Losing Balance
by Lionel

chapter 46

It was after two o'clock early Monday morning when Alexis finally left the PCPD, and as Mike drove her home she stared out the window of the car, too tired to fall asleep. She was reminded of her life in Manhattan, and middle-of-the-night car service rides home from the office. For all the hard work and stress and crazy hours, there had been a simplicity to her life in the city, even a kind of normalcy - far removed from the Cassadines, she had been just another ambitious rising star in a city teeming with them.

Her life couldn't be more different now. Still a lawyer at her core, she didn't live her work in the same way anymore. Motherhood alone had given her world a whole new axis, and she was up to her teeth now in the Cassadine legacy she had once fled. Stefan and Nikolas were gone. Other people had come into her life, occupied important places in her heart, and most were gone, some dead, some still littering the streetscape of her life in Port Charles. For a time she had been terribly alone, sad and weary from her battles, but that had changed suddenly just a few short weeks earlier with an uncharacteristic jump from a basement window. These two men, one an old friend, one new, different in everything but their generosity, had rushed in to fill the empty spaces in her life, but she had failed in her responsibility to keep them from colliding.

Her life was anything but simple and normal now, and the last eight years had given her scars enough for a lifetime, but at least she was living. During her time in New York, she had been too busy racing through each day to care that her life was dull and empty. The only time she noticed was on those car service rides home late at night, and the only time she felt alive was when she took her car out and cruised the streets in the early morning hours. For all the richness of her life now, though, she wondered if she would ever shake the feeling that she was just one or two missteps away from being alone again.

*****

When Alexis walked into the lake house, she found Jax sitting on the couch asleep, bent over awkwardly like a question mark. She flipped off the lamp on the table and gently pushed him over so he lay more comfortably on his side along the length of the couch. As she covered him with a throw blanket and turned to go, his eyes flickered open and he reached out and captured her wrist in his hand. He pulled her back to the couch with him, and she sat down on the edge, her hip nestled into the curve of his belly.

She felt the unexpected heat of him - somehow she had expected his body to be as cold as his manner with her - and she wished for all the world that she could curl up with him and feel his arms wrapped around her. She felt his body's brute betrayal of his wounded heart, and she knew she would even welcome angry sex if that was what he wanted, if that was the only way they could make a connection. But he moved back on the couch away from her so their bodies no longer touched, and he released her hand.

She licked her lips lightly. "I'm -- I'm sorry I woke you."

"It's okay." Jax blinked several times, pulling himself fully into consciousness. "I didn't mean to fall asleep. I was trying to wait up."

"Did you want to talk?" she asked hopefully.

"No. I just wanted to make sure you made it home okay."

Alexis bit her lip and nodded sadly. "I did."

Jax sat up and moved back so he leaned against the armrest of the couch. "You were gone a while. It's late, isn't it?"

"Yeah. Almost two-thirty, I think."

Jax didn't say anything, but she saw his pale blue eyes almost glowing in the dark.

"I wasn't with Lorenzo."

"I didn't ask."

"But you assumed."

"Is it so unlikely?"

Alexis closed her eyes and rubbed her palm down her tired face, wincing at his question. "Mac let him go a couple of hours ago. I stayed at the PCPD talking to Sonny. He was in a bad way."

Jax let out a disgusted laugh, the way he always did when she spoke of Sonny needing her help. "Of course. And no one else would do."

"No one else was there, Jax. He needed to talk some things through."

"He needs to talk to a psychiatrist."

"Probably. But tonight, I was the one who could help him, so I did."

"What, you're his friend again?"

"No. I don't know. But I don't think I'm his enemy anymore, and I think that's a good thing for me and for Kristina in the long run."

"Are you planning to let him in her life, too?"

"No, of course not. I'm a long, long way from being able to trust him. But if he meant any of the things he said tonight, I'm less frightened of him than I have been in a very long time."

"Just don't let your guard down, Alexis."

His tone annoyed her, but she gritted her teeth and tried not to sound too testy. "I won't, Jax. I've protected Kristina from him all this time." She almost added 'on my own', but she held back. "I don't plan to stop now just because he flashes his dimples my way. I know I've made a lot of mistakes lately, but I've never lost sight of the need to keep my daughter safe."

"No? Because I would have thought having an affair with Lorenzo Alcazar compromises her safety." Jax regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, and he buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to bring that up."

"Don't be sorry, Jax. We need to talk about it."

"Not right now, we don't. You should get some sleep." He slumped down on the couch and turned away from her, closing his eyes. "Good night."

