Chapter 49 Lexi
Lexi
Iwake up to gray light filtering through unfamiliar curtains and the smell of coffee that’s been sitting too long on the warmer. For a disorienting second, I don’t remember where I am—the bed’s too firm, the sheets smell wrong, and there’s a weight across my waist that makes me freeze.
Then it comes back in fragments.
The warehouse. The gun. Gilbert’s body hitting the floor. The hotel room with rain and blood and too many hands. The drive back to campus in the very early morning hours, all of us silent and shell-shocked.
Koa’s dorm.
That’s where I am now. In his bed, fully clothed except for my shoes, with his arm draped over my middle like even in sleep he’s trying to keep me from disappearing.
I turn my head carefully, not wanting to wake him.
His face is inches from mine on the pillow, and in the gray dawn light I can catalog every injury.
The swelling has gone down, but the bruises are spectacular now—deep purple around his left eye, yellowish-green along his jaw.
There’s a cut on his cheekbone that should probably have stitches but won’t get them, and his lip is still split down the center.
He looks like he went to war.
I guess we all did.
My own body aches in places that have nothing to do with sex.
There’s a bruise on my hip from where I hit the ground.
My wrists still show faint marks from the ropes at the warehouse, even though that was days ago now.
Everything hurts in a dull, persistent way that reminds me I’m alive even when I don’t want to be.
I try to ease out from under his arm without waking him, but the moment I shift, his eyes open. They’re bloodshot, unfocused for a second before they sharpen on my face.
“Hey,” he says, voice rough with sleep and damage.
“Hey.” I stay still, not sure if I’m allowed to move yet.
He doesn’t let go of me. Just adjusts his grip, pulling me closer instead of releasing me. “What time is it?”
I glance at the clock on his nightstand—one of those old-school digital ones with red numbers. “Almost seven.”
“You sleep?”
“Some.” A lie. I maybe got an hour, and those were filled with dreams of blood and gunshots and Gilbert’s eyes staring at nothing.
Koa studies my face like he can see the lie written there. Probably can. “You need to eat something.”
“I’m fine.”
“Lexi.” He says my name like it’s both a warning and a plea. “When’s the last time you ate?”
I try to remember. The hotel? No. Before that. Time has gone strange and fluid, days blending together. “I don’t know.”
He sighs, the movement making him wince and press a hand to his ribs. “Come on.”
The kitchen is small and surprisingly clean for a college guy’s dorm.
There’s a French press on the counter next to a bag of coffee that looks expensive, and the sink doesn’t have dishes piled in it.
The only sign of chaos is the pile of bloody clothes in the corner that neither of us has dealt with yet.
Koa moves slowly, favoring his left side, and starts pulling things out of the fridge. Eggs. Butter. Bread. The normalcy of watching him cook breakfast like this is any other morning makes something in my chest constrict.
I sit at the small table, pulling my knees up to my chest. The chair is cold through my jeans.
“You can’t keep looking over your shoulder,” Koa says without turning around, cracking eggs into a bowl. He pauses, whisk in hand, and finally looks at me. “The threat is gone. Gilbert’s gone. Vincent’s gone. You’re safe now.”
“Am I?” The question comes out more bitter than I intended. “Because it doesn’t feel safe. It feels like I’m waiting for the next thing to go wrong, for someone else to show up and try to use me as a pawn in their game.”
“No one’s coming.” He turns back to the stove, pouring eggs into a pan. “The Reapers cleaned it up. As far as anyone knows, it was two gangbangers who killed each other. You’re not even in the story.”
“Except I am.” I rest my chin on my knees. “I’m in my story. I know what I did. And I can’t just... pretend it didn’t happen.”
The eggs sizzle. He adds butter, salt, pepper, moving with the kind of focus that says he’s thinking about something else.
“I don’t want you to pretend,” he says finally. “I want you to survive it.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You will.” He plates the eggs, adds toast, brings it over to the table. Sets it in front of me with a gentleness that doesn’t match his destroyed face. “Because you’re stronger than you know.”
I look down at the food. My stomach turns, but I force myself to pick up the fork. Take a bite. It tastes like nothing, but I chew and swallow because Koa’s watching.
We eat in silence. The coffee is strong and bitter, exactly what I need. Outside the window, I can see campus starting to wake up—students walking to early classes, cars pulling into parking lots, the world continuing like nothing happened.
Like I didn’t kill my father three days ago.
“Revan and Atticus,” Koa says, breaking the silence. “Went back to Blackridge.”
Something in my chest twists. “They didn’t say goodbye.”
“You were asleep. They didn’t want to wake you.” He takes a sip of coffee. “They’ll be back.”
“They will?”
