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Time to face the music.
I’ll just have to cut the song short and save myself some pain.
* * *
“I’m a natural!”Alley exclaimed with the excitement of a five-year-old who just got a double scoop ice cream cone.
I had to admit, the woman could shoot. Sometimes I ran across someone who picked it up easily as if they had been shooting for years. Looked like she was one of them.
“Are you sure you haven’t shot a gun before?”
“Does Call of Duty: Black Ops on my XBOX count?” she asked with amusement in her voice.
“I don’t think so, but it’s fun. It’s been a while since we played, but you’re good, I'll give you that.”
“Oh please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I smoked your ass last time we played and you know it.”
Setting herself up again, she got ready and took a few more shots. To say I was impressed would have been an understatement, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. The woman would just gloat for months and I would never hear the end of it.
Oh, who the hell am I kidding?
She was going to do that anyway.
Truth was, I would be happy to let her gloat and hear her sassy remarks any day of the week. Not long ago some of that personality I liked so much had disappeared as she struggled with her past. On that thought, my own past invaded my head as I peered down at the floor, willing it to go away.
I hadn’t even realized that Alley stopped shooting or laid her gun down, removing her eye and ear protection, until she spoke again, and my gaze met hers. “Maybe now is a good time to let some of the pain go that I can see written all over your face?”
And there we were, getting to the real reason we were here.
I wanted to say no, needed to bury the past so deep it couldn’t see the light of day ever again. But something in the way Alley was looking at me had me talking about a subject I’d told myself I wouldn’t utter a word of.
The day I left my hometown was the day I started a new life and forgot about the one that ruined my idea of love. Of trust. And finding someone to spend my life with.
Don’t get me wrong, I trusted my friends. But I didn’t trust a woman to hold my heart in her hands just where she could rip it to shreds. How could I do that ever again?
“Nothing good will come from dredging up my ugly past,” I told Alley.
She gave me an irritated look. “Don’t piss me off, I’m the one with the gun.”
And while I shouldn’t have laughed at her remark, I couldn’t help myself. But a second later, the humor I’d found disappeared when she spoke again. Her next words hit me right in the chest as if King Kong had just punched me himself.
“Kace, you were here with me and Landon for the last few months. Are we not living proof that sometimes doing just that, revisiting the old wounds and dealing with the ugly shit in our past, can pave the way to a new, amazing future?”
“That’s never going to happen for me, Alley.” I shook my head in denial that it would ever turn out the same for me as it had for her. Everyone didn’t get a happy ending.
“Yeah, why not?” she pushed, practically shouting.
Anger tore through my body as flashes of the excruciating moment from the past started replaying in my mind. The rage I felt, betrayal, and sadness all mixed together was almost too much to bear. My emotions took over and I lost it.
“Because she broke everything inside me that day!” I hadn’t meant to yell, especially not at Alley but I had no control. “No, forget that! It didn’t take even a day! It took all of about ten minutes and my world was turned upside down!”
“Who?” she asked softly.
It was that change in her voice, the other part of Alley that wasn’t sass, but the sweet side that cared about those she loved fiercely, that had me spilling the dark agony that I’d been holding inside.
I slumped down onto the wooden bench placed against the wall and she came to sit beside me. We sat silently for a moment and when she laid her hand on the top of mine, I took a deep breath and let the words go.
“Bridgette and I got together my senior year in high school. She was one year younger than me and had just moved to the area at the start of the school year.” I drew in a breath as I prepared to relive the memories. “When I saw her I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen and it didn’t take me long to ask her out. From then on, we were inseparable.” I clenched my hands knowing this is where things for us started to change. “Until after graduation when I had left to join the military.”
