breadth of him, the heat rolling off his body in waves, all so familiar. All what she craved—and had to run away from. Now.
She yanked out of his hands, or he let her go. Either way, she was free. “I can’t do us anymore. We’re done.”
She shoved him away and marched back into the bedroom. Staring at the half packed luggage, she called herself all kinds of fool. Leaving should’ve been her priority, not packing. Idiot.
If she had just left, he would’ve found a note and she could’ve avoided this soap opera scene. His heat scorched her back, and she braced for the worst because she deserved it. Hell, she wanted it. Whether angry words or blows, she’d take both to avoid something worse. The truth.
She wanted a fight, to bleed on the outside as much as she did on the inside. She wanted the armor on her back, the sword in her hand, an opponent she could hack—anything to stave off the inevitable. But Tirrika was a silent piece of inert jewelry.
“What happened when you met your brother for dinner?” Fury warped his voice.
It wasn’t her brother who’d put her at this crossroad. Hell! Maybe it was. Maybe it was him, her father, definitely her mother.
“Alexis.” He spun her to face him.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered with as much conviction as she could muster. She couldn’t stand his touch right now. It felt too good, like home.
As if scalded, his hands dropped. Alexis stifled a whimper at their loss. A voice inside her screamed, ‘What are you doing?’ She answered with, ‘I’m saving him’.
“I cannot touch you? Since when?” Voice low and deep, yet she didn’t miss the anguish layered within.
“S-since—” she stuttered, stalling for an answer.
“Talk to me, my love.” His breath fanned her hair and her desire.
“I am talking to you, but you’re not listening!” she shouted out of frustration.
“Because you are not saying anything I want to hear!” He stormed away.
He was right. She kept hemming and hawing, dragging out the torture. “I’m sorry. We—you and I—are over. I’m breaking up with you.”
“Yes...you are breaking me.”
I’m saving you. I’m saving you. If she said it enough, it would become true. “I know you don’t understand, but this is for the best. Someday, you’ll be grateful,” she said to his back.
“Every day I have spent with you, I have been grateful.” He half turned back to her. “I love you, Alexis.” Her gaze dropped to his outstretched hand. In his palm, a ring sparkled.
Other than him, it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Her fists curled to keep from reaching for it.
He pulled a Post-it note from his pocket. “In five days, I will be waiting at this address. If you have any love for me, join me there and grant me the honor of becoming my wife.” Gently, he gathered her to her and slanted his lips across her. A simple press of his lips to hers, and a hammer to her will.
Needing him, her lips parted, desperate to breathe him in a last time. His tongue slid inside her mouth, and she shattered. Her fingers uncurled and latched to his coat. She needed more, all of him.
He pried her hand open and dropped the ring into her palm.
No frisson of power tingled her nervous system, signaling a vortex opening. No goodbye. Reign was just gone.
Alexis dropped to the bed, her world in too many pieces to glue back together.
Chapter Thirteen
Twenty-four hours later, Alexis pulled into the garage of her family’s beach house in Key West. She’d checked with Thomas to make sure neither her father nor mother had decided on a sudden vacation and that the security codes hadn’t been changed. Even with the powers of an anu’Ra, she didn’t need the police showing up. Her brother was surprised at her destination yet somehow managed to keep his opinion to himself.
Wise man. Right now, anyone stupid enough to cross her path would end up bloody.
The house hadn’t changed. The same beach casual décor remained, except for her bedroom. It was now an office. She tossed her suitcase onto the bed in the guest room, retrieved her bathing suit, and marched into the ocean.
She swam parallel to the beach until exhaustion forced her to shore two miles away from where she entered. The return journey was just as cathartic.
And got her nowhere, especially when she had to stroll past blissfully happy couples, l
ost to everything except themselves, and families. A mom slathering sunscreen on her kids. A father teaching his toddler how to walk. A two-mile gauntlet of everything she couldn’t have.
She alternated between time on the porch, watching the waves with a book on her lap, sleeping, pretending to eat, and not thinking about all the years in front of her.
So many years.
