Lessons for Lexi (13 page)

Alex spun
towards JT. “I’m sorry, but I can’t even pretend to be nice to this guy. I’ll
be at the bar.” Alex stormed away, clearly intent on breaking his ‘no drinking’
edict.

He followed
after her and managed to grab the scotch out of her hand just as she was about
to put it to her lips. “Lucas Berringer is your father.”

Alex nodded as
she tried to grab the scotch back.
“Yes, unfortunately.”

He held it out
of her reach. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because
I don’t consider him my father anymore.”
Alex clenched her hand over her
stomach. “He was never much of one when I was growing up.” She shrugged. “I
think he blamed me for my mother’s death. She died giving birth to me.” Her sad
eyes met his. “Despite all that, he still expected me to follow him into the
family business. When I told him I would rather eat glass for a living, he
kicked me out and told me to come back when I changed my mind.”

JT put the
scotch down on the bar. “How old were you?”

Alex eyed the
scotch and snatched it up lightening fast. Before he could stop her, she tossed
it down in one belt. “17,” she answered as she slammed her glass back down on
the bar.

JT gave her a
stern look before deciding to let her off for breaking the rules. Seeing her
father had clearly upset her, though not as much as what he’d said about the
radio station. “What did he mean by that ‘radio station’ crack?”

Alex went
white. “I don’t want to talk about it here.”

He caught her
by the hand and started to pull her towards the coat room. “Fine, we’ll talk
about it in the car.”

Alex let out a
gasp and tried to struggle free. “It’s none of your damn business.”

He kept
pulling as she struggled, leading her down a short hallway. “It’s absolutely my
business and I think it has a lot to do with your behavior.”

She finally
ripped her arm free. “I told you I don’t want to talk about it!” She was
practically yelling and the coat check girl gave them a concerned stare.

He spun on
her. “Well you’re going to, if I have to wear out ever belt in the house to get
it out of you.” His temper abated a little when he realized how upset she was.
Both hands were clenched over her stomach and she was incredibly pale.
Deathly pale.
“Alex?” He gentled his tone. He reached for
her.

She opened her
mouth, but no words came out. Instead, she hitched forward, gagged and then
vomited all over the front of his tux.

He looked down
in shock and his heart nearly stopped beating, because what Alex had just
vomited wasn’t vomit. It was blood.

He caught her
just before she hit the floor, blood still streaming from her lips, and started
screaming for someone to call an ambulance.
 

Chapter 10

Lexi was caught in a familiar
nightmare. It was a nightmare she had at least once a week for the past year
and it always started the same.

Dead air.
There was
never supposed to be dead air on the radio. That was the number one thing Ronnie
had always taught her when she started interning for him. Ronnie had picked her
for an intern because she was pretty. She had picked Ronnie because his brother
was in television, hoping for a connection later.

They’d been a match made in heaven.
Lexi proofread his
scripts,
fact checked his
statistics and made his coffee.
 
He’d
taken Lexi under his wing, taught her everything he knew about radio, and
occasionally pinched her ass. Eventually, all that pinching and teaching turned
to love.

They’d been together for about 2 months
when Raj noticed their chemistry wasn’t just obvious to them. It was obvious to
everyone. Their banter and insults were always fast and scathing. After a lot
of coaxing, Lexi had been convinced to go on Ronnie’s radio show.

It was magic. Their chemistry translated
to good radio and they had a decent fan following. Nothing major, they weren’t
worldwide celebrities, but they were comfortable and knew their contracts
weren’t going anywhere. They were Andrew Flaxman’s most stable clients. They’d
gone along nicely for two years, Raj producing their show, them bantering back
and forth, occasionally getting into arguments with the callers.

On the day Ronnie proposed to Lexi on
the air, the show had gone viral on the internet. It had been one of the best
days of Lexi’s life.

The worst day of Lexi’s life had come a
little more than six months later, and it had ended with dead air.
 

The dead air in Lexi’s dream was stifling.
Dead air always sent her into a panic. Nothing was playing, nothing was
planned. Viewers were switching the stations.

She was in the hallway of her old
station, trying to get to a door, to stop the dead air. The more she ran, the
further it got away. Then, out of nowhere she was there.

That’s when the dead air was
interrupted by gunshots.

She wasn’t at the door anymore. She was
sitting in her old chair, staring at Ronnie, getting ready to start a show. Raj
did the countdown. 3 – 2 –

Gunshot.

Ronnie stood as the door to the
recording room burst open. He looked shocked at the interruption, but not
terrified. He never even saw it coming. “What?”
 
He choked out in confusion as a man burst
through the door, gun in hand.

Then his body was flying backwards,
slamming into the plastic partition, with blood spraying out of him. Lexi
couldn’t tell where it was coming from. She screamed and threw her body on
Ronnie’s.

The man in the doorway was dressed in
camouflage, like he was going to war, or hunting. Lexi let out a bubble of
hysterical laughter. He
was
hunting.

Ronnie. She had to focus on Ronnie.
This time she would stop it. She pressed her hand over the gaping hole in his
neck. Pressed it as hard as she could but the blood wouldn’t stop coming. She
was hysterical, gasping and screaming.
Watching Ronnie die
over and over again.
She was so
hysterical,
she
never heard the last two gunshots.

The first one was for her, it landed in
her abdomen, but she never felt it as she tried to stop the flood of blood
coming from Ronnie. The second one was the suicide bullet of the shooter. His
name was Calvin Riceland and he’d been a mentally unbalanced, frequent caller
of the show for years. He’d threatened them, but he’d been harmless. Or so they
thought.

