Chapter 11
LEXI
Glass shattered in every direction, and the sound of water was overwhelming. She couldn’t breathe right, and she couldn’t see much, except… Danny. Little Daniel was covered in blood.
She wasn’t sure if it was her blood or his, but looking down she saw they were both splattered.
It almost looked like he was sleeping, but his head was too far to the side.
It looked horribly wrong. Everything about this was wrong.
She shifted towards him, but a blinding pain in her chest made her whimper and stay still.
Mommy, who had left her arm out the window as they were driving, even though it was still chilly… Mommy was underwater. She wasn’t moving. Her hair splayed out around her head. And just like that, she couldn’t breathe.
“Lexi! Lexi! Alessandra, open your eyes!” came at her loudly from above.
In a blind panic, she launched up and back.
On instinct, she kicked her leg in an arc.
When she thought about it later, she would recall that that kick was in theory designed to take an opponent’s head off, but sitting on a couch with Grayson, it hit him in the upper chest. He grunted out his breath in a whoosh and was knocked back against the couch, but that was all.
With her leg coiled back, ready to kick again, Lexi looked around the room. The club. Pizza for dinner. Grayson. She’d gotten weirded out about something… memories of her mother. She’d fallen asleep on him. As her eyes latched on to his, she belatedly realized she’d kicked him.
“I’m so sorry!”
In a flurry of motion, she sprang off the couch. Grayson said nothing, but stared up at her from the couch. She scooped her phone out of her leggings pocket and checked the time - six-thirty in the morning. Fuck. She looked back at him and cleared her throat.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m so sorry. I’ll get going. I’ll just-”
Lexi left it at that and started picking up odds and ends from the coffee table. He had yet to say anything, so she kept going; the two pieces of pizza left were wrapped in paper towels and put in the mini fridge.
Napkins were thrown out, the pizza box was folded, stomped on and set next to the garbage pail, and the old water bottles were de-labeled and squished discs in a small blue recycling container she found. She couldn’t stop her hands from trembling with adrenaline.
All the while, he said nothing from the corner of the couch, watching her with half-raised lids.
With nothing left to do, she hesitated. Was he going to say anything?
She spied the paperwork with their notes and picked it up, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
It looked like he wrote down all her requests, and-
“I would prefer to not go over that again while I’m half asleep, and unless you’re going to start mopping next, could you come sit back down please?” Grayson asked.
He finished the request with a yawn and a stretch. She winced when she heard his shoulder pop and remembered it had been dislocated less than a day ago.
“Do you want an ice pack?”
Grayson stared at her blankly. She tried again.
“For your shoulder?”
“I would like,” he said around another yawn, “to be back asleep, but since that seems to not be an option right now, Miss Alessandra, I want you to come sit back down.”
Still she stood, and picked up her ballpoint pen from the table, sliding it into her other pocket.
The way he said her name felt funny. She pushed it aside as only being unused to hearing Alessandra.
With the couch and the round chair from the night before her main options, she chose the couch - but sat in the opposite corner from him, tucking her legs up in front of her.
Grayson turned, lifting his right leg up onto the couch to look at her. She could hear her own heartbeat in his silence.
“I should get going,” she started.
“Do you always wake up like that?” he asked, point blank.
Lexi looked down at her hands.
“Like what?” she asked. As if she didn’t already know.
“Oh,” he said, just as casually, “like there’s no more air in the room, and you panic?”
“I wasn’t panicked.”
Grayson said nothing, but rubbed his chest.
“I tend to wake up fast,” she blurted.
The doubt coming at her from under his lowered lids pushed through her to keep trying.
“Don’t need caffeine when I wake up, either. Just get right up and go.”
“I bet. Adrenaline does that to a person.”
She said nothing. He rubbed his hand against his chest again where her shin had struck, and sighed.
“Didn’t I tell you we need to actually get to know each other?”
Lexi winced. “So?”
Grayson shook his head and stood up. She felt both relief that his intense green gaze was pointed elsewhere, and a little bereft of his attention at the same time.
With a frown, she figured she was just sleep deprived.
As he stretched and put his shoes back on, she noticed he’d tucked them under the coffee table. It raised questions.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asked.
“Hm?”
Still mid-stretch, Grayson turned.
“When I fell asleep, you could have just woken me up and I would have gone home. Why didn’t you?”
It was his turn to look away.
“Unlike you, Super Girl, I do need coffee to wake up. You’re gonna have to give me a few before full conversations.”
He walked over to the kitchenette and she stayed on the couch, hearing water flow and machines beep to life. The scent of coffee wafted over to her a few minutes later.
“Want some?” he asked from across the room.
She nodded. Although it was early, she had to be at the gym in a couple of hours. It wouldn’t be worth it to go home and crawl into her own bed, only to have to wake up another half an hour later.
“I don’t know how you take it,” he said, setting two mugs down on the counter.
Lexi wandered over and inhaled deep. The aroma went straight through her lungs and down to her bones, and smelled like heaven.
Grayson had placed skim milk, a caramel creamer, a vanilla creamer, real sugar, and substitute sugars on the counter for her.
She was confused why he had different options for himself, before realizing that he probably served lots of people coffee.
LifeS had a restaurant and this was his office, after all.
She quietly added vanilla creamer and said, “thank you,” in between sips.
