Chapter 3: The Dawn Reckoning
The silence after he left was a physical weight. It pressed on Lex’s ears, her chest, the space between her shoulder blades. She didn’t move from the edge of the bed for a long time, just stared at the black card until the embossed numbers seemed to float in her vision.
Sleep was a lost cause.
She paced. She did push-ups on the living room floor until her arms shook. She stood under a scalding shower until her skin was red. None of it erased the feel of his mouth, or the cold terror that had followed. The two sensations were now braided together, a cruel irony. She’d wanted him, desperately. And her own body had betrayed that want, turning it into a landmine.
At 4:17 AM, with the sky outside her balcony a deep indigo edged with the faintest pewter, she gave up. She pulled on a fresh tank top and sweatpants, made a cup of coffee she didn’t want, and walked out onto the balcony. The air was cool and damp, carrying the faint, sweet scent of the jasmine she’d tried to grow in a terracotta pot and the distant, briny promise of the ocean. The city below was a circuit board of sporadic lights, humming a low, insomnia rhythm.
Her phone was in her hand. His number, inputted from the card weeks ago, was a stark line of text in her contacts. Just his last name. Frankenstein.
Her thumb hovered.
It’s Lex. She sent it. Three stupid words that felt like shouting into a canyon.
The reply came in less than ten seconds. Are you alright?
She almost laughed. A harsh, dry sound. No. Can you come back?
I am already here.
Lex straightened, her heart lurching. She scanned the empty street, the dark roof of the adjacent building. Nothing. Then a shape detached itself from the deep shadow in the corner of her balcony, near the overflowing jasmine. He stepped into the faint ambient light, silent as a thought. He hadn't even displaced the morning mist clinging to the wrought iron.
“Jesus Christ,” she breathed, her hand flying to her chest. “How long have you been there?”
“A while,” he said. His voice was the same calm, low timbre, but it held a rawness, as if he’d been standing in the cold damp for hours. Maybe he had. He was dressed as he had been, the fine wool sweater looking incongruous against the backdrop of her shabby-chic balcony furniture. “I wished to be nearby. In case.”
“In case I self-destructed?”
“In case you needed someone,” he corrected gently.
She just stared at him, the steam from her forgotten coffee curling between them. The intimacy of his vigil, the sheer, staggering presence of it, unseated her more than any dramatic entrance could have. He hadn’t pressured. He’d just… anchored himself within reach.
“I want to show you,” she said. The words felt ripped from a deep, locked vault. “And then I might throw up. Or ask you to leave again. Fair warning.”
He gave a single, slow nod. “I am not easily frightened, Alexandra. Nor am I easily displaced.”
She turned, setting her cup on the small table with a clatter. Her back was to him, facing the lightening sky. The horizon was a thin strip of molten gold now, bleeding upward into violet and rose. She could feel him behind her, a still point in the turning world.
Her hands went to the hem of her tank top. The cotton was soft, worn. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and pulled it up and over her head in one swift, brutal motion. The dawn air touched her skin, raising goosebumps. She dropped the shirt on the balcony floor and stood there, rigid, arms at her sides. Her eyes were squeezed shut. This was worse than any medical exam, any locker room. This was voluntary. This was judgment.
She heard his breath catch. Not a gasp of horror, but a slow, careful intake, as if he was steadying himself.
The scars were worse in the flat, honest light of morning. A tangled, grotesque topography across her back, shoulders, and ribs. Some were thick and ropy, the legacy of a belt buckle. Others were finer, sharper lines—from the ring he’d worn, she remembered with unnatural clarity. A few were small, circular burns. A constellation of calculated pain, a map of a five-year war fought in a suburban house with beige carpets.
Seconds ticked by. She waited for the revulsion, the polite distance, the uncomfortable murmur.
It didn’t come.
Instead, she felt warmth. Not his touch, not yet. Just the heat of his body as he moved closer. He stood behind her, to her right. She could see his shadow, stretched long by the rising sun, against the brick wall in front of her.
“May I?” His voice was a whisper, barely louder than the rustle of the jasmine.
She couldn’t speak. She nodded once, a stiff, mechanical jerk.
His fingertip touched her skin just below her right shoulder blade. It was as light as his thumb on her cheek had been, but this time, there was no panic. A seismic shiver ran through her, but she held firm. He traced the length of a thick, diagonal scar, following its path from her scapula down toward her spine. His touch was clinical in its precision, reverent in its slowness. He didn’t flinch from the raised, ugly tissue. He explored it. He acknowledged it.
“This one was early,” she heard herself say, her own voice alien to her. “A shovel. He’d been gardening. I said the wrong thing.”
His finger paused. Then continued, moving to a cluster of finer lines along her rib cage. His other hand came up, his palm hovering just above the skin of her lower back, the heat radiating from it.
“These,” she continued, the words starting to flow like poison from a lanced wound, “were for waking him up. He worked nights. I forgot. The ring. He was left-handed.”
Frankenstein said nothing. His silence wasn’t empty; it was a vessel, filling with every word she spilled. He traced each scar she named. His touch was a calm, steady counterpoint to the trembling that had begun deep in her bones. It wasn’t arousal. It was a profound, terrifying catharsis.
When his fingers brushed a particular, jagged patch near her kidney, she flinched. “Hospital,” she whispered. “That one… that one was the last one.”
His hand stilled. Then, slowly, he lowered his head. She felt it—the soft press of his lips against the very center of that particular scar. A kiss. Not of pity. Of sealing. Of acknowledgment.
A sob broke from her, harsh and ugly. She brought her hands up to cover her face, her shoulders shaking. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t.
His arms came around her then, not from behind, but carefully, turning her to face him. He pulled her into his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other resting with immense gentleness on the ruined skin of her back. He held her as she cried, her tears soaking into his sweater. He didn’t tell her it was okay. He didn’t shush her. He just held her, his chin resting on top of her head, his own breathing deep and even, a rhythm for her wreckage to match.
The sun cleared the horizon, a fierce, brilliant gold that painted the balcony in stark light and shadow. It warmed her bare skin.
Eventually, the storm passed. The sobs subsided into hiccupping breaths. She was spent, hollowed out and strangely light. She kept her face pressed against him, listening to the slow, steady beat of his heart. It was slower than a human’s, she realized. A deliberate, ancient rhythm.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she mumbled into the wool.
“Do what?” His voice rumbled in his chest.
“This.” She gestured weakly between them, still not looking up. “You’re… you. And I’m a broken jeep with no tires.”
He exhaled, a sound almost like a laugh. “I have rebuilt more complex machines than that.” He shifted, just enough to tilt her chin up. Her face was a mess, eyes swollen, nose red. He didn’t seem to see any of it. “You are not broken. You are reforged. The shape is different, yes. The material is stronger.”
“That’s a hell of a line, Frank.”
“It is not a line. It is metallurgy.” He wiped a thumb under her eye, catching a last stray tear. “And my name is Frankenstein.”
A real, shaky laugh escaped her. “Yeah. I know.”
He retrieved her tank top from the ground, shook it out, and helped her pull it back on, his hands careful, efficient. The simple domesticity of the act was more intimate than the kiss had been.
“The sun is up,” he observed.
“Yeah.”
“You should eat something.”
“Probably.”
He looked at her, the dawn light painting the silver in his hair with fire. “May I take you to breakfast?”
Lex looked down at her sweatpants, at her bare feet. She looked back at the apartment, at the fortress of her own making. Then she looked at him, standing patient and solid in her sanctuary of jasmine and scars.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice finally steady. “But I’m driving.”