Alpha Fighter (8 page)

“I was just heading out on a run myself. we may as well go together. I'll show you the good routes, since you're new in town." I give her a wink.

"I, uh..." She looks up, like she expects to find a good excuse to avoid me written on the ceiling.

"Are you coming?" I'm already halfway out the door, bouncing on the balls of my feet.

"I..." she sighs. "Yeah, I'm coming."

I smile. We make idle conversation, just pretty basic small talk, on our way over to the big house where she picks up a fat dog with droopy eyes and a jiggling belly that hangs down further than it should. Poor thing really could use a run. I don't know when he last got some movement. Looking at the size of the bump on that woman, I'd guess it's probably been a while.

"Think we'll have to carry him home?" I joke, after we jog a few blocks.

"He'll be fine." Her answer is as short as they've been on the whole run, even though I can tell it's not because she's at all out of breath. The girl is fit. She probably runs regularly to keep that perfect ass of hers in the top form that it's in. Short as her answer is, though, I know that she's having trouble keeping her cold act up. The sides of her mouth twitch a bit and she's struggling to keep the smile out of her eyes.

"It's okay. We're running uphill for this first part anyway." I shrug. "Worse comes to worst, we'll just roll him back."

Now she cracks a smile. "Shut up," she says, trying to force some seriousness.

"Too late!" I cheer. "She smiles!"

"Sorry," she says, smiling again. "I'm just not looking for...friends. Not right

now. I have a lot going on, you know?"

"I get it," I say, "Busy girl, good for you. I like to see a girl with ambition. But ambition doesn't mean you have to isolate yourself, you know."

"Yeah..." She looks at me briefly, then looks away. She's definitely hiding something, but that's okay. I'll figure it out.

I give her a little nudge. "And who said I want to be your friend, pretty girl?"

She gives me a wide-eyed stare for a second, then an unwilling grin—and then, looking like she has no idea what she's supposed to feel, sprints off with the dog.

I charge after her. This spirited, sporty girl is worth the chase. I feel exhilarated running after her like I haven't in the longest time.

Savannah

I
'm still on cloud nine all through my shower, and as I get dressed before my evening shift. I try to tell myself that it's the endorphins from my run, which was great. But I know it's not Cooper's pace challenging me to push myself on those hills that has me in such a good mood. As much as I try to keep my guard up and be as off-putting and cold around that man as conceivable within the bounds of basic interpersonal decency, I can't keep myself from feeling at ease. There's something about Cooper that makes me want to open up. There's something about him that makes me feel safe and comfortable and just plain happy.

But it's when you become content that you find yourself in trouble. Happiness is dangerous.

I'm a little early for work and decide to grab a slice from Bennie's Pizza before work for dinner. In my floating-on-air state of peace, I'm less on guard and less aware of my surroundings. That's why it takes me a minute to realize that the voice in the booth behind me is a familiar one. It has been weeks—since I ran away, in fact—since I last heard a familiar voice. But when I finally realize that the woman's voice in the booth behind me belongs to someone I knew in my life as Savannah Santos, I quickly slouch down in my booth and pull the hood of my sweatshirt up way over my face.

"Are you close?" The voice is hushed, like the woman doesn't want to attract attention to herself, either, but it's distinct. "Okay, please hurry. I'm waiting here for you already."

It's Lily. Lily Moreno, Nate's sister.

Fuck.

Luckily, her booth is closer to the back of the pizza place, and further from the door, than mine. That means that I don't have to pass her to leave.

Pulling my hood down as far over my face as I can, I quietly get up and walk as quickly as I can out of Bennie's Pizza without attracting attention to myself.

This is bad. This is very bad. What is Lily doing all the way down here? This is way out of our usual range; we never wander this far. No one from the clubs comes to this part of town, just because it's far away and there's not really anything here to come all this way for. That is why I chose to come here. So why is Lily here? Bennie's Pizza is definitely not that good.

Is she looking for me?

