Beneath the Surface

Lexie

October 19, 2011

I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling. It’s been a quiet day today. No problems with the boys or Jax. Once again I can’t sleep though. I finally dozed off last night after hours of staring at the ceiling, and got about three hours of sleep. I thought for sure I would be able to sleep tonight, after not being able to last night, but it seems I was wrong. Every sound or creak throughout the house makes every muscle in my body tighten and I strain to listen, trying to make sure it’s just one of those normal sounds houses make sometimes, and not someone inside the house with us. I look over at the clock and see its 11:23. The boys have been asleep for a couple hours now, and I wish I was too. The exhaustion is starting to get to me. I know if I do finally fall asleep I will only have nightmares. Before I left home my doctor gave me a prescription for sleeping pills, but I can’t take them when it’s just me and the boys because I won’t wake up if one of them has a nightmare. I don’t like them anyway. They don’t keep the nightmares away. They only make it to where I can’t wake up from them.

I’m torn from my thoughts as a terrible scream breaks through the quiet. I am off the bed and running before it’s even ended. I sprint out of my room and across the hall to the boy’s bedroom.

The sight that I’m met with breaks my heart all over again. Jason is sitting up in his bed covered in sweat, sobbing, with tears running down his face while Justin has his arms wrapped around his brother trying to calm him. I go and sit next to them, and pull Jason towards me. “Momma!” He starts sobbing even harder. I hold him in my arms, rocking him back and forth, and start singing to him. It always calms him eventually, but it usually takes ten to fifteen minutes before he starts to calm. I hear someone banging on the front door and know Jax must have heard the scream, and has come to see what’s wrong. He is a cop after all. I look at Justin, “son, go answer the door and tell him we’re all fine.” I go back to singing to Jason before he’s even stood up.

**********

Jax

I walk out my front door behind Carson. It’s late as hell, and we are both exhausted from a long day at work. We don’t work together, but we both work long hours pretty often and they are definitely catching up with us tonight. We just finished watching the recording of the South Carolina/ Vanderbilt game. It was on two days ago but we missed it and just now had time to catch it tonight. I follow behind him dragging my feet. Even exhausted I feel that if someone’s been at my house you should walk them out instead of just sending them for the door. “No offense, you know I love ya man, but I can’t wait for you to leave so I can crash!” He chuckles at me. We are almost to his car when both our heads jerk around at the sound of a high pitch, terror filled scream.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“What the hell?”

We both take off running for Lexie’s front door. Carson beats me by about two steps and has already tried the door knob. It’s locked. Well that could be a good thing since obviously no one broke in through this door. There is always the back though. I step next to him and start banging on the door. I look at Carson, “if they don’t answer in one minute I’m breaking this door down.” He nods that he agrees. It’s only a few seconds before one of the boys opens the door. He looks nervous when he sees me.

“Mom said to tell you we’re all OK.” I’d like to believe him but his voice shakes as he says it and I heard that scream. I know something is wrong. I scan him from head to toe. He’s wearing transformer pajamas with bright red socks. His blond hair is all over the place like he just woke up, but his eyes are wide awake. After that scream I’m not surprised he’s wide awake, but it looks like he’s not the one that screamed. He seems unharmed. He also seems pretty calm, except that he seems unsettled by our presence, which isn’t surprising.

“Look I don’t know your name, but I can’t just leave without checking to make sure everyone is OK. Can we come inside?”

He looks at me with reluctance. “My name’s Justin, and we’re fine. Mom told me to come down and tell you that. She didn’t say to let you in. I don’t know you and I can’t let strangers in the house. I don’t think my mom would want you inside.” He starts to close the door, and I put my hand out to stop it.

“Who screamed?”

“My brother, Jason.”

I hold back a sigh. I’m not leaving until I see for myself Lexie and the other boy are OK. I pull my badge off my belt, glad that it’s still there from work, and hold it out. He takes it from me and looks at it. “I’m a cop Justin. My name is detective Jax Stephens. I heard someone scream and I really can’t just leave without making sure everyone inside is OK. If you just let me in to check it out we’ll leave. It’s OK. To let a cop in to make sure everyone is OK. Right?”

He nods and opens the door wider to let us inside. “My Uncle Shawn is a detective too. He told us to always do what cops tell us to do. I don’t think my mom is going to like this though. Yall being here is probably just going to scare Jason worse.”

“Where are your mom and Jason?”

“Upstairs in our room, come on I’ll show you.” He takes off up the stairs. Carson closes the door, and we follow after Justin. He’s standing at the top of the stairs waiting for us when we get to the top. He points to a bedroom door, and me and Carson approach cautiously. I wish I had my firearm in case something really is wrong and someone dangerous is in the house, but I took it off when I got home from work. Hopefully Carson has his.

As we near the open door I can hear someone singing softly and what sounds like someone sobbing. We walk through the doorway and I come to a dead stop. The first thing I notice is the very short black, cotton shorts and tight pink Tank top that Lexie is wearing, and my body responds immediately. She looks up and her eyes meet mine and grow round. They bounce back and forth between me and Carson a few times before they turn to Justin. She looks at my badge in his hand and I see her shoulders relax, but only marginally.

