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An angsty little birthday ditty for Finicia, who I think won't mind the angst <wink>
The house was dark. For her, it would always be dark from now on... a black hole that she had leapt into hopefully only
to lose that light inside it.
She sat there in the dark and waited. Waited for the sound of his car in the driveway. Waited for the jingle of his
keys, the twist of the lock...
Her eyes hurt when he opened the door and the moonlight managed to make its way inside. Red and burning from hours worth
of tears, the delicate orbs couldn't handle the onslaught and she closed them until he shut the door.
"Please, don't turn on the lights."
Ric's hand stopped short of flipping the switch.
"Alexis?"
She reached out and pulled the chain on the small banker's lamp that sat on the end table. It was the light she used
to use when sitting here trying to settle Kristina down at the end of a long day.
Used to use...
"Sweetheart," he said, moving closer when she didn't look at him. "What is it? What's wrong? Is it Kristina,
did..."
His voice halted when she sat on the edge of the coffee table and reached for her hand and she pulled it back. Shock
registered on his face, and in the dim light, even with her gaze averted from his, she could feel him studying her as his
own eyes adjusted, taking in the tear stains and the red, puffy eyes and the sadness that felt all-consuming to her.
The silence in the room held and she knew he was looking around, trying to figure out what had happened. It took him
a minute to get it... to register what wasn't there.
"Where are all Kristina's toys?"
"At Wyndemere," she answered coldly.
"Alexis..." he sounded afraid. Somehow that made her feel a little better. She forced her eyes to his.
"Do you have any idea what it took for me to trust you? To hand you my heart and believe with everything in me that
you wouldn't give me reason to regret it?"
"And I never will," he said, but lamely, as if he knew the bottom had just fallen out but wasn't sure how or
why. "In a few weeks, we'll be married, and then..."
He had reached down for her hand again. That's when he noticed it was gone. The platinum band with the square cut diamond
was no longer on her finger.
"I don't under--Alexis, what's going on?"
"I wanted to surprise you. I wanted to show you how far open I could push all those doors inside me with you."
The admission hurt her now... to know how foolish she'd been made her ache physically. "So I spoke to Nikolas, and he
arranged for us to go to my family's island in Greece. I wanted to show you where my happy memories with Stefan were from...
I wanted to take you into the corners where I actually managed to have good dreams."
Telling him was making the pain well up once more, but the dual effect was that it made her anger burn. Alexis leaned
forward so that her face was barely inches from his.
"But I had to get Kristina a passport because we'd agreed to take her with us wherever we went on our... on our honeymoon.
So I went in the safe to get her birth certificate."
He knew. The moment she mentioned the safe, the wheels clicked in Ric's mind and his eyes widened in horror. She had
found the paternity test results he had hidden there.
"Alexis, let me explain..."
"What?!" She roared, standing and crossing the room because being close to him was making her feel sick. "Explain
what, Ric... that it was all lies? That every word you said to me, that every time you touched me was just another manipulation?"
"That is not what happened!" he screamed back, moving toward her but stopping when she glared at him with such
hatred that he froze in place. "Alexis, yes, it started out that way..."
"With you knowing that Kristina was Sonny's daughter?"
"Yes," Ric agreed. "I knew and yes, that is why I started getting close to you, but you know that I never,
ever used that against you. I never used Kristina to pressure you because after I got to know you, once I started to... to
care about you and her, I couldn't."
A bitter laugh tore from her throat. "And I might have believed that, Ric... if you had told me the truth when Carly
blabbed to Sonny and he came after Kristina anyway. If you had told me then that you knew, I might have believed that what
you felt for me was real."
"It is real! It's the most real thing in my life, Alexis." He was nearly convincing. Tears in his eyes, his
face red from being so desperate. Nearly...
"Nothing is as real to you as your need to win against your brother." Her words were practically spat at him.
"I trusted you with my whole life, and you couldn't trust me to forgive you one time? That's not love, Ric. There's
nothing real about that except you deciding that if you kept quiet, if you didn't risk telling me the truth, then you'd still
win because you'd get to lord it over Sonny that you were raising his daughter with me."
"I was going to tell you after the wedding. I was. I even..." He raced back to where he'd set his briefcase
down by the coffee table and jerked it open. Moments later, Ric pulled out an envelope. "I even wrote it down so I
could figure out how to tell you." He extended it to her as if it could somehow stem the flow of pain raging out of
her.
"You don't tell someone you love the secret after they promise to be with you forever, Ric! You tell them before
and you trust them to love you enough and understand you enough to say, 'okay, you made a mistake, but I forgive you.' But
you didn't do that. You didn't have the faith in me to tell me the truth... which means whatever you feel for me, it sure
the hell isn't love."
She turned and headed for the door. She had to get out of here. Alexis could feel her stomach starting to feel queasy
again, and she wasn't sure how long she could keep herself from falling apart.
"Alexis, where are you going?"
Her body stopped at the front door. Where was she going? Temporarily she knew, but how did she find her way clear of
this? Pushing those thoughts aside, she turned to face the man she loved.
"I'm going to Wyndemere, which, by the way, Nikolas has barred you from. You are to make no attempts to contact
me and you aren't to go near my daughter, do you understand? We are done forever, Ric. Forever."
She could have left him with just that because it was obvious her declaration was killing him. But Alexis wanted him
to know what this felt like... and if he did love her at all, if any of it was real, her parting shot was going to make him
know the unbearable burn of pain in her heart.
