Alpha Hero: The Complete Series by Ford Hope

Author:Ford, Hope [Ford, Hope]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

9

Zach

I walk into The Tavern fifteen minutes before six. I see her sitting at a table and walk over to her. I’m surprised to see her still in uniform. I figured I would show up here and she would be dressed to impress. The fact that she isn’t calms my nerves a little bit.

I sit down across from her and she looks at me with a surprised expression. “What are you doing here?”

I shrug my shoulders. “We need to talk.”

She throws her hands up, tossing the wrapper that she was tearing up in her hands across the table. “What is it with you and wanting to talk? One night, Zach. It was one night.”

She starts to get up, but I put my hand on hers to stop her. “Just let me say what I came here to say.”

I know she wants to walk away, but instead she sits down and nods her head for me to continue.

“So… uh, I’ve never told this story, but here it goes.” I take a deep breath and try not to get caught up in the memories. “My mom left my dad and me when I was five years old. I came home from school and instead of her waiting for me at the bus stop, the next door neighbor let me into the house and fixed me a snack. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which I remember as being a treat. Usually, I wasn’t allowed to have a snack before dinner so I was pretty happy. It wasn’t until later that night I found out from my dad that Mom had left.” She gasps and I look down at her hands that are crossed on the table. I almost reach for her, but decide against it. “Uh, I haven’t seen her since. And I mean, it fucked me up. There’s no doubt about it. But it really fucked my dad up. He couldn’t hold it together after that. He started drinking and well, our lives pretty much fell apart then. His heart was broken and he couldn’t heal from it. He ended up drinking himself to death.”

“Oh, Zach…” she starts, but I hold up my hand to stop her. I know I need to get this out.

“So I decided then that I would never fall in love. I grew up thinking that all women left. I thought that if I felt anything for someone like my dad did, she would leave too, and there’d I’d be. And well, it worked for a long time. I had fun, taking women home with me but it never meant a thing.” I pause and look up at her. She wipes a tear off her cheek. “But then I met you. It’s been almost seven weeks ago and my life has not been the same since. I wake up thinking of you and then think about you all day. I don’t want other men looking at you, talking to you and I damn well don’t want you going out with them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.