"No." She took his hand and pulled him back, demanding his attention. "I'm not having an affair with him, Jax. What you saw was not typical. It was … a moment."

Jax took a deep, controlled breath in a vain effort to suppress his flaring anger. He yanked his hand away from her, made angrier still by the way he made her flinch. "Just a moment of weakness, is that what it was? Usually you fight your feelings for him out of, what, respect for me? Concern for Kristina? But you slipped up that one moment? That doesn't make me feel any better. I saw you, Alexis. I saw the way you looked at him. It's not the way you look at me."

"I - I don't - "

Jax ignored her pained effort to speak. "Do you know what that felt like? It felt like I was filleted alive. Like someone took a knife and sliced my skin and my flesh and my heart right off my bones."

Alexis felt his agony slicing through her as well, and she crumpled in on herself, wrapping her arms tightly around her stomach. "I'm sorry, Jax. I'm so sorry." Her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Jax instinctively reached out his hand to comfort her but let it fall before he made contact. "I told you I didn't want to talk about this tonight, Alexis. I'm still too angry. Please just go to bed."

She met his eyes miserably. "You don't have to protect me from your anger, Jax. I deserve it. A few harsh words aren't going to be the nail in the coffin."

"They'll just make things worse."

"How much worse can they get, Jax? We're living like strangers. I hate this."

"I hate it, too, Alexis, but at least there's still some hope. If we talk right now, it's over. I need more time."

"Time for what?"

"Time to figure out how to fix it."

"You can't do it alone, Jax. I'm the one who broke it. You can't fix it without me."

"I don't know if we can fix it at all. But I'm not ready to give up, and I'm afraid that's where we end up if we talk about this too soon. So good night."

He rolled away from her, taking all of his warmth with him, leaving her empty. She stood up reluctantly. Her hands hung helplessly at her side. "Good night."

*****

At seven o'clock the next morning, Alexis woke from a deep sleep to Jax standing over her bed with a cup of coffee and the morning newspapers. Lost in the haze of awakening, she smiled sleepily at him, warm and content in their longstanding ritual and eager to shed her bad dream. As her eyes found their focus, she saw his unsmiling face, and awareness came rushing back to her, wrapping an icy chill around her soul. She sat up quickly and pulled her covers to her chest. "Good morning."

"Morning." Jax handed her the local paper, opened to an inside page. "Look at this."

Alexis reached for her glasses on the nightstand and took the paper from Jax. She read the headline out loud: "'Cassadine Case Brings Censure for Local Judge.'" She scanned through the article quickly, shaking her head in something like wonder or disbelief. "So there it is…."

Jax frowned. "You don't seem surprised. You knew about this?"

Alexis looked up from the paper nervously. "Lorenzo pulled some strings. He made this happen."

Jax snorted. "How nice. You must be very grateful to him."

Alexis nodded and tried to keep her tone calm and non-inflammatory. "It doesn't solve everything, but it is a relief."

"It's got to be pretty satisfying, too. She really raked you over the coals."

"Yes, it is. Perhaps I can't carry off a vendetta like a true Cassadine, but I'll admit to some small taste for revenge."

Jax put his hands on his hips and shook his head. "You know, I've got to hand it to him. I guess my way of handling Judge Farmer was pretty cumbersome. Why go through all that trouble to create a safe and loving home when you can just apply a little pressure and make the problem go away? It's hard to compete with that."

"Gosh, and I wasn't even aware that there was a tournament for white knights." She had to fight back an inappropriate smile that threatened to crack her solemn mien. "I'm not looking for someone to rescue me, Jax. He happened to be in a position to do this, and I decided to let him help me."

"How long have you known Judge Farmer was no longer a problem?"

"Since Wednesday," Alexis answered softly. "But I didn't really believe it would happen until now."

"Were you planning to tell me?"

"I never had the chance, Jax. You haven't been speaking to me, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember." He hesitated a moment, as if making a decision, and then sat down on the edge of the bed. He nodded vaguely toward her left hand. "I guess you can take the ring off now. Looks like you won't be needing it."

She curled her fingers up tight. "I don't want to take it off, Jax."

"Why not? Do you really want to marry me?"

"Yes, a part of me does very much."

"And what about the rest of you? Do you think it will ever catch up?"

"I don't know. I really don't know. But I know that I'm not ready to say no."

Jax closed his eyes for a moment. "I'll save you the trouble. I'll withdraw the offer."

"No," she whispered. "Please don't, Jax. Please don't give up on this."