For the first time, I look to the boy in her arms and my chest tightens. I immediately feel bad for checking Lexie out when the kid is so distraught. Lexie is sitting on what I guess to be his bed, and he is sitting in her lap facing her with arms and legs wrapped around her body. He is sobbing so hard I’m not sure how he can breathe. I can only see one side of his face as his head lays on Lexie’s shoulder, turned towards the wall, but I can see tears streaming down the side of his face that I can see. He hasn’t noticed us yet and for the first time I’m slightly worried that we made the wrong choice coming inside. If Justin was right and we are going to make it worse maybe we should quietly step back out before he sees us. I’m not sure how he could get any more upset than he is right now.

Lexie is still singing softly and rocking back and forth as she keeps her scared eyes on me and Carson like she’s worried we might attack at any moment. I look at Carson to see his eyebrows drawn down over his eyes as he looks at the boy on the bed with concern.

I’m about to touch his elbow and tilt my head towards the door so he knows I think we should leave when all hell breaks loose. I’m not sure if one of us maybe made a sound, but I didn’t hear anything, or maybe he sensed they weren’t alone anymore. Jason’s head suddenly whips around and he looks right at us. He immediately starts to scream and his eyes never leave us as he clings harder to his mother. Me and Carson both take a step backwards and raise our hands in front of our chests as if to show him we don’t mean any harm. I’ve never seen anyone as scared as this boy is right now. He starts to try and climb around his mother to get behind her when Justin jumps on the bed next to him and holds my badge up where he can see.

“Jason. Jason! He’s a cop, look! He’s a cop! It’s okay!”

Jason’s head swivels between the badge and us at least ten times before he stops screaming and starts sobbing again. Since he already knows we’re here I decide to say something. I make my voice just loud enough to be heard over his sobbing. Maybe if I can get him to think and try to talk he will get distracted start to calm down. “Why did you scream, Jason? Are you hurt?” He shakes his head without looking at me. “Did you see someone in the house?” He shakes his head again. “Okay, well can you tell me what happened?”

“I.. I.. h.. had….”

“He had a nightmare.” Justin speaks for him.

Me and Carson look at each other, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing that I am. This is an extreme reaction to a nightmare. He’s still crying but his sobs are slowing down and it’s more of a sniffling now.

“That must have been some nightmare.” Carson speaks up. He nods.

“Want to tell me what it was about?” Lexie glares at me over his head, and I can’t figure out what I did to make her mad. I look back to Jason and see he’s looking at me now.

“The bad man came back.” Jason whispers, and Lexie sighs.

I look at Carson again to see he now has a worried expression on his face. “Who is the bad man?” He asks.

Jason shrugs at him, “I don’t know.”

Well that makes no damn sense! How could he be this scared of someone without knowing who it is he’s scared of? There goes the abusive ex-husband theory. Unless he just doesn’t want to tell us.

“Is the bad man real or is he just in your dreams?”

“That’s enough,” Lexie snaps at us. “I really appreciate y’all coming to check on us when you heard the scream, but Jason is still upset and it’s almost midnight. I’m going to move the boys in my room and try to get them to sleep for the night. You see no one is in any danger so there’s no reason for all the questions. I’ll walk y’all out. Justin come sit with your brother.”

I feel my eyebrows raise at her tone of voice, I don’t understand why she seems so pissed off. Justin climbs on the bed next to Jason and wraps an arm around his shoulders. Lexie storms past me and Carson and out the door into the hall. I follow behind her and my eyes automatically fall to her ass. Jesus Christ those shorts are tight, and they hug her ass perfectly. I curse under my breath and drag my eyes to the back of her head. I see Carson smirking at me from the corner of my eye. I flip him off. Asshole.

Lexie opens the door for us without saying a word and we walk onto the porch. I would ask what I did to piss her off, but that would make her think that I actually cared, and I really don’t. I’m very curious about what’s wrong with this family, but that’s all it is. Just curiosity. Maybe if I tell myself that enough times I’ll actually start to believe it.

“What the hell was that about?” I wonder out loud.

Carson sighs, “Not a clue, but that boy is definitely terrified of somebody. Question is who is it, and is he still around?”

“I’d like to know what the bad man did.” I look back at the house. “Lexie sure as shit didn’t want us to know anything.”

Carson starts to climb into his black explorer but looks back at me, “Try not to be too nosy. Okay? Whatever that families problems are, they really aren’t any of our business.” I grunt in response. “Don’t grunt at me. I’m serious. I, of all people, understand not wanting people to know your business.”

He closes the door and turns the ignition before I can even respond. Well damn, that’s the first time he’s even hinted to the fact that he had secrets. I mean me and Dillon already knew that he did, but he’s never mentioned them. Maybe he’s getting closer to telling us what they are.