by Kristie Cook
“Good for you!” I said, giving Dorian a squeeze. I would have done the same thing—punched the kid in the face. In fact, the lunatic in me wanted to hunt down the little brat right now. The not-so-crazy part of me at least wanted to find his parents.
Mom shook her head disapprovingly. I ignored her.
“Don’t you ever let anyone talk about your daddy that way,” I said. “He’s a wonderful man and he loves you very much. It’s not his fault he’s not here. You know that, right?”
He nodded, his cupid-bow lips quivering with sadness. I held my arms out and he gave me a bear hug—as big of a hug as a six-year-old can. He knocked me to the floor and I gave an exaggerated cry. He laughed and showed me his guns, flexing his biceps. I ooh’ed and aah’ed over them. They were actually impressive. He had his dad’s strength.
Then he crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Mom and then me, his eyes lit up with mischief. “I’ll stop fighting if you get me a dog. Then I’ll have a friend and I’ll ignore everyone else.”
I bit my lip, not knowing whether I would laugh or cry. I knew how Dorian felt to want a friend so badly. I also knew he would promise anything to have a dog, which he’d been begging us for since his last birthday. We had a hard time believing, though, that he would stop fighting. It was just part of his nature.
“I turn seven in twenty-eight days,” he said when we didn’t respond. And then I did chuckle.
“We’ll see,” I finally said.
“How about no fighting between now and your birthday and then we’ll discuss it?” Mom suggested.
I looked at her with surprise. She was the one usually against adopting a pet. A dog would be another responsibility to worry about if we ever had to go on the run again. Then I realized she must have figured Dorian wouldn’t be able to hold up his end of the bargain.
“Deal,” he said and I cringed. I agreed with Mom on this one.
I gave Dorian another hug, then Mom took him to school. As soon as I was alone, I poured a cup of coffee, went out the backdoor and snuck around the side of the house for a cigarette. When I heard Mom’s car return nearly an hour later, I snuffed out my third one and drained my third cup of coffee, then hurried inside. I munched on chocolate-chip cookies when she came through the door and dumped an armful of grocery bags on the counter. She eyed me, her mahogany eyes filled with disdain.
“Those are healthy,” she said as she placed the bags on the counter.
“Breakfast of champions.”
“Alexis—”
I felt a lecture coming on and there were plenty of areas she could pick on. The ticking in my head grew louder. Some kind of switch flipped. I couldn’t control the need. I wanted to lash out. Psycho Alexis reared her ugly head.
“I don’t want to hear it, Mom,” I snapped, marching out of the kitchen. “I fucked up by not having a girl, but I gave it my best shot. I’m writing the damn books. At least back off everything else, okay? I’m trying as hard as I fucking can.”
“Alexis!” she admonished, following me into my office. She hated my language, which was exactly why I used it. “I just wanted to remind you Owen will be here later. You might want to clean yourself up.”
I looked down at myself. I wore the same raggedy t-shirt and sweatpants I had slept in. Pretty much my normal attire. What the hell do I care what Owen thinks? I didn’t. Mom seemed to, though. In fact, she seemed to care a lot about what Owen thought lately.
“I’m fine,” I snarled.
I grabbed my laptop and headed outside. The mid-March morning in Atlanta, Georgia, had been a little crisp earlier, but the air quickly warmed. It would be a nice day to write outside and I hoped the fresh air would help my mood. I set up the laptop on the patio table, opened the document and then stared at the screen. For a long time. I just couldn’t focus on stringing words into meaningful sentences. Giving up, I gazed absent-mindedly across the yard, thinking about last night.
I considered writing out the evil vampire Claudius, after that rendition of him interrupted my dreams last night. Maybe the time had come to kill him off. Of course, he was one of my primary villains in this last book of the series, so he was necessary until the end. But I was pissed at him now. How dare the asshole harass me at night! I eventually dismissed him for the time being after deciding he would die, a final death, by the end of the book.
