Alone with You

by Aly Martinez

I’d died once and it hadn’t felt like floating through the clouds. There were no pearly gates. No bright light guiding me home. Not one fucking ounce of peace to be found.

Dying was the most god-awful, heinous, and terrifying experience imaginable. Or so I’d thought—until someone had brought me back to life. Surviving. Now that was one level of agony that could never be matched. I was a prisoner. Like a storm hovering on the horizon, Death followed me. Day in. Day out. The Grim Reaper became my own personal stalker. Unfortunately for me, my name had yet to be at the top of his list. No, my fate was worse. I’d become something of his tour guide, sentencing everyone around me to his wrath.

And I was… God, what was I? Anxious. Bitter. Broken. Those had all been more recent developments. At one point, I’d been witty and bold. I think? It was hard to remember anymore.

“There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t shown interest in over the last decade. Myself being at the very top of that list.”

How had I missed the phone? How the fuck had I missed him carrying a goddamn phone? I’d never doubted my abilities as a soldier before, but after that, I’d never be able to trust myself again.

I was supposed to be angry. I was supposed to hate him. I was supposed to feel a sick sense of relief that he was exactly as miserable as I’d once hoped. But as my chest tightened, I unfortunately learned that emotions didn’t always follow the path you paved for them.

I thrived on routine—every minute having a purpose. A therapist had once told me it was about control. He couldn’t have been more wrong. It was about survival.

“I think you’re framing this wrong. This is black-and-white thinking. You’re assuming that because it happened once it’s always going to be that way. There is no truth to be found in always and never.”

“Truett,” I breathed, wishing like hell I’d stuck to my no-questions policy. The weight of gravity suddenly crushed me. “You still don’t go out in public? But…I saw you…at the restaurant…in the rain.” He blew out a ragged breath, slowly peeking up at me. He tried to smile, but it was wholly sad—and completely heartbreaking. “Once a week I go to The Grille, but recently my ex-wife bought it and promptly shut it down.”

At six three, two twenty, I was trained in every form of combat the Army had to offer. But as I sat in that mall food court, bodies strewn around me, a gunman on the loose, killing everyone in his path, I was nothing but a helpless child, trapped in my own mind.

I wasn’t scared of dying, but I wouldn’t be able to survive the aftermath of this. I didn’t want to survive the aftermath.

My chest ached as I took in her tear-stained cheeks. I wanted to tell her I loved her and, no matter what she thought, I had loved her every minute of every day since she was sixteen years old and walked into my math class wearing a smile that branded my soul. Nothing would change that. Not even death.

Much to my own frustration, I’d thought about him over the years—birthdays, anniversaries, and such. How could I not? Nobody forgets their first love.

“Gwen,” he rumbled, so much packed inside that single syllable it caused chills to pebble my skin. “You kept it?”

Fuck me. I tried not to stare. Really, I did. But in a cruel twist of fate, when I closed my eyes, instead of transporting me to my own personal hell, my brain taunted me with memories of her head thrown back in ecstasy as she rode my cock. It was nothing short of a miracle that I’d escaped that restaurant with my zipper still intact.

Some battles weren’t mine to fight though. I’d learned that the hard way.

Knowing I’d gone to war with her brother and had to look her in the eye, break her heart, and acknowledge that I was the reason he didn’t make it home was more than I could bear.

My life started that day when I slid my ring on her finger. And years later, when she dropped that same ring at my feet, my life ended. The sweet and the sour. The beginning and the end. Happiness only truly existed in the space in between.

I haven’t always been there for you, but I can’t stop hoping that maybe there’s a reason you bought this specific restaurant and waltzed back into my life. And maybe, if I’m lucky, that reason is us.”

I hadn’t just let go of Gwen all those years ago. I’d let go of an entire beautiful future together. And after all the tragedy I’d experienced, that might have been the most devastating reality of all.

I’d just never thought it would take eighteen freaking years.

No. The opposite of hate was not love. It was indifference. And never, not one day in my life had I ever been indifferent to Truett West.

Well, I convinced myself she was with you. Out there, smiling and laughing, baking cookies, playing at the park, living an incredible life. It’s why I don’t leave the house. I’m not scared of the outside world, Gwen. I’m scared of the reality that she doesn’t exist anymore outside of these four walls.”