Ronnie was dead by the time the
EMTs
had arrived. So was his shooter. Lexi had been
unconscious, with Raj performing CPR when they’d arrived. She died twice on the
way to the hospital, only to come back again.

Four surgeons had worked on her for 18
hours and they’d worked miracles. She lost a good chunk of her stomach, along
with some of her intestinal tract, but 6 weeks later, she was released from the
hospital. She still had a few bullet fragments in her that the doctors felt
were too dangerous to remove. Her stomach was a crisscross of scars from
incisions. But she was alive.

She’d missed Ronnie’s funeral. She’d
been unconscious at the time. On her release from the hospital, she was given a
long list of restrictions. Her body would never be the same again. She had to
avoid stress, she had to eat right and abstain from alcohol. She could never
have children. The scar tissue was pressing on her reproductive organs,
interrupting her ovulation.

Not only had the shooter taken Ronnie, he’d
taken her ability to have a baby as well.

The Lexi that had left the hospital had
been bitter and determined to break every rule on the list, excluding the one
about not having children. Even if she could have, she wouldn’t. She would
never risk loving someone again, not when they could be taken away so fast.
 

She went back to the radio station,
ready to prove to the world that Ronnie’s death hadn’t been in vain and that
they hadn’t beaten her. Shortly after the shooting, she’d returned to the radio
as a solo DJ. Everyone waited for her to break down.

Instead, Lexi was fantastic. While
she’d been charismatic and charming before, she hadn’t had the edge she’d
needed to truly become a star. The edge she had was an edge related to the
bitterness over her fiancés death.
 
Before, most of Lexi’s arguments had been mocking and a little passive
aggressive. After the shooting, Lexi’s arguments weren’t arguments. They were
attacks. Screaming matches. Everyone tuned in to see what Lexi would say next.

In the beginning, it was a great outlet
for her. She was mad at the world and she got to take it out on the world
through the radio. For each tantrum she threw on air, she had people calling in
to agree with her and people calling in to call her a bitch.

Those calls always turned her stomach
to knots. They were the ones that made her wonder if the person on the other
end of the line would be the next one to show up at her station with a gun. To
hide her fear, she just got meaner.

After six months of that, Lexi’s name
was growing, but Lexi noticed she wasn’t angry anymore. She went on, half out
of routine and half out of obligation to Ronnie. She wouldn’t let go of his
memory. Letting go of the show was letting go of him and she wasn’t ready.

Lexi became a household name. Her star
had originally risen after people had tuned in out of morbid curiosity. After
awhile, no one remembered how she had started. They just knew they either hated
or loved Lexi Logan. There was no grey area about it.

But Lexi’s heart wasn’t in it anymore.
Instead, she was just filled with a slight feeling of dread along with constant
sadness. Her damaged stomach rebelled against her when she’d tried to medicate
it with alcohol, but she kept drinking. She fell into a routine. She got
apathetic about her show.

Her stunts in front of the paparazzi
had only fed her fame.
Her
DUIs
and
speeding tickets.
Her slapping a well known political
pundit at the democratic convention.
Her dropping an f
bomb on Jeopardy that the producers had only just managed to bleep.
The
posing for Playboy, with a sheet strategically draped over her scarred middle.

She was famous but she was lost.
She both loved and hated being famous.
She didn’t feel as
alone when people knew her name, but she also couldn’t stand the constant play
acting. The way she was always tense, on edge. The way she always felt sick
when she got into an argument.

Sick. Lexi fought to open her eyes,
remembering what had happened. She’d thrown up blood on JT.
On
his tux no less.
He was going to be furious. Maybe if she could open her
eyes, she could promise to pay for the dry-cleaning. She kept trying.

***

Words finally came in through the haze.

“I think she’s trying to wake up.” She
felt JT leaning over her and struggled to open her eyes. “Alex?”

He still thought her name was Alex. She
had to tell him the truth. Her eyes fluttered open and she focused on him. She
croaked out the first words she would think of.

“I’ll pay for the dry-cleaning.”

“What?”

“For your
tux.”
Her eyes were serious. “I vomited blood on it.”

“Alex, I don’t care about the suit.” He
plopped back in his seat. “It was my own damn fault anyway. I shouldn’t have
upset you.”

“You didn’t know what would happen.”
Lexi lay back in her hospital bed, for the first time noticing the pain in her
stomach was different. It wasn’t a constant bubbling burn. Instead, she felt
like she’d been cut open. “What did they do to me?”

“They had to remove three bullet
fragments and sew an ulcer shut in your stomach. They couldn’t remove it,
because apparently, you don’t have enough stomach left to remove.” JT leaned
forward. “What the hell happened to you?”

“JT, I need to tell you something. I’m
not who you think I am.”

JT gave her a gentle smile.
 
“I already know who you are.”

Lexi froze, “you do?”

“I was there when you ran into your
father, remember?” He kissed her hand.
 
“The old guard is in an uproar over having the
lost Berringer heir in their midst and not knowing it. They’re probably kicking
themselves over the missed opportunities to get you married off to one of their
grandsons.”

“Oh, that.” Lexi tensed up. “I’m not
really the lost Berringer heir. I gave that up when I left.
 
I don’t want my father’s money.”

JT crossed his arms over his chest.
“No, but you need it. Alex, you’re in the hospital following major surgery with
no insurance. The doctor had to remove bullets from your stomach. What
kind of stuff are
you messed up in and why won’t you let him
help you?”

“He doesn’t want to help me. Just let
it go, ok?”
 
Lexi’s sudden urge to
confess died when she realized how much explaining she would have to do and how
many wounds it would open up.