I can't wipe that thought from my mind through my whole shift and I'm quiet and distracted. Even Tamryn notices something is wrong and keeps asking me how I'm feeling and if I'm okay.

I am somewhat calmer by the end of the night, but this is just a reminder of why I can't afford to let down my guard. This is why I can't afford to start something with Cooper.

I grab the newspaper off the kitchen counter when I get home, even though it's late, because I need out. I need out fast, before it's too late.

Savannah

I
wake up in tears the next morning. I can't do anything but lie there, sobbing, body shaking. I can't think straight enough to think through it and convince myself that everything is going to be okay.

I'm just so confused and so unhappy. Seeing Lily brought everything I'd been trying not think about up to the forefront and rubbed raw a few wounds I didn't even realize that I had.

Why did I have to meet Cooper? Why did I have to pick this particular fucking apartment and meet this particular man who, in an alternate world where I'm not the prisoner of my identity, could be someone really special to me?

The worst part is that he already is becoming someone really special to me, and it hurts like a dagger through my heart to realize it. I'm breathing in short gasps. Even though I'm just lying on my bed, I cannot manage to catch my breath. The pain is so deep and so intense that it's a physical pain. I curl into the fetal position, like folding in on myself will make my feelings smaller, too—but, of course, it doesn't work.

With every smile, every kind word, every casual, incidental touch—none of which are casual to me, since every accidental brush sends shocks through my body and fills me to overflowing with longing—he makes me fall for him that little bit more. And he doesn't know that being with me would be a death sentence. I can't do that to him.

I can't do that to anyone. But I definitely can't do that to him.

It just hurts.

There's a knock at my door. "I picked up some fresh OJ," Cooper says through the door. "You're welcome to it."

I try to stifle my sobs and pull myself together so he doesn't get that something is wrong, but I can't. My attempt to hold my breath in and be quiet ends up in a choked gasp. It's loud in my otherwise empty room.

"Savannah?" He sounds worried, knocking again. "Savannah, are you okay?"

I can't trust my voice. I know that if I try to say anything, it will betray me. Instead, I use all of my self-control to pull myself together enough for a reasonably okay-sounding, “Mm-hmm.”

But Cooper knows better. He rips the door open and is at my bed in three big steps, his face filled with concern.

"Savannah," he says. "Savannah, what's wrong?" The care in his voice makes me lose it entirely and I'm a bawling mess in moments. Before I can even comprehend what's going on, he's sitting on my bed, taking me in his strong arms and shifting my head onto his lap. One arm is over my body, an approximation of a hug, and he strokes my hair with the other. "It's okay, Savannah. I'm here. It's okay."

I cry harder. This physical contact is what I so missed just a few weeks ago, when I had my lonely eighteenth birthday in that dingy old motel. I sat by myself on a moth-eaten bedspread from the 1970s, trying to pretend that there was something helpful or positive about that birthday. I had picked up a stale cupcake from the day-old section of the nearby grocery store's bakery that morning, because it was half-off, but the frosting had hardened into a fossilized swirl of unnatural blue. The only birthday-themed cupcake left was for a little boy, so there was a plastic green dinosaur with a nine on its chest on the top of the frosting mound. I sat there on my bed, a birthday cupcake in my hand that was fit only for a pre-teen boy who had gone taste-blind, and felt like I was the only person in my world. Each dry bite of day-old cupcake tasted like sawdust sticking in my throat and no matter how hard I swallowed, I couldn't get the lump to go down. I gave up on the cupcake three bites in, but I had to drink a tall glass of water before I realized that the lump in my throat wasn't from the sub-par baked goods, but from the emotion I was trying to swallow down with my lonely birthday treat. But here I am now, suddenly not alone anymore.

I'm not sure how long we stay like that, but I feel simultaneously very safe and unbearably, unendingly sad. I finally understand heartbreak.

But better that I feel heartbreak without having gotten to love at all, than that I destroy the man I love by letting myself love him.

