by Alix Labelle
Jori shrugged. “Maybe to be the woman I used to know?”
“Times are changing. People have to change with it.”
“But, aren’t you afraid at all, about how many lives are going to be affected?”
“Every decision I make affects millions of lives.”
“You know what I mean.”
Anita leaned back into her chair. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“You started World War III.”
“It was going to happen anyway.”
Jori nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. Anita could see her eyes brimming with tears. “As a politician, as a tactician, I have stood behind your every decision from the moment you stepped inside of the White House, because I trusted you. You were my white knight, my infallible hero.”
Anita flexed her jaw. “That’s hardly fair.”
“Rhodes, you were my best friend—”
“Were?”
“Yes, were,” Jori replied as she stood up. She turned to leave, but then stopped herself, chancing one last glance back at Anita. “As a friend, there was a time I would have stood by you, no matter what you did. But that version of you would have been the one I met on my first day of middle school. She was the kind little girl with frizzy hair and glasses, who then turned into the scary badass who graduated high school when she was sixteen, and then became the fearless woman who decided to protect and serve. But she was never this. She was never the suit in an office pushing buttons and ending the world.”
She walked out, shutting the door behind her, before Anita could bring herself to say anything by way of a response. She stood up and rounded her desk. Part of her wanted run after Jori, but an even bigger part of her wondered what she could say. Jori wasn’t wrong, after all; she had changed, and this was big. She was having trouble convincing even herself that she had done the right thing, let alone anyone else.
It was as she stood there, her thoughts hanging in the air, that her door swung open, slamming against the wall next to it. Her head snapped up as she blinked twice, taking in the sight of Bruce standing there, looking disheveled with his flushed skin and his coat hanging wide open. “I have been looking for you everywhere.”
Anita shrugged. “I’ve been right here.”
“I heard what you did, and—”
But Anita raised her hand. “Okay, everyone just needs to shut up about ‘what I did’. I didn’t make that decision alone.”
Instead of flaring up on her like she expected, Bruce remained curiously calm. “I just wanted to apologize.” He sighed, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. “I should have found you sooner.”
“What do you mean? You know exactly where I was. I’ve been with the president all afternoon.”
But Bruce didn’t seem to be listening to her. “I needed to tell you not to go to war.”
Anita rolled her eyes. “Well, if that’s what you barged in here to say, then you’re not the only one. You know what? News flash: no one wants to go to war.”
“You don’t understand—”
“What? What don’t I understand exactly? I’ve been here longer than you, and I’m just as qualified as anyone else in this House to make those decisions. I’m so fucking sick and tired of people telling me that I don’t understand.”
Bruce crossed her office in three long strides and grabbed her shoulders. “They want a war.”
Anita glowered into his intense eyes, wondering what the hell he was talking about. “And who are they?”
Bruce let her go, stepping away as quickly as he had come. “I’ve already said too much.”
Anita set her jaw. “If you don’t have answers, you can get the hell out.”
“Look, I know I can’t you everything—”
“You haven’t even tried.”
Bruce let out a deep breath, looking away from her. “I am not what everyone here assumes I am. I am not a friendly entity. But those that I answer to want a war.”
“Are you a spy?” Anita’s eyes stung with the promise of tears. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she glared at him. “Are you a fucking spy?” She felt dirty just being in the same room as him.
He shook his head. “No. Not exactly.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That I know with all certainty that a war will end us. I should never have drafted that resolution.”
“We drafted it.”
“I manipulated you.”
Anita shook her head. “No. No, you couldn’t have known. I… It’s not like the thought didn’t cross my mind, but it’s just that the chance of it happening was so slim that—”
“I knew. I have the resources to know these things, and I knew exactly what would happen.”
Anita’s eyes went wide as she stared at him, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. None of this made any sense… and yet it did. “You did this. You started the war.”
The tears that had welled up in Bruce’s eyes had begun to overflow. The large man Anita had met less than a month before, with his posture and his looks and his attitude, had been reduced to this trembling mess of organic matter standing before her. She wasn’t sure if she was more or less attracted to him because of it.
Even though she would do anything to avoid what was already happening. Even though she hated what he had done, seeing him like this, agonizing over a mistake she didn’t even fully understand, made her heart crumble. He’d saved her more than once. He’d made her feel more alive than anyone had in a long time.
And she could think of nothing to say. Every consolatory phrase felt like a lie. So she took the three necessary steps towards him, wrapped her arms around his torso, and rested her head on his chest.
She could feel it rising and falling as he heaved his sobs, his hands clutching to her relatively small body for dear life. They were both shaking in his pain, and when Anita finally broke out in her sobs of her own, she couldn’t tell whether she was crying for herself, or for him.
They stood there for another moment longer, before Bruce buried his chin in her hair and said, “I regret everything.”
Epilogue
Anita slammed her fists against the door of Bruce’s house. After waiting an entire week to run into him at the White house, and being disappointed on each of the seven days, she had decided she could wait no longer. She needed to see him. “Bruce!” she yelled as soon as she heard the sound of shuffling coming from the other side of the door.
