He snickered. “We’re not.”
“This is a lot to process.”
He rubbed his chin and gave me an expression that was almost sympathetic. Maybe he wasn’t used to rocking people’s worlds on a regular basis. Maybe it was rare that you were told that somewhere down the line some ancestor was… maybe… more than likely… not from… Earth.
I had a special tool to help me open tight cans, for fuck’s sake.
But hadn’t I dreamed about this my whole life? Being special? Didn’t everybody? Sure, all I had were stomachaches, but…
I blew out a breath that hurt and stared at the small coffee table right in front of his knees, still in shock.
Lifting my gaze, I eyed the almost normal-looking man sitting at my hip. He still hadn’t grown a third eye. There weren’t gills along his ribs, even though that might have been cool. Other than being too beautiful, his skin too smooth, he was… just like everyone else. At least on the outside.
Was it possible? That a great-grandparent had been like him? Was that really why my grandpa had been so secretive about his family?
I let out a shaky breath before wiping at my face, exhaustion suddenly hitting me. Recovering from being sick, not eating or drinking well, and getting an emotional bomb dropped on my ass would do that. At least I was pretty sure. “I need to lie down here for a minute, maybe have a quiet meltdown. Maybe cry a little. Will you let me know when whoever is coming gets here?” I asked him weakly.
His eyebrows rose, and he looked amused? “As long as you’re quiet.”
I gave him a dirty look.
His amusement didn’t go anywhere. “They’ll be here soon.”
Training my gaze on the ceiling, I hugged the pillow a little closer to my chest. “How do you know that?”
“Because I’m listening,” he answered.
Right. Because he was an alien. Or at least part of one? Enough of one to be so special?
Oh boy, this was going to take me a while to process and accept. Not that it changed my life or anything. If it was true, it didn’t do shit. All it did was explain a couple things.
I’d been trying not to think about how scary the future was going to be. I had no idea if I still had a job. Where was I going to sleep? How was I going to be able to eat? How much had the cartel found out about me?
I needed a cell phone.
My laptop.
And now this?
Keep it together, Gracie.
He’d said he’d help me. That he would keep an eye on me. To what extent would he be in my life?
I had no fucking clue, and my spiritual balls must have dried up since I wasn’t willing to ask.
We were moving on, and the world was still going to be a scary place regardless of who I was with and who my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents were. That didn’t change anything.
The point was, I couldn’t totally entrust my safety to another person, no matter how strong or special they were. I couldn’t forget that. He hadn’t told me exactly why his grandmother was looking for other Atraxians, and he’d sure been weird about that. Maybe she wanted to harvest my organs, who the hell knew.
I needed to keep my ears peeled and my senses on high alert in the meantime. There was no better time to start than now. I had a lot to think about.
Maybe I would need that little cry after all.
I’d think about it.
My body was stiff as I set my hand on his thigh to push myself up to standing. Figuring I already owed this family enough, I made my way into the kitchen and plucked a small knife I’d had my eye on from a butcher block. I found a clean-looking rag under the sink and wrapped it around the blade for protection. Then I slipped it into the pocket of the pajama pants I’d permanently borrowed, hoping I wouldn’t forget it was there and cut myself later. But it instantly made me feel better.
A snicker came from the living room.
I looked over.
“What’s that for?” he asked almost casually.
I patted my pocket. “I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know who’s coming.” And I’d already told him I was scared. I shrugged. He could figure it out.
Alexander’s head tipped to the side.
“I know you said you’d protect me, but you can’t be too safe, you know?”
His eyes got squinty, and his tone was still low as he said, “You don’t have anything to be worried about.”
That was really easy for him to say. “I almost had a panic attack yesterday while I showered. I thought about asking you to come and sit on the toilet. That whole incident could have been a lot worse, and I know that, but that doesn’t really help me much.” I shrugged. “It makes me feel better to know I could jab someone in the eye if I had to.”
Because I would.
I’d lost almost everything. I’d been sicker than every other time in my life combined and multiplied times one hundred. Never in a million years would I have imagined sleeping out in the woods with almost no supplies, but I’d survived that too.
With Alex.
And if I could get through all this shit, I could get through just about anything else.
And maybe that was the best thing I’d learned from all of this. I wanted to live, and I wouldn’t go back on my morals. Regardless of what happened, I had that.
Alexander patted the cushion beside him on the couch with a put-out sigh. “Come here.”
Okay… I didn’t drag my feet on the way back, but I almost did. I sat down right on the edge of the seat and raised my eyebrows at him. “Yes?”
He raised his right back. “I don’t need you fainting again.”
“I fainted one time.”
“You still did it,” he replied, the corners of his mouth twitching.
I swear…
“Gracie.”
I focused on him, on that serious face and tone.
“You understand what’s happened, right?”
I didn’t like the sound of that or his grave, nonsarcastic tone. “What do you mean?”
His eyes glowed as he tilted his head a little, that gaze of his intent. “Your situation.”
My face must have expressed just how fucking confused I was by his comment and by his expression because he said, “That’s what I thought.” The muscles beneath his clean sweatshirt bunched. “The cartel might not figure out how you got out of there, but they might.”
I blinked.
“I disabled the cameras in the facility, but the guards might remember they shot me and there was no blood left behind. If anything, you might be in more danger now than you were before. You understand that? Because I don’t feel like you do, and we might as well get all this out on the table so there aren’t surprises later on.”
I swallowed. There was a lot we’d already put out on the table, and I wasn’t sure how strong the legs were in the first place.
“You’ll be fine,” he told me, sounding so confident, so absolutely serious I wanted to believe him.
Oh, how I wanted to believe him.
I hadn’t thought about that at all.
A nudge at my leg had me glancing down. He pressed the side of his knee against mine as he leaned forward, and he said the second to last thing I would have expected. “Friends don’t let friends die. Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ve got something better than that knife. You’ve got me.”