CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
A Place Without Stars
Alexis and Kristina arrived back at the penthouse a short time later. She looked at the door, then to Johnny. Her eyes asked a silent question and Johnny nodded in return. Sonny had come home.
Kristina stepped inside the door, then stopped and turned to look at her sister inquisitively. Alexis hesitated. Her heart waged a hard-fought battle in her chest. A part of her wanted to run to him, to enfold him in her arms and never let go. But the other part of her thought about what the man she cared for much needed.
Space. He needed to the time to fight against the demons in his soul. But if left to himself, who would win?
And so she hesitated at her door, not knowing whether to stay or go.
As though she willed it, the penthouse door across the hall opened. Her heart slashed downwards in a gut-wrenching dive as she took in the sight of him. Sonny looked like he hadn't slept for the past twenty-four hours. His eyes, normally dancing with their devil-may-care light, had gone dull and lifeless. There were dark shadows under his eyes. He looked ravaged by equal parts of exhaustion and guilt. When was the last time he'd slept?
"Sonny…" his name escaped her lips without thinking.
He raised haunted eyes to hers.
After once glance into his eyes, Kristina disappeared quietly inside the apartment.
"Johnny." Sonny's voice was hoarse and raspy. "Can you give us a moment?"
Johnny nodded quietly and headed for the elevator.
Presently, it was just the two of them alone in the hallway. Alexis took a hesitant step towards him, halting as Sonny stepped out into the hall and gently closed the door behind him.
That action spoke more than a thousand words and froze her in her steps.. He was shutting her out. In all the troubles they had weathered together, he had never shut her out so eloquently. And what hurt most was that it was happening without him saying a single word.
"Why, Sonny?" the words whispered over her lips.
The pain in her voice drew Sonny to her. Before she could move again, he standing before her, close enough so that she could feel what should have been the heat from his body but what was now instead the chill of a glacier. Their connection was splintered with icy-self-control. She shivered in spite of herself.
"It…It's not you. It's me."
Alexis' heart plummeted. His voice was flat with denied emotion. She understood. The demons of his past were back in full force. "Sonny…. No..."
He went on as though she hadn't spoken. "You don't know, Alexis. You don't how things really are with me. How everything good that my life touches turns to ashes."
"I've made choices in my life that do nothing but cause people harm. Everyone around me pays for my sins. But never me." He paused and Alexis sensed the pain coming off of him in waves. Her heart went out to him, despite her earlier protestations of pride.
"God has a sense of humor. Did you know that?" Sonny laughed; but the sound was bitter and his eyes kindling with savage pain. "A great sense of humor, oh yes He does. Especially when it comes to me. With all of my many transgressions, He won't take me from this earth, even though I've earned death a hundred times over. But He finds a way to make me pay. By leaving me whole and alive, while making everything around me wither and die."
"You're wrong, Sonny…. God isn't like that. He wants us to be happy and ...and be loved. Even when we sin against Him, God just wants us to love and be loved…." She reached out for him, but drew back, shocked as Sonny jerked away from her touch.
"That might be true for everyone else, Alexis." Sonny's voice rose. "But you don't understand…it's my life I'm talking about here! My life is cursed – and so is anyone's who's connected to me!"
He spun away from her, fist striking savagely against the wall, the blow echoing in the air between them. "God makes sure I pay…by keeping me alive and making everyone around me suffer instead."
"Carly is alive, Sonny. She isn't dead. And you didn't cause her accident." His moment of lost control unnerved Alexis more than anything else. "God forgives us if we truly repent, Sonny." She told him, suddenly aware of the need to break through his self-imposed guilt.
She paused, momentarily at a loss for words; then Alexis decided to speak what was foremost in her heart. "Do you deny God's capacity to love?
"Do you defy God to forgive you, Sonny? Do you really think you're that much more powerful than God's love?"
Something in his eyes flickered, responding to her, but whether it was her voice, her words or her challenge, she didn't know.
The only thing she did know was that she was unable to bear watching his pain any longer from so far away. With no sense of rational thought, Alexis came to him, taking his hands in her own, silently willing him to take whatever he could of her strength.
She was snared helplessly by his gaze, drawn into the dark dreamless depths of his eyes, trying to fathom what thoughts were lurking hidden in those sable dark depths. What she saw there, the raw and naked pain sent a wave of empathy surging through her, delving into the very rivers of her being.
Unconsciously, his hands clamped down on hers almost to the point to where it hurt, but Alexis didn't flinch. She barely registered the sensation of near-pain, the touch of his flesh to hers was her only reality.
Then Sonny's hands were gliding swiftly up her arms, igniting a trail of heat in their wake, palms moving first to cup her face, then fingers began lightly tracing the now-familiar contours, as though re-familiarizing himself with the feel of her.
Alexis found their positions reversed, her back suddenly against the wall and Sonny's body pressed against hers urgently and she trembled helplessly beneath his touch. Before she could move or speak, his lips were on hers, retaking them as he had done that first time, totally encompassing and engulfing her senses and then all rhyme and reason with his touch and taste.
Like a thirsty man at a newly discovered oasis, Sonny drank deeply from her lips. He was drowning; inundated and overwhelmed in his grief-turned-guilt, lost in the arid and all too familiar wasteland of his life-long-standing self-hatred and Alexis was life-giving waters to his soul.
His hands came up, fingers tangling themselves in the rich chestnut mass of hair, beseeching, then swiftly demanding all that she could give. And Alexis gave all that she was to him freely, without reservations, without any thought to herself. Indeed, she had no capability of true thought, just feeling and wanting and desire. She was the wellspring of all that he needed in this moment, the only thing that would assuage his torment, and she opened the dam-gates of her heart for him with everything she had in her.
