Page 6 of Brax

“Do you not remember? Do you remember your birthdate?” A knock on the door interrupted them, and Mav, Saint, Pax, and Brax walked in.

“Well, you look a lot better than last time I saw you,” smiled Brax. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry,” she said softly.

“I was just trying to convince Stephanie to tell me her birthdate,” smiled Kelsey. “We’re pretty big on celebrating around here and wouldn’t want to miss yours.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Everyone has a birthday,” said Mav, trying to make her feel better.

“I don’t.” She looked at the men, then targeted Brax. “Are you really going to help me?”

“I swear to God, I am going to help you. All of us will,” he said, swallowing as he stared at her strange blue eyes. “It’s just a birthday. Won’t you share it with us?”

“I don’t have one. I’m not real.” Brax frowned and took the seat next to the bed. He reached out for her hand, noticing the clean nails, now clipped neatly.

“You feel real to me,” said Brax. “Soft skin, warm hand. You told them you were twenty-eight. That means you have a birthday.”

“No. That means I had a creation date. I was created in a lab. I am the clone of someone’s dead daughter.” Katelyn and the other girls pushed through the door, staring at the young girl.

“It’s really you,” said Katelyn. “I remember you.”

“Katelyn,” she whispered.

“You’re real, Stephanie. You’re as real as I am.”

“No. You were born from a mother’s womb. I wasn’t.”

Stephanie remembered everything about her arrival at Belle Fleur. Everything then, now, before, and in between. She forgot nothing. She wasn’t allowed to forget.

Slowly, she was discovering that she could have a relatively normal life. She had friends, connecting with the others who were at the school. She made new friends, and she had fallen in love. Unfortunately, her crush didn’t feel the same.

“It’s not a crush, you stupid woman,” she whispered to herself, sipping the coffee on her front porch. When she’d first arrived, terrified and confused, she was sharing a cottage with Braxton Pechkin, the man who was causing her more pain than she imagined possible.

For some reason, he seemed confused by her and by his own reactions to her. Stephanie knew that he liked her. The way he looked at her when she was dressed in jeans, or a dress, or anything really, was very telling. His cheeks became flushed, his veins pulsed in his neck, and he started sweating.

She knew enough to know those were physiological reactions to her being close to him. But then things changed. He started leaving before she woke in the morning and didn’t return until she was gone.

She would head over to the cafeteria for breakfast before going to work, and he’d already be in there eating. When she arrived, he would leave and head to the cottage. She would go to the other island to work, and when she returned, he had already gone to dinner or he was out working a case.

It was all too much for her. She spoke with Claudette and Mama Irene and requested a cottage of her own. When he found out, he seemed angry.

“Where were you this morning?” he asked.

“Having coffee in my own cottage,” she said.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Luke called the meeting to order. She could feel Brax’s eyes boring into the back of her head.

He’d just have to get over it. She didn’t have time for his games, and she wasn’t about to stick around heartsick because he couldn’t see her for what she truly was. Then he showed up at her cottage.

A few days later, Stephanie poured herself a glass of iced tea and sat on her front porch, rocking as she looked out at the bayou slowly moving past her. She loved being near the water.

Mav and Katelyn were just two cottages over with a water view as well. She would go and have dinner in a little while, but for now, she needed the quiet.

“Why did you leave?” She turned to see Brax’s face and swallowed, shaking her head.

“You know why.”

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