Grayson walked to the edge of the kitchen, pulling a shade aside to look out a window, glancing up at the sky. He brought his coffee with him in one hand and held out the other as he came around the corner of the bar.
“Come,” was all he said.
Lexi hesitated only a moment, but took his hand. He led her past the couch, told her to grab the blanket, and waited while she draped a large knit blanket over her arm before taking his hand again.
In the farthest corner of the room past his work desk was a door, one Lexi hadn’t noticed before.
It was painted all white with a push-bar for a handle, and she almost expected an alarm to go off as he pushed through it.
But it led to a staircase, and he led them up.
Trying not to jostle her coffee with the weight of the blanket -and that he wouldn’t let go of her other hand - Lexi focused hard enough on her mug.
She didn’t notice at first that they’d stopped climbing. He was staring at her.
“That’s cute.”
Lexi looked up. She realized she’d been concentrating hard enough that her tongue had slipped out slightly past her lips.
It was something she’d done since childhood, but rarely had anyone ever caught her doing it.
She quickly slipped her tongue back in, but the damage was done.
Grayson was grinning down at her. They stood in front of a door with a sticker that read ‘Rooftop Access’, and he held the heavy door open for her.
“Almost there,” he said, tugging her behind him.
For once, it didn’t occur to her to demand answers. She doubted he’d made her coffee just to push her off the roof, and was surprised to find herself content to be tugged along. Her breath formed light puffs of mist in front of her face as they walked the expanse of a rooftop terrace.
At the edge of the flat rooftop was a small circle of lounge chairs and patio furniture.
A small fire pit sat there as well, but he led her to a long lounge chair.
He let go of her hand to adjust the back of it, pulling it to a more upright position, and sat down.
She surveyed the chairs, wondering which one would be the least cold.
In early November, outer Philadelphia wasn’t always below freezing, but at dawn it felt damn close.
“Sit,” he said, taking another sip of coffee, looking up at her expectantly.
“I’m thinking about it,” she said, staring at the other chairs.
“Here.”
Grayson grabbed her forearm and tugged, pulling her to his lounge chair.
Oh. She straddled the chair and sat at the front.
Grayson sighed, and she looked over her shoulder.
He leaned all the way forward and wrapped an arm around her waist to drag her backwards on the canvas until she was nestled between his legs.
The chair material was chilled, and slightly damp with morning dew. She shivered. He shuffled the blanket around the front of her over their legs until she was in a little cocoon of warmth. Only then did he lean back and pick up his coffee again. She wondered if this was a normal morning for him.
“Do you usually-”
“Shh,” was all he said.
Lexi leaned back a bit against his chest, again a little surprised by how much bigger he was than her. With his feet up on the chair, his bent legs sat up next to her like solid walls, at the moment draped in blue knit.
From behind her, his warmth seeped into her back and she unconsciously nestled closer.
He sighed in contentment and wrapped one arm around her stomach, resting his heavy forearm across her waist. Their breath mingled in front of her; accidentally syncopated clouds of sheer white, and she watched each cloud dissipate.
“This is nice,” she said after a few quiet minutes.
“It’s about to get better.”
His voice was still rough with sleep and rumbled through her chest. Grayson pointed to a space between buildings.
Against the city backdrop; close enough for a cheap Uber ride, but far enough to look like an actual cityscape, the outline of Philadelphia slowly became visible against the dawn.
As the sky burst into pinks and peaches of early light, buildings’ lights and street lights winked out.
The first spear of sunlight bounced off of a copper church dome, highlighting the old architecture.
The second hit a skyscraper paned with rose-gold glass, so the entire building reflected a pinkish glow.
She watched as the city was slowly bathed in light, and didn’t realize she’d sat forward until Grayson sat up against her.
From their vantage point, after a couple of minutes, the sun hit them directly.
Lexi closed her eyes; not against it, but in pure enjoyment.
The arm circling her waist grew tighter, drawing her back against Grayson, and she went with it, leaning her head back, almost high enough to reach his shoulder.
Lexi’s eyes popped open when his lips grazed the side of her neck, and she was so startled she almost dropped her mug. Luckily, there was little left in it, but since her heart had jumped to triple time, she set it aside.
“Relax,” he murmured, but she just… couldn’t.
Her breathing sped up, and she sat tense and rigid again, as if the last several minutes of absolute bliss never happened.
Lexi could feel the growl from his chest before she heard it, and looked up over her shoulder at him.
Before she could move, the hand in front of her came up to rest at the base of her throat and his forearm stretched the length of her torso, pinning her back between his leg and his chest.
Green eyes glittered intensely as he turned her more to face him.
“Am I going to hurt you?” he asked harshly.
“I don’t… think so,” she whispered.
It seemed that wasn’t the answer he wanted, because his fingers tightened and she heard his mug shatter somewhere next to them. She could still breathe perfectly fine, but she felt her pulse where his fingers pressed, betraying her racing heart.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, his face inches from hers.
Despite his intensity, she thought it through.
“No,” she said.
Her confidence rang clearly through the one syllable. That answer seemed to pacify him some, and he took a deep breath, considering her. His forefinger at her throat stopped gripping to trail a sensitive spot on her neck and she fought the urge to squirm.
“You’re not afraid of violence,” he said, “and you’re not afraid of me.”
His finger beat a gentle staccato on her pulse.
“So what is it?”
Without waiting for an answer, he pulled her mouth to his.