"I don't want to marry you, Alexis."

She flinched and pulled her knees up tighter into her body, and Jax saw that his words cut deeply into her. He reached forward and brushed his fingers against her cheek. His thumb swept away the single tear that trailed down.

"Not because I don't love you," he added more gently, "but because I do."

She shook her head weakly. "I don't understand."

Jax pressed his hands to his thighs and bent over. His eyes focused on a spot on the floor. "Have you slept with him?"

"No."

"But you want to?"

"I want a lot of things, Jax. That isn't the thing I want most."

"What do you want most, Alexis?"

"I want to make this right with you. I don't want to hurt you."

"That's not a reason to marry me, Alexis."

"I just want to be happy and in love with you, Jax. I'm not quite there yet, but it's what I want. I want to wander off into the sunset with you. I do."

Jax let her words sink in, but eventually he shook his head. "Not as much as you want him. I won't be the thing that stands between you and what you really want, Alexis. I can't. I can't do that again."

Her shoulders fell and she exhaled heavily. "I'm so sorry. This is just what I didn't want to happen."

"What are you sorry for, Alexis? That you kissed him or that I saw it?"

"Both."

"Really? Because you looked happy about the kiss until you saw me."

She knew he was right, and her conflicting desires confused her. For not the first time, she cursed her lack of fluency in understanding her own feelings. "If I could take it back I would, Jax."

"But you can't."

"No. But can you forgive me eventually?"

"It's not a matter of forgiveness, Alexis. The problem isn't that you hurt me, or that you broke a trust. I know you never made a commitment to me. We live together, and I did ask you to marry me, but you've been careful not to define us into an official relationship. So you really didn't break a rule here. I just wish you'd been honest with me. You knew how I felt. The problem is that now I know how you feel, too."

"I've told you how I felt from the beginning, Jax," she insisted.

"No, you haven't. You've told me some things, Alexis, but I think what I saw the other day carried more truth than anything you've said to me yet about what's really going on between you and Lorenzo."

"I haven't lied to you."

"If you haven't lied to me, then you've lied to yourself. You said you pushed him away, and that's obviously not true. You said you weren't getting involved with him, and that's obviously not true."

"Not on purpose, Jax. It's just been one thing after another. Once this whole mess with Helena is over, it'll be easier."

"Are you listening to yourself, Alexis? You can't stay away from him. If you're counting on him to disappear to make the temptation go away, we have a problem that I can't begin to solve. Yes, you admitted you were attracted to him from the start; I was willing to risk that. But you didn't tell me your heart was his."

"I didn't know. I don't know."

Jax shook his head. "I suspected all along you had deeper feelings for him, but I just didn't know you would let those feelings grow the way you have."

"Let them?"

"You nurtured them, Alexis. All the time you spent with him, the way you turned to him for support, all of that was you choosing him."

"No, I didn't choose him, Jax. Over and over again, I chose you."

"No, you didn't. Maybe you didn't sleep with him, but you didn't walk away from him either. If what you wanted most was me, if you were choosing me, you would have walked away from him when it was still possible. And now it's too late."

"It's not too late."

"It is for me. I can't ignore your feelings for him, even if you can. You want him, Alexis. Maybe you're in love with him - I don't know. You should probably figure that out. I'm afraid that if you don't go to him now, you'll spend the rest of our lives wondering what it would have been like. I'm afraid that every time we make love, I'll be looking in your eyes for signs of sadness or regret afterward. So go to him, if that's what you want. You have my permission, not that you really need it."

She shrugged her shoulders in frustration. "I'm not going anywhere, Jax, and I'm not taking off this ring. Dammit, please don't give up."

"I don't see a way through this, Alexis."

"You told me when we were in the desert that a Jacks can never be stranded. One foot in front of the other always gets you home. We'll take the first step, and then we'll focus on the second."

"You actually listened?"

"Of course I listened. I thought you were a strange alien being, but I listened. Maybe I even learned."

"And maybe I learned a thing or two from you about accepting cold, hard reality. You can wear my ring, we can share a home, we can pretend that if we just keep moving we're going to end up back home, but the truth is that we took a wrong turn. Until you really deal with your feelings for him, we're not going to be able to get anywhere we would want to be." He took her left hand and studied the ring on her finger for a moment.

"Here," she said, starting to twist off the ring.

"No. Wear it. Not as a promise to me; maybe as a kind of a beacon, something to help you remember where home is if you decide you really want to find your way there." He rose from the bed and kissed her on top of her head. "Maybe someday all the parts of you will choose me." He turned and left the room, leaving her crying softly in her bed.