Tired of thinking so much about the stupid vamp, I closed my eyes and tilted my face toward the sun, focusing on the heat of the rays on my skin, giving me paradoxical goose bumps. I felt the burn of someone watching me, but I ignored the feeling. It had to be Mom and I didn’t want to deal with her yet. With the warm sun washing over me, I actually felt…well, not good, of course, but at least no longer Psycho. Then a slight breeze came up, light against my skin and just a little cool. And with it, a familiar scent.
Mangos and papayas, lime and sage.
My eyes flew open and I sat straight up, nearly knocking my computer off the table.
“Relax, it’s just me,” Mom said. She placed a tray of food on the table. “Seared tuna on greens with a lime vinaigrette dressing and fruit. I thought you’d be ready for lunch.”
I eyed the tray and realized the food must have given off that mix of aromas. How could I even think it’s anything else? I slumped back into my chair, feeling the emotional wound pulling open again as if a physical gash had been carved into my chest. My body quickly healed cuts, burns and bruises, but not this most painful kind of mutilation.
I moved the laptop out of the way and took a plate from Mom. She joined me across the table. When I looked up at her, I noticed for the first time that someone stood behind her. Quite a ways behind her—at least seventy-five yards, on the other side of the pool, by the fence lining the back of my five-acre property. I froze at his sudden appearance, sure he hadn’t been there just a minute ago.
Something fluttered in my stomach and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. I stood up and took a couple steps toward him, not able to control myself. He just watched me, his arms folded across his chest. Could it be? I had a sudden need to see his face. I slowly moved another step or two toward him, frightened and curious and…hopeful. Who are you?
“Alexis?” Mom startled me out of my trance.
I turned back to look at her as if I’d forgotten she was there. She had twisted in her seat to see what had me ogling.
“Who is that?” I asked, raising my arm toward the man.
She brushed her chestnut hair from her face and peered behind me with her inhumanly sharp eyes. “Who? I don’t see anyone.”
I turned back to him. He was gone.
“I thought…” What the hell? Did he flash? Was it him? Or a protector? Or just my imagination?
“Probably one of the landscaping guys,” Mom finally said. “They have a different crew out today.”
“No Amadis?”
“Not until Owen comes later.”
“Oh. He just kind of…disappeared. And he was staring at me.”
Mom raised her eyebrows. “There would be many reasons for that, my dear.”
I looked at her for meaning. She just shrugged.
I tried to see the stranger’s face in my mind, but he’d been too far away. His build, though…his height, the way he stood…so familiar….
I slumped back into my chair and stared at my hands in my lap, fighting back tears. It’s not him. It’s not him. It’s not him. I tried to convince myself. I’d had other instances of mistaken identities, but because this was in my own backyard, it felt different. Worse. Especially because the stranger had simply disappeared, as if he hadn’t existed in the first place. As if I’d been seeing things. It doesn’t hurt. Just losing my mind, is all.
I shoved my plate away and stood up. I had to get out of here. Because it did hurt. It hurt like hell, actually. For some stupid reason, something inside me had soared high with the tiniest glint of hope, then dive-bombed into the pavement of reality. All the pieces inside shattered into even smal
ler ones, if that were even possible, cutting open old wounds and making them throb and bleed again. I clutched at the pendant—my gift for our one and only Christmas together—as if it could soothe the pain.
“You didn’t eat anything.” Mom pointed to my plate, then gestured at me. “You eat all that junk food and look what it’s done to you. I give you something healthy and delicious and you don’t even touch it.”
The last tick of the bomb sounded. Psycho Alexis could be suppressed no longer and a switch didn’t just flip this time. The whole bomb exploded.
“I’m not hungry, okay?” I roared. “Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone?”
The pained shock on her face stabbed me in the gut. I fled to my bedroom.
Who is he? Why did he stare at me? And what did Mom mean?
I went straight into my bathroom and, for the first time in…what?… probably months, I looked in the full-length mirror and really studied myself. My mouth dropped.
“How’d I get so old?” I demanded of my reflection, moving closer in, staring at a face that appeared to be fifty-five years old.
