Chapter 19: Alexis

Chapter 19: Alexis

“It’s great to see you back,” Vincent said, smiling slyly at me as he stood there in the doorway, hands tucked in his pockets.

“Oh, shut up,” I said, rolling my eyes at him, grinning back. “You’re all assholes. When I went away, no one came and checked on me.”

“Well, that’s not true, is it?” Vincent grinned, coming inside the house. “I heard there was a very furtive and frequent gentleman from the pack who couldn’t stay away from you.”

“You’re so bad!” I slapped Vincent on the shoulder. “How do you even know that? Did he tell you this?”

“No!” Vincent lifted his hands and shook them. “No. He’s not like that. It’s just whenever he’d come back from one of his mysterious trips, he’d come back in a good mood. You don’t have to be a genius to put two and two together.”

“Yeah, well, here’s the thing, though. Two and two are not together. I don’t know what we are, and it’s freaking me out,” I said, putting my supplies back in the kitchen cabinet. It didn’t take a lot of convincing on my part to get the place back. I had the money for rent now that I was making good bank at the warehouse. And since it didn’t make sense to have two places, I emptied my apartment and brought back my supplies here. It felt good to be back here. Yes, technically, this was just a rental property, but for me, this was the place where I had grown up, and my parents had sung and danced and cooked and lived. It might be a rental, but this was all the home I ever knew.

“I would go easy on Will if I were you,” Vince said as he helped me put my clothes back in my closet. “That man’s been through some serious trauma.”

“I know. That’s why when he said sorry, I forgave him. We’re okay-ish in general, but things have happened, Vince. Romantic things. Like…”

“Oh my God, you guys kissed, didn’t you?” Vince gasped.

“Well…”

“Get out! Seriously? Oh my God!” Vince clapped his hands together and then punched the air.

“It happened so spontaneously,” I said. “It was like; I didn’t even have time to consider what we were doing. And now, it’s weird. We are stuck in this undefinable phase where we’re neither friends nor mates. Where does a person go from there?”

“Kintsugi,” Vince said, smiling wryly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Kintsugi. It’s this Japanese art where they take broken bowls, trays, plates, and other kitchenware and put the pieces back together with gold as glue. Fixing the unfixable. And when they’re done fixing it, it’s a beautiful thing. What was once a broken bowl is now an amazing piece of art, its cracks filled with gold. Not only is it repaired, but it’s also more beautiful, not to mention spiritual and symbolic,” Vincent said, putting the last of my shirts back in the closet. Then he started taking out my jeans and began piling them in the shelf space.

“I’m a little lost. It’s only eight in the morning, and I’m not equipped to deal with metaphors until I’ve had my coffee. You gotta be clearer than this,” I said.

“Fine,” Vince said, sitting beside me, staring out the window. “The metaphorical bowl of your and Will’s relationship shattered when he rejected you in front of everyone. You thought it was beyond repair. He probably thought that as well. But now, it would seem that fate is smearing some molten gold on the cracks and putting the bowl together, shaping it into something stronger and more beautiful than before.”

“You gotta stop watching all that anime. It’s turning you into a dweeb.” I threw a pillow in his face.

“That’s okay; you don’t have to believe me,” Vincent said as he left the room. In the doorway, he turned around and said, “I believe someone is waiting at the door. Kintsugi!”

I pushed Vincent out of my home and came face to face with Will standing there solemnly, hands behind his back. He looked tired.

“Hey,” I said.

“I see you’re back,” Will said.

“I am.”

“You’re adjusting okay?”

“Actually, I have one last run to make to my old place. Gotta get all my stuff back. Half of it is still there. It wouldn’t fit in my truck,” I said, averting his gaze.

“Are you feeling better after last night?” Will asked.

I hadn’t stopped thinking about the events of last night. “I feel less vulnerable. I feel as if I’ve got things in my control now. Does that make sense?”

“It does. When we take an action, we are not passive anymore. It allows us to feel in control.”

“Well, I felt in control enough to decide to come back. I just feel closer to my parents. They would have wanted me to live with the commune. In our old home,” I said.

“I’ll see you later. I’ve gotta train the troops,” Will said, ducking out.

You could cut the awkwardness in the air with a knife. When would it go back to normal between us? I couldn’t help but feel that, by kissing and having sex with each other, we had somehow turned a bitter rejection into a complicated calculus equation.