*****

"We're beginning our approach to National, Ms. Davis. Can you please stow your briefcase beneath your seat?"

"Of course." Alexis nodded at the co-pilot, who disappeared back into the cockpit.

She put her papers in her briefcase and tucked it away beneath her seat and then looked out the window at the lights of the city below, trying to catch a glimpse of anything she recognized. It had been a few years since she last visited Washington, and she had never quite grasped the layout of the city's quadrants, with the orderly grids and sweeping boulevards of L'Enfant's grand plan, or the federal corridor at its center. Somewhere down below was Foggy Bottom, the colorfully named but dull neighborhood that housed the State Department and its spooks, and the non-descript government building where she would spend the next few days.

Scanning the nighttime cityscape quickly made her dizzy, and she leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. Though she hated to leave home when the situation with Jax was in such crisis, and she hated leaving Kristina at all, a part of her was grateful for this unexpected business trip. She was weary all the way down to the tips of her toes, worn out by the strain and stress of the odd stalemate at the lake house. For the past two days, ever since her early morning conversation with Jax on Monday, she had barely left the house. She had stayed close in some childish effort to show that she wasn't going anywhere, to prove that she could stay away from Lorenzo. Jax, in turn, had grown scarcer, as if by giving her enough room he could compel her to prove him right.

On Wednesday morning - this morning, she reminded herself, though it seemed so very long ago - she had left the house briefly for her final orthopedist's appointment. Just three weeks and two days after injuring her ankle, she was declared well enough to cast aside her walking cast, and the remaining restrictions on her activities were lifted. When she returned to the lake house after her appointment, Jax had been on the phone in his office with the door open. He had waved her in and put the call on speakerphone.

"John, Alexis just walked in. Alexis, it's John Schaeffer. He has a favor to ask you."

Alexis sank down into a chair, suddenly realizing how exhausted she was from her short trip out. "Hi, John. How are things in your little corner of the State Department?"

"Murky as always, of course. But Washington's beautiful this time of year. How's your gorgeous little girl?"

"She's great, thanks. What can I do for you?"

"It's a big favor. I'd like you to come down here for a few days. I've got a guy who needs a lawyer."

"So head over to K Street and flag one down. Washington is full of lawyers. Your office is full of lawyers. Why me?"

"The usual establishment channels won't work here. He's a 'friend of the government' type, if you know what I mean, and he's going into some delicate negotiations with the department. It's all highly classified, so I can't go into a lot of detail until you get here, but no one does this sort of thing better than you."

"I really try not to travel these days, John. I hate to leave Kristina."

"I know, and I wouldn't ask you to except that I really can't think of anyone else who can handle this properly. It's very important -- not just to my guy; this goes up to the highest levels here. A lot of people will be very relieved if this works out. And I'll be very grateful."

"This is really not a good time for me to leave town - "

Jax interrupted. "Can you give us a second, John?"

"Sure."

Jax put the phone on mute. "I think you should go, Alexis. Kristina will be fine here with Alice and me and Lady Jane. Helena's been quiet."

"I know. But I just don't want to go. I don't want to leave things like this with us. I hate the way we are."

"I hate it, too, Alexis, but it isn't going to get better just because we're in the same town. We both could use a little space. And we owe John. He did a lot to help Jerry. One of these days, he may be able to help Jerry again. Please. Do this for me."

She sighed and nodded. "Put him on." When the phone was off mute, she spoke up. "John? When do you need me?"

"First thing tomorrow morning, if you can swing it."

"I'll fly down tonight."

"Thanks, Alexis. I won't forget it."

Once she agreed to go to Washington, Alexis began to embrace the idea. As much as any mother, she craved a few nights spent alone in a nice hotel, indulging in room service and baths and uninterrupted sleep, and she hoped that free of the distractions and tensions of the lake house she might be able to clear her head and face the hard decisions she needed to make. Lorenzo had even made the travel stress-free for her, insisting that she take his private jet to simplify matters for his security team.

Alexis opened her eyes just as the plane smoothly touched down on the tarmac at half past nine. Minutes later she climbed into yet another limousine, with Marcus and Mike in the front, for the short trip to her hotel. By a quarter past ten, she was neck deep in bubbles, surrounded by every pampering cream, oil and tool she had managed to cram into her suitcase. At eleven, she slipped between the cool white sheets of her bed, floating between layers of down, and sank into a bone-deep sleep.

chapter 47