The elevator chimed, announcing its imminent arrival, bringing them back to the here and now. Sonny pulled back from her, the kiss ended as suddenly and as savagely as it had begun. Breath ragged and short, they stood there silently, eyes caught by one another's.
He released her, just before the doors slid open and Michael burst out, followed by Max and Johnny. Max' expression remained unchanging; Johnny glanced at Alexis, a silent apology in his eyes.
Alexis struggled to regain her balance; Sonny's onslaught had left her with legs a-tremble, heart throbbing unevenly in her chest, breathless from the intensity of his kisses, lips tender, swollen and bruised and feeling that without a doubt, Max and Johnny must know, just by looking at her, what had just happened between them.
Michael, totally oblivious to the adult tension thrumming in the air, began to chatter excitedly. He came to go with his father to the hospital to see mommy. "So we can be together just like mommy says we're supposed to be."
His words were an ice-cold jolt of reality in her face. And more than that, worse than that, Alexis could tell what it did to Sonny too. Her eyes went to his face and she watched as the shutters slammed down and the walls rose up. It was as though the last few minutes they'd spent in one another's arms had never happened.
Little Michael turned to Alexis, still talking animatedly and grinned. "A family again. That's what mommy says. Isn't that great?"
"It's great to see you happy, Michael." Alexis managed to say. "I'm glad your mother came home."
"I knew she would. Just like I knew she'd be all right. She came to see me when everyone was looking for her, just to let me know she'd be home soon. It wasn't a dream like everyone told me, even if she was wearing a crown."
"A crown?" Alexis asked in spite of herself.
"Well, maybe it wasn't a crown." Michael admitted. He thought for a moment. "Maybe it was more like the stuff like they wear in the desert, like in a book that Uncle Jason brought me once. I drew a picture of her."
"That's nice, Michael. I'm glad to see you happy." Her eyes swept from the child to Sonny, but his eyes were shuttered again, emotions carefully closed against her and she couldn't read him at all. She watched as he shut down everything in order to present a calm front for his son, and a solid façade before his men.
"Are you ready to go, Daddy?" Michael had turned to Sonny, his eyes still alight. "We'd better hurry before Mommy gets too sleepy to see us."
"I don't think that will happen, Michael. Your mom is waiting for you. Why don't you go on inside, and I'll be right behind you?"
But Michael was tugging on his hand and he was left with no choice but to let the little boy drag him towards the door. His eyes turned to Alexis, but she was once more, unable to read into their depths.
"I'll talk to you later, Sonny." Alexis said.
"…Take care of yourself, Alexis." Sonny answered in a voice gone suddenly soft. So eerily soft, that it sent a thrill of unease through her.
His door closed. There was nothing left but to turn away and enter her own apartment. She did, then Alexis leaned against the closed door and closed her eyes against the burn of unshed tears. "Take care of you, Sonny." She whispered aloud. "Until you let me take care of you."
Sonny closed the door, barely conscious of Michael's excited chatter. Finally, he managed to get a word in.
"Just let me go upstairs and clean up – just a little –" he amended quickly, seeing the look of disappointment come into Michael's eyes. The little boy had been through so much, Sonny couldn't bear the look in his son's eyes. They all needed him so much. His own sins couldn't be allowed to touch other lives…
Once upstairs, Sonny leaned heavily over the bathroom sink. Bending low and cupping his hands under the faucet, he splashed cold water over his face in an effort to clear his mind. At last he lifted his head to look at his reflection. A haggard face stared back at him. His eyes were burning, tired and felt gritty.
When was the last time he'd slept? He couldn't remember, but it didn't matter. The night had no peace for him; it was a place without stars. Sleep held no peace for him, no restoration or solace. Every time he closed his eyes, the nightmares came back to haunt him. The blood of the innocents on his hands that would never come clean. He had to do the penance for that. Carly had almost lost her life, because of him… his son had almost lost his mother. He owed them, now.
Sonny closed his eyes, and for a moment, he was unwillingly drawn back to the memory of Alexis in his arms, of her lips against his and what that had been like for him. He'd been lost, drowning, twisting, unutterably lost in a maelstrom of pain. But then Alexis had been there, like a mirage on a far horizon, like the answer to the unspoken prayer that he'd never dared prayed for. For peace. For a love that didn't hurt.
But that was not to be for him. She was not for him. Sonny knew that. The accident had only proven what he'd always known. That it was his destiny to never gain peace or happiness.
But he'd come so close to breaking the vow he'd made earlier. Alexis could never understand, and he knew that. For all that they shared a tortured childhood and the trauma it could inflict, for all that they recognized the kindred spirit in one another, there had always been some things that she could never understand and one of those things was the decision that he'd made.
She'd braved bullets, his accusations of betrayal, his angers and his selfish self-centered ways, and stayed by his side through it all. In the end, on the night that had changed both their worlds, had put all that she was on the line for him. But he couldn't let her do that anymore.
Alexis wanted to be there for him, she was the friend and lover he'd never experienced before in his life, and somewhere deep inside, he knew that, but no matter what she said, in his heart he knew what would happen if he allowed it. She'd get hurt just like the rest. Like Carly, like Brenda. Like… Lily. And his children. His heart bled again with the pain of his memories, but it also strengthened his resolve.
For her own sake, he had to push her away. He couldn't let another moment of weakness overtake him, he told himself harshly. Sonny told himself that it was a goodbye of sorts. Alexis would understand it, one day. She was too smart not to. And one day, she'd even thank him for it.
Slowly, Sonny straightened, his resolve returning stronger and more unwavering. He'd die first before he let that any hurt to her happen. And if the price for her life, her happiness, were his own, then he'd pay it.
Gladly. Without reservation or hesitation. He'd sacrifice it all – for her.