Cooper

I
have had an easier time getting heavily-trained, grown men to crack during military interrogations, completely without violation of the Geneva Convention, than I have had getting Savannah to open up about her past and her story. I'm getting to know Savannah, and she's the most beautiful girl I've known in a long time, inside and out, but I still know no more about what's haunting her. I still don't know what her personal demons are, but I know they're big.

I'm really starting to feel for this girl, though, and I know that whatever her deal is, she's already hurting enough. She doesn't need me to add to that by prying into her business and pushing her to tell me more. So when I find her in a heap on her bed, crying like her world just ended, I don't try to get her to tell me what's wrong. I want to know more than anything, because I feel this need to fix it and make everything better for her. But I know she just needs some comfort. Instead of pushing her, I just hold her in my arms.

She's this beautiful, strong woman with this beautiful, strong body, but at that moment, she felt so frail, so vulnerable. She felt as delicate as a china doll and looked infinitely more beautiful, even with the tears streaming and her face flushed from crying. Even though I was sitting there, on a passable bed with a halfway decent mattress and a beautiful girl's head in my lap, her shiny black hair splayed out over my legs, I didn't want to fuck her.

Any other girl, I'd either fuck or send home. But not Savannah. She's the kind of girl that's so beautiful you just want to stare at her, and so special you don't even want to fuck her— you just want to hold her, instead. And, when she's ready, make love to her slowly and gently and missionary style, just so that you can look her in the eyes the whole time. 

When Savannah stops crying, I let her have some time alone to calm down a bit and clean herself up. She comes out of her room fifteen minutes later, looking a little sheepish but otherwise normal. I figure the best thing to do is not to say anything about earlier and let her bring it up if she wants to. As I guessed, she doesn't. But she seems grateful that I don't, either, and even invites me along to jog the pregnant lady's fat dog again.

"What?" I tease, "You actually want me to come?"

"Nah," she teases me right back, grinning, "I just know you'll come along either way, so I may as well get the good roomie points by inviting you."

God, how I love to see that woman smile.

"Smart girl," I say, "What, do I owe you dinner now?"

"Do you?" She raises an eyebrow.

"I've exhausted my cooking skills already," I say, lifting my hands in surrender, "But there's this great sandwich place that I have to show you."

"I don't know," she says.

She looks a little conflicted again. "Come on," I say. "The tuna will knock your socks clear off."

"Oh, really?" She is smiling again.

"Really," I say.

"Okay." She bites her bottom lip and smiles.

Every time I think she can't get any cuter, she does.

Savannah

C
ooper is unbelievable. He's built like Adonis with a face like a movie star, but the most amazing part about him is just who he is under all of that. I would have never imagined when I first met him that the same man who rushed a scantily clad lady of the night lookalike out of his place seconds before giving an apartment showing would make me feel safe in his arms just weeks later. I was the most vulnerable I had allowed myself to be since I was a child, and more vulnerable than I had been with anyone since the death of my mother and sister all those years ago.

And yet I surprised myself by feeling safe given the things I felt, and wearing those feelings the way that I did, with Cooper. It is honestly beyond all logic. But whether or not I can understand it doesn't change the fact that that's what it was and I felt the way that I did.

Lack of logic does not change the fact that I
feel
the way that I
do
.

Reason doesn't change the fact that, though I know I should stay out of Cooper's way, I can't. It doesn't change the fact that I'm happy when he accompanies me on my jog with Maxie, even though I know I should be hoping that he won't. It doesn't change the fact that I'm thrilled when he invites me to grab a sandwich with him after the jog. It doesn't change the fact that I find myself nursing my Coke long after we're both done with our sandwiches, just to have an excuse to stay with him, and keep talking to him, a little longer. It doesn't change the fact that being around him fills me with happiness.

"Savannah? Sa- VAN-nahhhhhhh!"

It takes me a minute to realize that Tamryn has been trying to get my attention.

"Sorry," I say. "My mind was in the clouds." If 'clouds' is another word for Cooper.

"Uh-huh." Tamryn waggles her eyes at me. "Is there something you need to tell me?"