She had to make plans. Hiding in her parents’ disputed beach house wasn’t a long-term option. How to decide when anywhere in the world was open to her? Weeks ago, they’d spent some time roughing it on a deserted island in the South Pacific. The two of them in a tent, fishing, swimming, fucking. Go figure, her man was a survivalist. She’d never had more fun in her life.
And that was her sticking point. She couldn’t get past how he’d made her feel since the moment he appeared in her living room. How the blood sang in her veins at his presence. When he touched her, held her in his arms, rested her head on his chest, and listened to the steady thump of his heart...nothing else mattered. How could she go on, move forward, when he haunted her dreams and her nose missed his scent. Her tongue, his taste.
She didn’t remember how she came to be in front of the floor-length mirror in the foyer. In every home, Gloria had a mirror pretty much in the same area for that ‘final appraisal’, she’d said.
Now, Alexis stood there, stomach rumbling, throat dry from being out on the porch all day, studying the reflection of the blonde stranger. Tired of playing pretend, she yanked Tirrika off her neck and threw the anu’Ra into the living room. Slowly, the blonde faded, and red hair flowed over her shoulders. The slope of her nose changed, along with her jawline, and the width of her eyes. She recognized herself, the outer skin she’d known all her life. Her irises changed from the faux blue back to brown.
Reign called them copper.
Except.
If the eyes are a reflection of the soul, her soul was dead. Without Reign, her eyes weren’t coppery—his husky voice whispered in her ear—they were fucking brown. Plain-as-dirt brown.
She rubbed her eyes, too weary to keep them open. Sleeping hadn’t been a friend. She spent more time staring at the ocean from her bedroom window than between the sheets. When she did manage to close her eyes, Reign was there waiting for an explanation. She woke with a hole in her heart and his scent in her mind, his touch on her body.
The doorbell rang. Without Tirrika to alter her appearance, she marched through the house to the front door and yanked it open. Mrs. Kelly glared at her. At least she thought it was Mrs. Kelly. The woman in front of her had on a sunhat wider than Texas and a pair of yellow plastic sunglasses with Welcome to Florida scrawled along the rim. She wore a floral sundress that barely touched her wrinkled, pasty knees and sandals. Who knew Mrs. Kelly had toes and polished toenails.
“Are you going to let me in or shall I wither on the porch?”
Alexis jumped out of the way in time to avoid being barreled over. Mrs. Kelly entered the house pulling a carry-on behind her. She left her luggage in the foyer and plopped on the sofa. Her hat sailed onto the coffee table and her sunglasses went to the top of her head. “Water, please.”
Alexis retrieved a bottle from the refrigerator, had the good manners to pour it into a glass, and brought it to the elder.
Mrs. Kelly gulped, not sipped, the water down. Alexis perched on the edge of the armchair next to her unexpected visitor, waiting for her to catch her breath.
“My dear, I would thank you for the impromptu vacation if I wasn’t about to have heatstroke. I always wanted to visit the Keys, now I can cross it off my bucket list.” She fanned herself with a handkerchief she pulled from her cleavage.
A sliver of sympathy touched Alexis. “Uhmm, I’m so happy I helped. First, why are you here? Second, how did you find me?”
“First, I found you because I discovered your brother skulking around your backyard. I almost shot the man.”
Mrs. Kelly getting the drop on a Navy Seal. Alexis swallowed her laughter. “So glad you allowed him to live, though I don’t think he’ll be sharing that story with his buddies.”
They shared a grin, then Mrs. Kelly took both of Alexis’s hands. “I’m here for you. To be your sounding board. Your voice of reason. Also, the one to slap some damn sense into you.”
Alexis shook her head and yanked her hands free. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“I came because two people I care about are floundering, and I want to know why.”
Alexis made her way to the sliding glass doors, away from the brewing interrogation. “We’re not floundering. We’re over.”
“You are a horrible liar, dear. You love the man.”
“In the words of Tina Turner, ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?’ ”
“You know, that’s why I’ve always liked you, Alexis. You’re practical. Logical. You were never flighty. I watched you, you know. I tried to convince Gloria to let you join the Order. She refused. She was always the jealous type. Stole your father away from her best friend; didn’t know that, huh? Her interest in Martin lasted long enough to realize he’d never make it onto the Joint Chiefs. Then she pushed him into politics. The same reason he wasn’t suitable for the Joint Chiefs is the same reason he wasn’t suitable for the GOP.”