“I’m gonna go get my stuff.” What I wanted to ask him was, Hey, what does this mean for us? Are we something? What’s our dynamic? I was too afraid to ask this question and get an answer I didn’t want to hear. What if he were to tap into his rage and snap at me and repeat this cycle all over again? I couldn’t afford to get humiliated again.

***

After I’d filled my truck with the leftover stuff, including my new mattress, I decided to take a break and stop for a coffee and donuts. It was a Sunday. I had earned a fancy cappuccino and a couple of blueberry glazed donuts.

There was only one Starbucks in Fiddler’s Green. In downtown. I decided to make a detour and stop for a gluttonous breakfast.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t feel as good as I thought I would after killing the two vampires who had murdered my parents. Perhaps they had knowingly gaslit me so I wouldn’t get the satisfaction of killing them.

But if what they had said was true, whom did they mean? Maurice was barely in his twenties when my parents were killed. He could not have been plotting with the vampires. True, he became a very young alpha of the pack after my dad’s death, and soon after, he decided to run as mayor, but that would be giving him too much credit. Hadn’t the vampires said something about them being involved in Will’s kidnapping all that time ago?

It baffled me as to who it was. I’d have thought it was Fred, but Fred was practically Will’s own brother. Not to mention how glad Fred had been when Will had reappeared. After my parents’ death, Fred was one of the few people around the commune who had been kind to me. He had a fatherly way about him. It couldn’t have been anyone else from the original pack as well. My grandmother and grandfather, they’d been dead for quite some time.

On the other hand, they were meth-heads.

“My, my, you’re so deep in thought. You look like a baroque Rembrandt portrait.”

It was a voice that petrified me. A chill ran down my spine as Blair Beckett casually came and sat across from me in Starbucks, holding his coffee.

“Their pumpkin spice latte, mmm, so good,” Blair said, kissing his fingers. “Ooh, those donuts look delicious. Mind if I have one?” He took one of my donuts and put it in his mouth.

Every instinct in my body told me to run for the door and keep running until I’d reached Grimm Abode. But I stayed put. I was not going to let this man see that I was afraid.

“What are you doing here, Blair? Didn’t you catch enough of a beating last time? Want some more?” My face was stone, my voice monotonous. It was a good thing I was wearing sunglasses. I didn’t want to reveal any emotions to him whatsoever.

“Ooh, so feisty. You know, I almost regret that day. Almost. Other than the whole me kidnapping you to lure your boyfriend out thing, the interview went super well. I would have hired you were you not related to him. Hell, I’m still thinking about it. What do you say?” Blair had that disconcerting quality where he could laugh without so much as moving his lips. Back in community college, Maliha and I used to call these the yuppie laughs because all the wall-street jerks used to laugh like this.

“I should take you out back and kill you for what you did,” I said, my voice low, my tone calculated. I had to remind myself that under no circumstance was I to let him know that I’d spied on the call between him and Maurice and that I knew he was making something called the Wolf’s Bane.

“Look, I’m a businessman above everything. That thing with your boyfriend—”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“That thing with Will, it’s somewhat like a business transaction. He took away my family. I’m seeking restitution. It’s just good old-fashioned revenge. I’m sure you can understand. As far as we’re concerned, I don’t see a reason why there should be bad blood between us. Seriously, do come over sometime. For old time’s sake,” Blair said and then took my second donut from my plate. He stuffed it in his mouth, got up, and said, “All right, lovely seeing ya as always. I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment with some guys in Tokyo, and I don’t wanna miss it. Think about it.”

“I’ll get back to you. One of these days, I’m gonna get back at you,” I said.

“That’s the spirit,” Blair smirked. “While I have you, I wanted to tell you to enjoy your boyfriend-not-boyfriend while he’s still alive.”

I stood up so fast that my chair collapsed, causing everyone around me to look up and stare at me.

“I swear to God,” I began, but he held his finger to his lips, beckoning me to be quiet.

“Would you rather be standing here bickering with me? For all we know, something might have already happened to him. That would be such a shame, wouldn’t it?”

Even though he had not touched a single hair on my body, I had never felt so violated before.

As I watched his car drive off into downtown, I sent Maliha a text, asking her to hack into Blair Beckett’s phone and every known profile so that I could make sure he didn’t do anything to Will. That was if he hadn’t done something already.

I was thoroughly rattled as I left the coffee shop. My legs were shivering, and my breath felt shallow. I had to go back to the commune immediately. I needed to see if Will was okay.

Guys like Blair didn’t make empty threats just like that.