Lessons for Lexi Read online

  “Hey,” Raj reached out and started to rub her shoulders. “You’re not a train wreck. You’re beautiful, you’re smart and you’re incredibly sweet.” He gave her a squeeze. “But you are also the most self-destructive person I have ever met. You need to understand how hard it is for the people who love you to watch you hurt yourself like that.”

  Lexi looked down, shamefaced. When she’d gone on her benders, she’d never considered the fact that she was hurting anyone else. She thought the only person she was hurting was herself. She never realized she might be hurting Raj too.

  “But JT was different. He kept you from doing things like that.” Raj looked down, looking almost as ashamed as she felt. “Which is why I called Althea to tell her about your DUI that night.”

  Lexi sat up straight, tears stopped due to frozen surprise. “What?”

  “I knew you shouldn’t be driving that night, but you wouldn’t listen to me. After you got busted, it was like you didn’t even care. I told Althea about it because I knew she would tell JT.”

  Lexi glared at him. “And you also knew JT would beat my ass for it.” Her mouth was set in a tight frown. “I could barely sit for a week after that. What the hell Raj?”

  “I didn’t know how to help you anymore, Lex. But I knew JT could. As much as what JT does to keep you in line hurts you, it’s the only thing that actually seems to work.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she was still outraged, “you set me up to get spanked!”

  “Lexi, you’re only 28 and you have 2 DUIs on your record.” Raj was stubbornly unapologetic. “Someone had to do something.”

  She continued to glare, but had no comeback. In truth, she knew that Raj had done what he did out of love, but it still felt like a betrayal. “I’m tired.,” she finally responded.

  Raj pointed her in the direction of the guest room. “You can sleep in there.” She started to rise, “Lexi, think about it before you walk away from JT. I really think he might have been the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  Lexi wordlessly walked into the guest room, afraid to admit Raj was probably right.

  ***

  Lexi was tossing and turning and she just couldn’t sleep. She missed JT. She always slept better next to JT. In fact, everything was better with JT. She didn’t feel like it was impossible to live a normal life. She didn’t feel like she was letting everyone down when she was with JT. She knew exactly what JT expected of her and what would happen when she fell short of those expectations.

  She loved him. She loved who she was when she was with him.

  But he deserved better than her. He deserved a woman who could love someone without feeling the need to keep them at arms length. Because the truth was, Lexi was afraid of love. She’d loved someone before and when they’d died, it had nearly killed her.

  But that pain was nothing compared to what she was feeling without JT beside her, knowing that he’d never kiss her on the mouth as he told her he was proud. Knowing that he’d never throw his arms around her and squeeze her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

  She hadn’t had a choice to walk away from Ronnie. Ronnie had died. But JT was very much alive and she was choosing to walk away from him. Her tumultuous thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her door opening.

  “She’s probably asleep,” she heard Raj whisper. “She was all cried out when she got here.”

  “That’s ok. I’ll wait until she wakes up.” JT’s voice made her heart flip over. “I was harsher than I should have been with her earlier and we need to clear some things up.”

  She heard the door close, but pretended to be sleeping. She wasn’t ready to face JT yet. She expected him to lie down on the couch next to the bed. To her surprise, he slipped into bed right next to her instead and slid an arm around her waist, tugging her up against him.

  “I know you’re not sleeping, but you can keep pretending if it makes you more comfortable,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry I was so rough on you earlier, but it was the third time for the same offense. I had to do something to get the point across.”

  Lexi considered his complaint. “It wasn’t even my fault. Althea and Pennypinch put those plants back there, not me. I didn’t even know there was anything there.”

  “I know that now ,sweetheart.” JT kissed her ear. “I promise I’ll never punish you again without at least letting you try to explain yourself first.”

  Lexi stayed silent, not sure how to respond. She hadn’t expected him to be reasonable. “I’ll never be perfect JT.”

  “I know that.”

  Lexi rolled on her side, finally facing him. “No, you don’t, because you don’t even notice when I try to be. I was trying so hard to make you happy all week, and you didn’t even notice. The only time you notice is when I do something wrong.”

  “That’s not true.” JT eased her onto her back and leaned over her. “You think I don’t see how amazing you are? I’ve been crazy about you from the moment I met you, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. You’re brave, you’re beautiful, you always keep me on my toes. I might not tell you how much I appreciate you, and it probably gets overshadowed by when I have to discipline you, but I love you Lexi. I wouldn’t act this way about you if I didn’t. I’m sorry if sometimes I concentrate too much on disciplining you, and not enough on loving you, but I need to. I love you too much to let you self destruct.”

