Chapter Twenty-Three
ALEX
*
A little voice in the back of my head started piping up as I stumbled out of Paxton's apartment, telling me that I hadn't handled the exit very gracefully. I ought to go back and explain myself, that voice went on, tell her what thoughts were fighting with each other inside of my head.
Unfortunately, that voice was drowned out by a cacophony of much louder ones, all of them telling me to panic, to get the hell out of there and hope that, if I got far enough away, my powers might come back to full strength.
I made it out onto the street outside of Davies Books before I remembered that I didn't have a ride. I hadn't driven here; I'd teleported straight from the delicatessen, Paxton held in my arms. That memory sent another confusing wave down my spine, but I ignored it.
Thankfully, Davies Books wasn't in too remote or residential of an area, and I managed to flag down a cab just a few blocks away. The cabbie glanced back at me with some concern as, panting, I tumbled into his backseat.
"You okay there, buddy?" he asked, sounding more like he feared that I might throw up on his upholstery.
"Yeah," I panted back, forcing myself to give him a smile. It probably looked more like a grimace, but what the hell, it was better than nothing. "Get me downtown." I gave him the address of my apartment building.
He eyed me cautiously for a second longer, but hey, a fare was a fare. He put the cab in gear and pulled away from the curb, while I sat back and tried to fight down the wildly swirling thoughts that still made my head spin.
Calm down, Alex. Think through things logically. Don't just sit here and panic in circles. Let's take things chronologically.
Last night... I met with Paxton, and she was all excited that she'd found a lead on my powers. I didn't really want to tell her that I didn't care that much about the origins of my powers; I had them, what else mattered? But doing all that research with her kept on giving me excuses to see her, to get close to her, to notice more and more little quirks about her body and personality, her mannerisms and her thoughts, that I felt like she'd never shown anyone else. It was like I was addicted to discovering more about her, to peeling back all the layers of her soul.
She told me that she'd made a breakthrough – that I might be related to King Arthur! I didn't know how we'd figure that out, but man, it would sure make a good bragging topic. And she'd looked at me with those warm brown eyes, so alive in her expressive face, that I hadn't been able to hold back from kissing her and pulling her into my arms.
Things... I groaned, settling back further in the backseat of the cab. The cabbie flicked his eyes up to check me out for a second in the rear-view mirror. Things had gotten intense after that.
Even now, with all my panic, I felt a rush of arousal as I replayed mental images of last night inside my brain. Paxton, naked and needing me and soft and delectable, had been just as wonderful in bed as I'd imagined. There had been shyness at first, but then she opened up, showed me her true passion – and it had driven me to new heights to try and please her. I'd lost myself in her, in a way that I couldn't remember ever happening with any other woman.
That night, falling asleep beside her naked body as she curled against me, pressing back against my own crotch and chest, had been perhaps the most comforting and comfortable moment of my life. Compared even with the supermodels I'd slept with, Paxton just had a trueness, a realness about her that made her stand head and shoulders above all others.
But then, this morning, it all came crashing down.
If she wasn't just immune to my powers, but could also neutralize them, just from being near me... I tried to imagine life without them, without all the gifts that I'd come to depend on, to regard as normal. My bank account would drop to zero! I'd need to get a job – and how could I do that, when I had next to no real skills? I'd lose my money, my cars, my clothes...
The cabbie pulled up outside my building. "Here we are, then," he announced, sounding like he couldn't wait to get me out of his cab. I considered stiffing him on a tip, but hey, he at least got me where I needed to go. So instead, I handed him a couple of twenties and told his surprised expression to keep the change.
Standing in front of my apartment building, I saw my own reflection looking back at me from the plate-glass windows. It looked haggard, and I rubbed my hand along the stubble on my jaw. There was more at stake than just money and expensive toys. If I lost my powers, would every change I'd made be undone?
I headed inside, up to my luxury penthouse.
Changed into fresh clothes, after a shower and a shave, I still didn't feel much better. I opened the fridge and, despite it barely being nine in the morning, grabbed a bottle of beer. Twisting the cap off, I tossed it up in the air and pointed my finger at it, acting out of old habit.
The cap, flipping through the air, puffed into a cloud of quickly dissipating smoke.
I stared at the smoke cloud, open-mouthed. That hadn't taken any effort at all! I spun around, looking wildly for something else to try. I wrote out the first thoughts to enter my head, wild wishes that barely made any sense at all.
"Okay," I said a few minutes later, raising my voice to be heard over the miniature little herd of dog-sized elephants now trampling and trumpeting their way around my apartment, "my powers seem to be working fully again."
I sat down on one of the armchairs in the middle of my living room, although I had to scare away several small lions, the size of housecats, before I could claim the sitting spot for myself. Maybe recreating the entire African savanna, in miniature, hadn't been the best way to test whether my ability worked fully again.
"Hey! No number twos on the carpet!" I shouted at one of the elephants a few steps away, who trumpeted scornfully back at me. I frowned and looked at the surprisingly large pile of steaming crap that he'd left behind.
A few more written commands, and I'd opened a couple small portals that led back to a savanna in a parallel world, one where animals were naturally this size and where there weren't any tiny humans to prey on them. I climbed back to my feet and spent several minutes chasing the little herds of animals around, shoving them back through the portals.