"And just so you know, you finally beat your brother at something. Sonny broke my heart. You tore it out."
Alexis turned on her heel and left, slamming the door behind her. She didn't let herself stop--she got in the car, drove
to the docks and walked to the launch dock. She just had to get back to her daughter... she had to get back to the one and
only thing on Earth she trusted anymore.
She was so focused on that that she didn't hear the footsteps behind her. Maybe he'd just been quiet, unnerved by seeing
her so stone faced as she stared out at Spoon Island and waited.
"Alexis?"
Sonny's voice made her body tighten. Her arms reflexively wrapped around her even though she was burning up from hurt
and not at all cold.
"Please, Sonny, just keep walking and leave me alone."
He didn't move. He stood just a few feet away, slightly to her left, watching her.
"What did he do to you?"
It would have been funny if it weren't so damn tragic. Alexis shook her head. "Nothing you need to know about.
Just leave it alone. Leave me alone."
"What did Ric do, Alexis?"
She thought about telling him, but she knew Sonny. Ric would be beaten to a pulp at the very least by tomorrow morning
if she did. And somehow she didn't want that... didn't want him hurt nor did she want Sonny to live with hurting him. It
made her angry all over again that she cared about either of them still, even now.
"Let's just say that both of Adella's boys are masters at hurting me, and leave it at that, okay?"
She replied without looking at him. Alexis had expected him to go away, and Sonny did move behind her... but he didn't
leave. He stepped back to the bench she was too anxious to sit on and he stood by it silently while she waited. He made
no more attempts to speak to her and she never looked back at him. But he was clearly refusing to leave her alone.
When the launch arrived, the pilot reached out to help Alexis into the boat. She didn't say good-bye to Sonny and he
remained quiet where he stood sentinel. She wasn't sure how long after they left the pier he actually moved himself. And
it wasn't until the boat was half way across the bay that Alexis finally let herself feel all the hurt that she had forced
herself to push down not just from today, but from every day since she'd truly trusted her heart with another and had it thrown
back at her broken and shattered.
****
Ric sat despondent in the living room of the house where he'd expected to spend the rest of his days with Alexis and Kristina...
maybe even a child of their own. He'd been so damn close... so close to having a life he'd never even been able to dream
of before her... a life free from his hate of Sonny, free from feeling second best. She had given him that as gift, and all
she'd asked in return was that he never let her down the way so many others had.
He was so consumed with guilt, he barely noticed the door flying open, even though it had nearly been blown of its hinges.
In fact, Ric looked up just in time to see his brother's fist coming into his face at full speed.
The blow sent him flying off the chair he'd been sitting on and to the floor. Hands grabbed at his shirt and pulled him
up, then he was hurled toward the couch. Two more blows followed. Ric knew that on 99 out of 100 days, he could have killed
his brother in a fistfight... but he couldn't even try to mount a defense now... he didn't want one.
"What the hell did you to her?"
Another fist to the right side of his head. Ric felt himself nearly black out, then Sonny pulled him up and dropped him
back down, stepping away.
"I warned you, didn't I? I told you the day you moved into this house that if you ever hurt Alexis or my daughter..."
"Just shut up!" Ric screamed. "I know! I don't need you to tell me what I've done. I saw her face! I
know what I did."
The ranting broke him down, and Ric sank off the couch onto the floor, his head in his hands. If what Sonny had wanted
was to see him riddled with guilt and heartbreak, then that's what he was getting... and Ric didn't give a damn if he saw
it.
"She loved you. She loved you, and you hurt her..."
Ric looked up and glared as his brother. "Yeah, well, she loved you, too. That didn't stop you from hurting her."
His next thought made him laugh bitterly. "The truth is, she deserves better than both of us."
They sat there like that for long minutes, both thinking about the woman who had loved them too well and gotten so little
in return for it.
"I wish I could take it back," Ric finally said. "I don't know how to make this up to her."
"You can't take hurt like that back, especially with Alexis." Sonny's voice was low and sad, speaking from
experience. "She's the kind of woman that feels the hurt in her soul... and there's no way to take that back."
The sad impossibility of the situation played through Ric's mind. Two brothers with iron wills, one woman with an unbelievable
capacity for love... and somehow neither of them could seem to love her well enough to not hurt her.
"So what do we do?" Ric asked, seriously looking, perhaps for the first time, to his big brother for advice.
"Well... only one thing to do. Find a way... any way... to make her believe in us again."
Sonny stood up and made his way to the front door. He didn't realize until he was nearly back at his car that when he
said "us," what he meant was "me." For months now, he'd stood by watching Alexis plan to marry his brother
with seemingly no way to get her to look at him with anything but contempt. He'd wanted a chance... just one chance. And
though he'd have never wished her this pain, here it was... he would be there, even when he wasn't wanted... and he would
wait for her to ask him in.
Sonny was determined to prove to Alexis once and for all that she had not been wrong to love him...
Back inside the house, Ric hobbled to the mirror and took in his bruised and bloodied face. He needed to see to that,
needed to see about getting everything about him and inside him in order. Alexis was hurt and she had every right to be...
but she loved him. He knew that in his gut. And he would wait... he would do as she asked, keep his distance, and he would
wait until she gave him any sign that he was wanted again.
"Well... only one thing to do. Find a way... any way... to make her believe in us again."
He nodded as the words played over in his head.
Ric was determined to prove to Alexis once and for all that she had not been wrong to love him...
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