  Lexi’s eyes filled with tears and she wanted so much to lean into him, to tell him she loved him too. But she couldn’t. Loving him meant letting everything go, letting him lead her. It meant taking the risk that she would lose him someday.

  “I can’t JT. I can’t take the risk of loving you back. God knows I want to, I really do, but I’m scared. I’m scared that I won’t be enough for you.” She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “You deserve someone who isn’t as damaged as me. You deserve a woman who’s an even match for you.” She swallowed. “You deserve someone who can give you children.”

  “I don’t want someone else. I don’t want some perfect frozen trophy wife.” JT leaned over her again, grabbing her by the chin and making her look at him. “As for kids, we can adopt if you want to. I don’t care either way.” JT sat up on the bed. “I’m going to give you some space to think about this Lexi, because I know that you’ll come back to me. But when you do, you need to be ready to let go of the past and love me back.” He kissed her quietly and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Lexi turned on her pillow and wept for what she would never be brave enough to have.

  ***

  The dead air was back. She was running, racing down the hallway to get to the recording room in time. This time, she would stop it. Like clockwork, the gunshots came. Suddenly, she was over Ronnie, trying to stem the flow of blood coming from his neck.

  “You can’t stop it, Lexi baby. You can’t stop it.” Lexi turned around and in the doorway was Ronnie, but it was Ronnie as she’d known and loved him. Not Ronnie with the gaping hole in his neck and the dead eyes. It was smiling Ronnie, looking healthy and alive.

  She looked down at her hands and the Ronnie she’d been trying to help was gone.

  “It’s too late to help me, Lexi baby. But you can know that you did everything you could.” Ronnie put his hand on her shoulder. “You need to let it go. You fought to keep that radio show alive, afraid that if you let it go, I would have died in vain. But the only way I’ll really have died in vain is if you spend the rest of your life alone because you’re too afraid to love again.”

  “I’m scared, Ronnie”.

  “I know, but you don’t have to be. You already have someone who loves you, who would do anything for you.” Ronnie smiled. “Who knows how to handle you when you get out of hand. God knows I never could.”

  Lexi was surprised that she could blush in a dream. “Jesus, does everyone know about that?”

  “You can’t help me, but you can help yourself Lexi. You can go back to the
man you love and live out a beautiful life with him or you can keep going down your destructive path and both of our lives will have been in vain.” Ronnie started to fade. “I know you’re smart enough to make the right decision.”

  Lexi awoke with a start, tears rolling down her cheeks. But they weren’t sad tears, they were happy tears. They were the tears of a woman who was ready to start over, to return to a life that was a gift and not a burden.

  She jumped out of bed, feeling light and filled with energy. She threw on her clothes and grabbed her purse. She was going back to JT.

  But first, she had to make a special and very unpleasant purchase.

  ***

  JT came down the stairs the next morning, a day’s worth of stubble on his face. He hadn’t slept well the night before. As sure as he’d told her he was, he was still afraid Lexi wasn’t going to come back. Her demons might be too big. She’d been through so much.

  He rubbed his eyes as he turned down the hall to his office. He continued to work from home. He wanted to be there for when she came back. His stomach turned. If she came back, he amended silently.

  He opened his office door and suddenly, his bad mood disappeared. Lexi was there, seated in a chair in front of his desk, waiting for him.

  “Hi,” her voice was a little bit shy. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I can see that.” He struggled to keep his voice even and not rush at her, waiting to let her speak first. He sat in the chair across from her and watched her expectantly.

  She cleared her throat. “I love you JT. I love you so much that it hurts me.” She blinked back tears. “It hurts because I loved someone before and I watched him die. My life changed that day, and I stopped being me. I was driven by fear, afraid to love anything again.” She shook her head. “That’s no way to live. Someone very important to me made that clear to me.”

  JT had to resist the urge to throw his arms around her. She wasn’t done talking, but her announcement that she loved him had filled him with hope.

  “I want to come back JT. I want to love you the way you deserve to be loved.” She reached into a bag she had sitting beside her chair and pulled out a small device. It looked a bit like a flat kitchen whisk, made of two looped wires attached to a black rubber handle. “I know that loving you means being disciplined by you and I’m ready to accept that as well.”