“I cost Dad his political career,” Alexis said. It was common knowledge. The GOP dropped him the minute she chose Reign and became a fugitive.
Mrs. Kelly shook her head. “Dear, your father didn’t have a dog in the race for that empty Senate seat. It was always going to be that congressman who lost the seat for them. They wanted the appearance of the selection being fair and balanced. It wasn’t. You were never a factor until after you escaped jail.”
Alexis rubbed her forehead at the sudden migraine and shrugged. “Thanks for the clarification. Now, what difference does it make?”
“Not much, except...you can’t use the parent crutch excuse anymore.”
Now that pissed her off. “I’ve never used my parents—”
“Gloria made you a bitch. Your father made you guilty and needy. They’ve been your crutches your entire life and ruined your past. Looks like they’re going to ruin your future also.”
A string of denials balanced on the tip of her tongue, then she thought about her future, the yawning emptiness waiting.
The words died.
“Show me to a bedroom so I can lie down. I’m not young anymore.”
Alexis mumbled an apology and showed her unwanted guest to a bedroom.
“Wake me in two hours and be dressed with Tirrika around your neck. We have an appointment.”
Two and a half hours later, Alexis was dressed in a black spaghetti-strap dress, and sandals. Tirrika was banded around her arm. Mrs. Kelly refused to share their destination. Only curiosity kept Alexis’s lips glued. She didn’t want to be here, walking into a yellow, white trimmed mansion in the Casa Marina neighborhood. Unfortunately, she didn’t want to be at the beach house either.
Truth? She didn’t want to be anywhere, but since she had nothing better to do, she put her brain in neutral and followed instructions.
“Hello, Margie.” A woman, close in age to Mrs. Kelly, greeted the elder. The two hugged and entered a conference room filled with other women. Alexis counted eight, ranging in age from mid-forties to the eldest, Mrs. Margie Kelly. Only four were seated at the conference table. The rest lined the walls in plush chairs.
Mrs. Kelly took a seat at the head of the table. She glanced at Alexis and nodded to a chair along the wall to her right. A murmur rolled through the room causing Alexis to pause. She wasn’t an idiot, and the significance of sitting on the right side of the leader of the Order wasn’t lost on her. From every direction, calculating eyes dissected her. Beauty pageant alumni, it would take a hell of a lot more to intimidate her.
Alexis’s shoulders straightened, her spine stiffened, and her steps didn’t falter. She removed the cellphone and notepad from the chair and planted her ass in the seat.
“No need for theatrics here. You can shed your alter ego,” Mrs. Kelly said loud enough for all to hear.
Alexis gave her a glare that said, Really? You’re going to out me here?
Mrs. Kelly gave a careless wave at the women. “You are among your sisters. None will betray your secret. To do so would mean their death,” spoken in the conversational tone one expected over tea and petit fours.
Still, Alexis paused at the big reveal.
Mrs. Kelly arched a salt and pepper eyebrow, and waited, lips pursed in annoyance. So waited everyone else. Once again, she was under the spotlight, judged and measured. The only thing lacking was a bikini and a sash.
Fine. I’ll comply, you old hag, but I’ll do the killing myself if one of them talks.
Though not a single word was spoken, Mrs. Kelly smiled as if she’d heard every word. Alexis huffed and, with a thought, shed her blonde shield. There wasn’t a peep from the peanut gallery. Not a gasp of recognition of the fugitive in their presence. Not even a whisper. Talk about anti-climactic. Either this bunch of women was hard to impress or they already knew. Just like Gloria.
Mrs. Kelly brought the meeting to order with a strike of a gavel. The governing members discussed staffing, finances, relocation, and the missing Soul Catchers. Alexis took notes only because the others took notes.
“I hold Roman Nicolis responsible. He lost them. He must find them,” Mrs. Kelly said.
“And if he finds them?” Francine Delany, Finance Chairperson, asked.
“When he finds them, we will take them from him. They had their chance to protect the anu’Ra and failed. They’ve forfeited that right.” Mrs. Kelly’s voice held an uncompromising conviction.
Forever (Descendants of Ra: Book 4.5) Page 9