Dark puffy circles surrounded my bloodshot eyes that were once a deep mahogany, just like Mom’s, but were now a flat brown. Deep lines permanently etched my forehead, between my eyebrows and around the corners of my mouth, which drew down into a perma-frown. My skin was pale and sickly looking, blotchy and aged. My hair, a dull reddish-brown, hung lifeless down my back in strings. Holy shit! Grays! I looked closer at my head and stopped counting at ten. I’m not even thirty!
I stepped back to see if my body looked just as bad. It was worse.
“How’d I get so fat?”
A round pooch protruded in front. Where did these huge hips come from? And my ass? No wonder I preferred sweat pants and elastic-waist shorts. My breasts were the only part that looked smaller…and saggier.
I crumpled to the floor, wailing a mix of sobs and screams. What’s happened to me? What did I do to myself? I’m fat and ugly and old. And alone. All alone.
I literally looked twice my age and I never noticed I was getting older. For me, life stopped at nineteen. I knew time had passed. Dorian’s birthdays were the biggest marker another year went by. Plenty had happened, but I hadn’t lived it. I’d just been going through the motions, barely existing in the fog. Over seven years gone that I’ll never have again. And I looked like twenty-seven years had gone by. I’d let all that stress take a toll on me and my body while never realizing that I—the essence of me—was aging.
Images of the last seven years flashed through my mind like a slideshow while I lay on the bathroom floor with my eyes closed, tears still seeping. Pictures of Dorian—his first smile, his first steps, his birthdays, his first days of school—were bright. Others were dim—book launches, signing tours, buying my first house with my own money. Those experiences should have been remarkable, but I’d let them slip by barely noticed, like water through a sieve, as I wallowed in my pain and loss and loneliness instead.
How could I be so stupid? So wasteful? So fucking miserable?
I cried for some time. Then I grew mad. Mad at myself. Then mad at Tristan. The anger boiled up and exploded again.
“How could you do this to me?” My voice came raw and scratchy as I screamed at the top of my lungs to ensure the one who left me behind heard me, wherever he was. I pounded my fists on the floor, breaking the tiles. “How could you leave me? Why haven’t you come back? It hurts so much. I am so alone.”
I broke down in hard sobs again.
Where are you? Come back to me! Save me from this emptiness!
I cried until my chest and stomach hurt. Then I curled into a ball on the bathroom floor, closed my eyes and pulled out every single memory I could possibly grasp, forcing their clarity, no matter how much they felt like daggers piercing my soul.
That first night of class, when we met. The first time he smiled that angelic grin at me. Looking into those hazel, sparkly eyes, full of love. The first time he touched me and the unusual spark. Our first kiss as the sun set that fall evening. Cooking together. Motorcycle rides. Christmas, when he gave me the pendant, explaining it was a piece of his heart. His warm laugh. The night he proposed. His strong hands and powerful arms holding me close against his hard body, feeling so safe and so loved. And our wedding on the beach. Our wedding night….
Darkness overcame me.
Mom knocked once and I told her to go away. She didn’t come back until much later. I didn’t move from my fetal position on the bathroom floor. I no longer cried; I physically hurt from the sobs and didn’t think I had anymore in me. I barely acknowledged her as she helped me up and to my bed. But I hugged her fiercely as she tucked me in, as if I were six again.
“It’s okay, honey,” she murmured in my hair as I held her tightly. “It will get better. I can feel it.”
“Mom?” Dorian squeaked from the doorway, his stuffed shark tucked under one arm. “Are you okay?”
I propped up on an elbow and held my other arm out to him. He crawled onto my bed, squirmed under the covers and snuggled against me.
“I’m okay now,” I said as I wrapped my arms around him. Mom left, turning off the light and shutting the door behind her.
“Please don’t be mad at Dad,” Dorian whispered in the darkness. “Don’t yell at him for leaving. You said it’s not his fault. And he can’t even hear you anyway.”
I sighed sadly. I hated that he’d heard my bursts of anger.