She stared at the aged wood for another moment longer before she started to hear the sound of another voice. Her eyes narrowed as she assumed it was that Lexus woman from the other day. But as she pressed her ear against the door, she realized that that didn’t quite make sense. The other voice was male.
She knocked on the door yet again. “Bruce, I can hear you in there! Why are you avoiding me?”
There was more shuffling and more voices before she heard the back door open and shut. Then, outside, she could hear the rustle of the leaves. She walked across the porch, peering around the side of the house just in time to see what looked like another tiger running into the woods.
A gasp slipped out of her mouth just as the front door was yanked open.
“Rhodes!”
Anita turned to find Bruce’s head peering from inside of his house. She tried to cover up her own embarrassment by charging him. “Where the hell have you been?” She pushed past him into his house.
Bruce scoffed, but shut the door behind her anyway. “I can’t take a couple of days off without you storming my house?”
Anita grimaced at this. “Uhm, after what happened the last time we saw each other? No you fucking can’t.”
“I’ve told you a million times. I can’t tell you anything!” Bruce yelled, stabbing his chest with his finger.
“Well, that’s not enough!”
Bruce approached her, staring her down. “Who do you think you are?”
Anita cocked her head to the right. “I think I’m the person you practic
ally told you were a spy.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “I’m not a fucking spy.”
“So what the hell are you?” Anita asked as the image of the tiger she’d just seen came to mind. “And why do you have a tiger?”
“I don’t have a tiger.” Bruce clamped his jaw shut. His eyes widening as if he thought that he had said far too much.
“Do you have friends with tigers?” Anita demanded. “Are you a tiger?”
“That is a ridiculous accusation,” he snapped.
“You’re a ridiculous person,” Anita said, standing her ground, even though she could feel herself becoming more and more engulfed in his scent. Her body was drawn to his, their attraction becoming harder and harder to deny.
He took her face in both of his hands. “I’ve told you. I can’t say anything more.” He dragged her into a kiss, pressing his lips against hers.
Anita clutched hiss flannel shirt, allowing herself to melt into his kiss for a short moment before she realized what he was doing. “No!” she yelled, shoving him away. “I demand answers, or I will tell Hector what you told me, and then they will dig and dig until they find the answers themselves.”
“You would do that?”
“Hell yes, I would do that. I would expose you in a second.”
“And if I tell you now? If I tell you exactly what I am and you happen to believe me, would you keep that secret?”
Anita hadn’t thought of that, so she lied. “Yes.” Her heart pounded in her chest as she realized just how close she was to the resolution of what had occupied her thoughts for so long.
He scoffed. “Then here it is, if you choose to believe. I was sent here by a nation of extraterrestrial beings to incite a war that would render humans defenseless, against themselves and against us.”
Anita froze.
But he kept talking. “But if you believe that, also know that I have every intention of stopping what I started, no matter what it takes.”
She shook her head. “How the hell would you do that? What’s done is done,” she whispered.
He grabbed her chin, tilting her face up to meet his. “As someone famous once said… Never say never?”
Anita giggled, in spite of herself. “I think you’re full of shit.”
As soon as she got those words out of her mouth, he kissed her again, holding her there until she was sure he’d been lying… about everything.
THE END
Sign up here to receive links to the hottest new romance ebooks on Kindle delivered directly to your inbox every week! (Click the link below or enter https://surrenderpublishing.leadpages.co/surrendertothealpha/ into your browser.)
Alien Love Triangle
An Alien Romance
Chapter 1
“Oh no,” Amanda said, staring down at her dashboard. “Why the hell does this keep happening?”
The needle on her gas gauge had just spontaneously shifted from around an eighth of a tank to well below “E,” and, as Amanda’s car sputtered forward, she knew that she was nearing empty.
That’s what you get for driving such an old car, Amanda told herself, once again. She’d said that same phrase to herself several times over the past few months, since her gas gauge first started giving her problems. She’d tried to keep track of her gas consumption by tallying her mileage, but she’d never been that good with math, and she didn’t know the rate at which her 1992 Chevy Cavalier consumed fuel. So, every once in awhile, despite her efforts, she ended up in a situation like this… though this situation was like no other she’d encountered before.
“Fuck,” Amanda said, examining her cell phone. “No Service” flashed across the screen at her, and she wanted to throw the useless piece of junk out of the moving car window.
Amanda looked out at the sprawled-out, empty space beside her as the car continued to slowly lurch forward. She’d been driving along an unoccupied, rural stretch of highway, and there wasn’t a home, business, or shred of discernable human life or activity around for miles. When her car ran out of gas before, it had always been in the city, and there was always a way to get gas—she could call someone, call the auto club, or walk to a gas station. None of those were options at this point, and Amanda cursed herself as she finally relegated to reality and pulled over to the side of the road.