  He took the device out of her hand. “What’s this?”

  She blushed. “It’s called a loopy Johnny. I asked the lady at the store what the most painful thing she had for spankings was.” She nodded at the evil looking device and stood up. “She told me it was that.” She unbuttoned her pants and started to push them down. “I think you should use it on me now.”

  He stood and caught her hand as she started to lower her jeans before putting the loopy Johnny on his desk. “No.”

  Lexi’s face fell and he nearly laughed out loud. For the first time, Lexi looked disappointed that she wasn’t about to get punished.

  “I’m not going to use it on you because you don’t deserve it, not because I’m rejecting you.” He pulled her into his arms and sighed before burying his face in her hair. “I love you too sweetheart and what you just said was very brave. I think you deserve something else instead.” He released her and walked around the desk, pulling open the top drawer.

  Lexi tensed and he let himself laugh at her expression. “I’m not getting a paddle,” he reassured her as he pulled out a small blue box. “Today is going to be about celebrating, not about punishment.” He walked back around the desk and Lexi’s eyes widened as he dropped to one knee in front of her. “Now say you’ll marry me so we can get started.”

  She was nodding, her eyes filling up. “Yes JT. A million times yes!” She threw her arms around him and he stumbled to hold her before pulling her to a stand with him and kissing her with every ounce of passion in his body.

  She pulled back, smiling up at him, before her eyes fell on the loopy Johnny on the desk. “Can’t we put that away? It’s making me nervous.”

  JT laughed before lowering his mouth to hers again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Epilogue

  Lexi shifted uncomfortably, trying to keep her nose in the corner, but having a bit of trouble. Her large pregnant belly made it nearly impossible to get all the way in.

  “Have we learned our lesson?” JT came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

  Lexi nodded. “No ladders when I’m pregnant. I’m sorry JT; I was just so excited about the nursery.”

  “Then you can come out now.” He smiled as she turned and he put a hand on her belly. “Though I’m pretty sure you were never all the way in.” JT had stopped spanking her after the pregnancy test came back positive on their two month anniversary but he found that corner time was still an effective and safer punishment for a pregnant woman.

  A side effect of Lexi’s second surgery, that no one had realized, was that it removed scar tissue that was putting pressure on her fallopian tubes. Lexi and JT had continued having unprotected sex, with no idea that Lexi had started ovulating again. Considering how often they wound up in bed together, it was only a matter of time before Lexi had a bun in the over.

  “He’s kicking,” JT smiled. He’d been honest when he’d told her that her supposed infertility hadn’t bothered him, but still couldn’t help but be thrilled to see his baby growing inside of her.

  Lexi pouted. “He doesn’t like corner time either.”

  “You should be grateful for it.” He informed her sternly. “Because as soon as he’s out, we’re going right back to spankings.” He gave her an evil smile. “I still haven’t gotten a chance to try out that loopy Johnny on you.”

  Lexi flinched at the thought. “Then I’m glad I have three more months.”

  He chuckled and caught her by the hand. “We should go get changed. We’re both covered in paint and Althea is going to be here for your baby shower in less than an hour.”

  Life had changed dramatically for Lexi. She was in love, she was growing her family and she’d never been happier in her life. Raj had used his connections to get her a job writing scripts for a liberal political television show, though JT had insisted she only work part time during her pregnancy.

  Three months later, Lexi gave birth to a healthy 7 pound 8 ounce boy with her unfortunate eyes, but blessedly, JT’s ears.

  Five months later, JT finally got to test out the loopy Johnny on Lexi’s bottom. The lady at the store hadn’t been lying. It was just as painful as she claimed.

  Over the years, two more babies, another boy and finally a little girl, joined JT and Lexi’s family, each one more of a blessing than the last. JT was still strict, and Lexi still found herself getting put over his knee on a regular basis, but she never complained about it. Instead, she was grateful for it, because she knew that JT loved her enough to discipline her.

  She was glad she’d been able to let the past go and take a risk on love, because it was the best decision she’d ever made, even if that love left her with an occasional sore bottom. Her fears were gone and the only room she had in her heart was for love. The nightmares of dead air had disappeared and instead were replaced by beautiful dreams of her and JT’s future. It was a future without fear and filled with love.

  And Lexi was finally able to accept that she deserved it, no matter how many lessons she had to learn to get there.

  The End