“I love your father very much, Dorian. Don’t ever think I don’t. I just get mad sometimes and say things out of anger, but only because I miss him so much. Understand?”
“Yeah. I miss him, too.”
I squeezed him tighter. “But we have each other right now. I love you, little man. Very much.”
“I love you, too, Mom.” Within minutes, his breathing settled into a quiet snore.
I fell to sleep shortly after, welcoming unconsciousness, waiting for the memory-dream to start.
But it never came.
After more than seven years of the same thing every night, my dreams were finally different. I found myself in a world where everything was a shade of what I could only call steel-blue-gray. I sat on the top of a mountain, at the apex of the arced range with several peaks pointing to the steel-blue sky in each direction. Far below, at the base of the mountains, looked to be a meadow and a lake but they seemed small and vague from this perspective. A multitude of images hung in the air, as if projected on unseen screens. The images changed, like the slideshow of my waking memories while lying on the bathroom floor. Dorian, the beach, vampires, writing, college classes, Mom’s old bookstore, werewolves, my mom, motorcycle rides, me on the bathroom floor and the figure in the yard…a lot of him. In fact, I later realized, I didn’t even remember seeing Tristan’s face, not clearly anyway. Anytime his face would start to come into focus, the image would shift to the stranger standing in the yard watching me.
I’d always feared losing the memory-dream. Because I knew I’d lose forever the clear image of his face…and my sanity along with it.
Chapter 2
I awoke slowly, not my usual gasping, upright bolt. I opened my eyes, but didn’t find the expected darkness. I lay on my stomach again, my head nearly hanging off the edge of the bed. From the dim light on the floor, it looked like the sun had just started to rise. I glanced up at the clock. 6:05. Not 3:45. Not 8:00. And I felt wide awake.
I rolled over to find Dorian still sleeping peacefully, spread-eagle on the other side of the king-sized bed. He was a strange phenomenon, just like his mother. Before me, no Amadis daughter had ever given birth to a male without a twin sister. Mom and Rina had been sure I was pregnant with twins. I’d never had an ultrasound, never even went to the doctor for prenatal care. Mom acted as my midwife and her and Rina’s feelings were supposed to be enough.
I had developed my own theory: Mom and Rina had sensed a boy and were so sure I’d follow everyone else’s precedence, they sim
ply assumed a girl accompanied him in the womb. Stupid assumption. I was always abnormal, even for us. Of course, I would be the one to screw everything up.
They hadn’t given me a good reason why Dorian couldn’t lead the Amadis when the time came. Instead, they clung to the hope that, because I was different in so many other ways, I might still be able to have a daughter. Mom and Rina felt this could happen, although no Amadis daughter had ever given birth more than once.
There was one obvious problem with this new “plan”—it required a father. And my only love was…gone. Disappeared. Not seen since that tragic battle seven-and-a-half years ago, less than three weeks after our wedding.
As I watched Dorian sleep, his face looking so much younger than his nearly seven years, the thought of him hearing my temper-tantrum last night tortured me. No kid should have to witness such loss of control by his own mother. He had his own pain to deal with; he didn’t need to hear mine, too. I was supposed to be strong for him.
It was time for a change. Time to live, instead of barely existing. Time to discover the Real Alexis. I couldn’t entirely let go—that was out of the question—but I could surely move forward with some things. Right? I needed to, for me and for Dorian. I owed him. He deserved more than Almost Alexis. But how?
I thought I could start with my writing. I needed to get back on track with it. I hadn’t written for nearly two days, finding it difficult to write the final chapters of the last book of the series I’d started six years ago. The series was a wildly successful—although dark—love story bringing together the worlds of humans, vampires and other creatures. I stayed out of the talks of movie deals, so they hadn’t come very far. I didn’t care.
Shortly after Dorian’s first birthday, my agent started harassing me for another book, since the first one did fairly well. She reminded me of my contract, but I didn’t care. Writing was a part of my old life, I’d told her. That’s not who I was anymore.