She thought she’d gotten more than enough gas to get her from her apartment in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to her cousin’s home in Washington, Pennsylvania—but, then again, she’d never been that good with math, and she didn’t know the rate at which her 1992 Chevy Cavalier consumed fuel. Apparently, she hadn’t gotten enough, and she didn’t know how she was going to get more.
I really should’ve taken advantage of President Obama’s Cash for Clunks incentive, Amanda thought to herself as she got out of her car and walked back to her trunk. She had a spare gas can back there, and she knew it was futile to check it. She was well aware that it was empty, as she’d drained it a few days earlier outside of a bagel shop, but, nonetheless, she checked it. It turned out there were a few drops still in it, and, for a moment, Amanda thought about dumping her bottle of drinking water into the can to try and stretch it. She didn’t know if that would be safe, so she decided against it.
If her phone had been working, Amanda would have used her Wi-Fi signal to check and see if stretching gas with water was dangerous, but since her phone wasn’t working, she couldn’t… and she couldn’t call her cousin, the auto club, or a cab. She couldn’t do anything. She was, by every measure of the word, stranded.
Get yourself together, Amanda told herself. She was starting to feel very overwhelmed and intimidated by the situation. Her heart was racing, and so was her mind, and she felt like she was going to cry, pass out, or vomit. She thought of all those cheesy horror movies where a car broke down on the side of the road, and the driver was hunted by sadistic, ravenous, in-bred cannibals. This neck of the woods wasn’t too far from the Appalachian Mountains, you know—and, come to think of it, cheesy or not, those movies were pretty darn scary.
But it wasn’t just the prospect of being hunted by cannibals that frightened Amanda. She was also afraid of some more “practical” things—like running into your average, run-of-the-mill criminal who was looking to rob, rape, kidnap or murder someone. People like that really did exist, and, if Amanda had any doubt that they did, she knew all she needed to do to be reminded was flick on the local news station.
Amanda didn’t have any flares of indicators to set up in order to draw attention to her vehicle, and given all her fears, she wasn’t sure that she’d use them if she did. She figured, civilization had to be nearby somewhere. It wasn’t close, for miles, but it couldn’t be that far, and, as she stumbled toward it, maybe she’d find a spot that actually got cell phone reception.
It may not have been the wisest thing to leave a car on the side of the road, but Amanda decided she’d rather leave it sitting there by itself than stay inside it like a sitting duck. Plus, it was a 1992 Chevy Cavalier, don’t forget—if someone wanted it so badly that they did whatever it took to steal it, Amanda figured they deserved it. The car’s Blue Book value couldn’t have been more than $500.
Amanda hopped behind the steering wheel one last time to collect some of her belongings from the front seat. Her useless phone, wallet, and a half-eaten candy bar had been scattered there throughout the evening, and she needed each of them and more for the next leg of her journey.
Amanda turned around and reached to the seat behind her to grab her overnight bag. When she turned back around to face the front again, she dropped the bag, gasped, and felt startled. A bright light was shining on her, and a vehicle was traveling in her direction.
Chapter 2
“Where am I?” Amanda asked, though she didn’t know if there was anyone around to hear her. All she could see was bright light and white, and all she could hear was the purr of something electronic humming. Her body felt warm, but there was cold air all around her, and even though she was lighthead
ed and dizzy, she’d never felt so calm and at peace… not ever.
As quickly as Amanda wondered where she was, she stopped caring. She felt so wonderful—so soothed, yet so alive—that it no longer mattered where she was or how she had gotten there. All she cared about was staying right there, in the moment… with the bright light and the humming, with the cool air rushing over her warm body and the smell of… the smell of… What’s that? Amanda thought as her mouth began to drool and her brain registered the word “bacon.”
“What the hell happened to you last night?” Marie said, rushing into the room, gnawing on a piece of the irresistible cured meat. Amanda felt a jolt surge through her body, and she sprung up in bed a moment after her cousin entered.
“What do you mean?” Amanda asked, looking down at the clothes she was wearing. She had on white panties and a white camisole, though she couldn’t recall whether she’d been wearing the garments for a day or for a few hours. She grabbed the blanket from beside her and wrapped her lower legs in it. “It’s cold in here,” she said, running her hand through her hair.
“You must have had some night,” Marie chided. “I heard you mumbling in here earlier, and gave you some time to wake up. But, now, I’ve waited long enough, and I want details. So why don’t you get dressed, come to the kitchen, and tell me all about it?” Marie couldn’t help but notice that her cousin was totally disoriented and out of her wits, but she figured Amanda must have had one too many the night before and was still recovering.
Marie stood up and walked out of the spare bedroom, leaving Amanda to herself. It took a good minute or two before Amanda was able to get up on her feet, and when she did, the first thing she did was walk over to the window. She pulled back the curtain and gazed out at the driveway beyond. Her 1992 Chevy Cavalier was parked there, safely and soundly, and Amanda cocked her head to the side as she tried to remember how on earth it got there.