“Yeah.” He sets the mug down, and I notice his hands are shaking slightly. “We’re not done with you, Lexi. None of us are.”
The words should be comforting. Instead they feel like a weight settling on my shoulders—the knowledge that I’m tied to these men now in ways I can’t undo, that what happened between us can’t be taken back or explained away.
“Hockey needs me,” Koa says, changing the subject. “Coach has been calling. I need to get back to practice.”
“Right. Normal life.” I push eggs around my plate. “You’re going back to normal life.”
“You are too.” He leans forward, elbows on the table. “You still have your dorm, but you can stay with me. I have my drum equipment, but I can move that shit.”
I look up at him. “Koa—”
“Just until you feel safe. Until you can be in your dorm again.” His eyes are intense, desperate almost. “I’m not trying anything. It’s just an offer.”
“Offer to keep me close?”
“Yeah.” He reaches across the table, his damaged knuckles brushing mine. “I can’t protect you if you disappear again.”
The admission hangs between us—that he wants me here, needs me here, is terrified I’ll vanish the way I did from the cabin. That he’s as fucked up about this as I am, just showing it differently.
“Okay,” I hear myself say.
His shoulders drop with relief. “Yeah?”
“For now.” I pull my hand back, wrapping it around my coffee mug. “But I’m not staying forever.”
“I’m not asking you to.” But something in his face says that might be exactly what he wants.
The days blur together in a strange rhythm of pretending. Koa goes to practice. I stay in his dorm, healing, trying to remember what normal feels like. I shower until the water runs cold. I fold laundry that isn’t mine. I cook meals I barely eat.
I try not to think about the gun in my hand. The recoil. The way Gilbert looked at me in that final second before the bullet tore through his chest.
But the thoughts come anyway, sliding in during quiet moments. When I’m washing dishes. When I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling. When I’m doing absolutely nothing, and my brain decides to replay the whole scene in high definition.
You killed him.
You’re a murderer.
You’re no better than he was.
On the fourth day, I can’t take the walls anymore. I need to move, to do something, to prove I’m not just hiding from the world.
I find myself walking to the liberal arts building, the one where my classes were supposed to be. The ones I missed because my life exploded and took me with it.
I slip into the back of the American Literature lecture.
She doesn’t notice me—too focused on discussing Fitzgerald and the corruption of the American Dream.
I sit in the back row and try to absorb the words, try to remember what it felt like to care about symbolism and themes and whether Gatsby was tragic or pathetic.
The girl I was cared about these things. The girl who had a scholarship and a plan and a future that didn’t involve blood under her fingernails.
I don’t know who I am now.
After class, I walk through campus like a ghost, observing. Students complaining about exams. Couples holding hands. Someone playing guitar on the quad. All of it feels impossibly distant, like I’m watching through glass.
I stop at the dining hall, get coffee I don’t want, sit at a table by the window. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, half-expecting bad news.
It’s been quiet. Too quiet. Like the universe is holding its breath, waiting to see what I’ll do next.
I open my messages and type before I can overthink it.
Me: you made it?
I send it to Atticus. Wait. The three dots appear almost immediately.
Atticus: Always.
Something in my chest loosens. Just a little.
A few minutes later, my phone buzzes again. Revan this time.
Revan: Don’t forget what you belong to.
I stare at the words, trying to parse the meaning. Is it a warning? A claim? A reminder that I’m tied to them now in ways that can’t be undone?
All of the above, probably.
I type back: I haven’t forgotten anything.
The response comes quick: Good.
I set my phone down and stare out the window at the campus stretching before me. Students moving between classes, living their normal lives, completely unaware that days ago I put a bullet in my father’s chest and felt satisfied doing it.
The restlessness crawls under my skin again, that feeling of not fitting anywhere. Too damaged for normal life, too normal for the violence I’ve seen.
Somewhere in between, trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be now.
A girl who goes to class and takes notes and pretends the world makes sense?
Or the one who pulls triggers and doesn’t apologize?
Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
My phone buzzes one more time. Koa.
Koa: Where are you?
Me: Campus. Getting coffee.
Koa: Come home soon.
The word “home” makes something ache in my chest. Because it’s not home—it’s his dorm, his space, a temporary shelter while I figure out my next move.
But the way he says it, like it could be home if I wanted it to be...
That’s almost worse than the violence.
Because it makes me hope.
And hope is the most dangerous thing I’ve felt in days.
I finish my coffee, throw the cup away, and start walking back to Koa’s dorm.
Back to the place that isn’t mine but might be, to the boy who betrayed me but saved me, to a life that doesn’t make sense but is the only one I have.
The restlessness doesn’t fade.
But for now, I know where I’m sleeping tonight.
And in this fucked-up world, that’s something.