"Trust me, you'll be happier over there," I promised the last of the elephants as I ushered them through the portals. Once I was fairly certain that I'd gotten the wildlife out of my apartment, I closed the portals and dropped down on the sofa with a sigh.
My powers were back, seemingly undamaged in the long term by my dalliance with Paxton. So if I kept away from her, I wouldn't need to worry about becoming powerless – which would shortly lead to me becoming broke, and then probably homeless and jobless.
All I had to do was keep away from Paxton.
Easy.
I made up my mind, right there, that I'd do just that. I'd been seeing her for the last month or so, almost to the point where we'd be considered to be dating – but we never really put a label on us, even. There wasn't much to breaking up except for me to stop calling her.
And she'd understand, right? It wasn't that I didn't like her; I just didn't want to give up everything I had, not for a bit of sex. Sex with her was great, but I could get great sex whenever I wanted, with my power.
Although... I leaned back on the sofa and closed my eyes, remembering how she'd spread her legs to straddle me, how her eyes lit up with passion as she leaned forward, her breasts hanging to brush ever so lightly across my chest as her hips moved against me. I'd reached back to wrap both my hands around her ass, squeezing and guiding it to take me even more deeply, and she'd let out a little sigh as if to say that yes, this was just what she'd hoped that I'd do to her to make the sex absolutely perfect...
Dammit, Alex! I smacked myself on the cheek with one open hand. Stop thinking about it! Just because Paxton turned out to be an absolute goddess in bed, that didn't mean that she was worth me throwing away all my power.
She would understand, right? Ironically, I couldn't use my powers to make her okay with it, to help her move on, because she wasn't affected by them. She was my Kryptonite, able to exploit all my weaknesses.
If it was just giving up my powers in the future... could I handle that? I paused with the bottle of beer halfway to my lips, considering. I could certainly add enough zeroes to my bank account to last me for the rest of my life and then some, which would fix most of my other worries. And if we did break up later, well, my powers would just come back again, and I'd be able to pick up right where I left off! Right?
But what if things didn't work that way? What if, once I spent long enough with Paxton, my powers permanently vanished? What if she got close to me, drained me totally dry, and then decided that we weren't perfect together? What if, when she moved on, she left me a worn-out, emptied husk?
And what if that nullification of my powers extended into the past, into changes that I'd made long ago to myself? I caught another glance of my reflection, this time in the huge floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto my broad balcony. I saw my strong jaw, my handsome features, my muscled and shapely physique.
Behind that handsome face, however, I could still see little hints of another face, on that I'd nearly forgotten and left behind in the past. A face that nearly drove me to death. A face that I'd sworn to block out completely from my memory.
"So much for that," I muttered, finishing off my beer and glaring down into the empty bottle. A snap of my fingers refilled it, but I knew that it wasn't going to help.
Instead, I summoned my phone into my hand and called Tommy.
"Really? At ten in the morning? Some of us do have jobs, you know," he griped when he picked up.
"On a Sunday?"
"It's Monday, Alex," he sighed. "And I'm at work. I can't take the day off to go hang-gliding, or skydiving, or whatever else you want to do-"
"It's Paxton," I said, and he stopped.
"What about her?"
"I..." I took a deep breath, finding the next words already hard to say. "I think that we're done."
"Ah, shit." I heard him rustling some papers around. "If you promise me that we won't get drunk, so I can make up these case briefings later, I can be there in twenty minutes. How's that?"
I drained the rest of the refilled beer in my hands. There, no more drinking. "Deal."
"Not even a retort. Sounds serious. I'll be there soon, buddy." He hung up, and I settled back on the couch to wait for him.
I shouldn't be this upset, I kept on repeating to myself. Paxton was great, but she wasn't perfect. She had flaws, like her bullish insistence on following up on the mystery of my powers, even though it was only to satisfy her own curiosity. She was short (which made her all the more adorable), didn't have a high-paying job (but she worked with her family, and she loved her work), and she had that annoying expression when she didn't like some off-color joke I'd made and wrinkled her nose at me (which made her look even more adorable and made me want to kiss her all over until she burst out laughing and gave herself up to me).
There, see? Flaws. And I'd get past her. After all, it wasn't like we were in love-
Finally, after remaining silent all this time, ever since I woke up this morning, my heart decided to pipe up and contribute to the conversation. It only had a few words to share, but they had a hell of an impact.
Ah, shit.
Somewhere along the way, my heart pointed out, shortly and with a note of smugness that I didn't especially appreciate, I'd fallen for Paxton Davies. Maybe it was just a crush, but there was definitely more than a skin-deep attraction there.
Stupid, stupid Alex Hamilton. Why the hell did I have to go ahead and poke my nose into a mysterious girl who was immune to my powers, instead of just sticking with the easy women, like supermodels? Why did I have to go and get to know her, see the beauty hiding beneath the superficial outer layer?
By the time that Tommy arrived, I was lying face-down on the floor, groaning as I pressed my forehead against the cool marble. "This is the worst," I said in greeting.
"Yeah, welcome to the real world, what the rest of us have to deal with," he replied, not sounding nearly as sympathetic as I'd prefer. "So what happened?"
I forced myself to roll over, looking up at him. Taking a deep breath, I told him everything.
By the time I finished, his little mocking grin had faded, and he looked nearly as desolate as I felt. "Wow," he said.
"Yeah."
"So what are you going to do?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Lay here until I think of something."