Alpha Hero - Hope Ford Page 0,45

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. I thought I could go with your notion of getting you out of my system, but it didn’t work. All it did was make me fall even more in love with you.”

She gasps and I reach across the table for her hand. When I lace our fingers together, I stand up and scoot into the booth next to her. I wrap my arm around her and look into her face. “I’m going to fuck up, Shannon. Probably a lot. But if you’ll have me… I promise to love you for the rest of my life.”

Tears are running down her face. “Are you sure, Zach? Because I’ll be honest, I fell for you six weeks ago and I haven’t stopped.”

I tuck a piece of hair away from her face, careful not to touch the stitches on her forehead. “So I guess getting me out of your system didn’t work, huh?”

She shakes her head side to side. “So I get another night?”

I do what I’ve wanted to do since I sat down. I bend my head and kiss her lips. I pull slightly back and tell her, “No, we get forever.”

Epilogue

A few weeks later

Shannon

Terry and a few of the other firemen are carrying my boxes into the house. Not Zach, though. He’s supervising and making sure that no one tries to talk to me. I should hate how possessive he is, but it doesn’t really bother me. For someone that claimed to avoid relationships, he sure has done a one-eighty. We spend all our time together, well, except when we’re at work. He calls and texts me a few times a day and he doesn’t go out with his buddies anymore to pick up women. If he does go out with his friends, he usually stays for an hour or so and then comes back home to me. Ever since that night at the tavern he has been all in. I was scared at first. Worried that he would change his mind.

I empty the box and before I can start to