This recruit better be worth it.
Five people, a star, and a song.
Love.
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| Image by Charnchai on Pixabay |
They say my Prince Charming will swoop in on a horse
And destroy my biggest enemies without feeling remorse
Anything and everything he’d willingly do for me
A blissful future with him I would gladly see
No matter the shallow contents of his head
As long as he makes enough to live and is good enough in bed
He’d work so hard all night and day
While I’d stay home to watch our children play
We’d call ourselves lucky to have such a deal
where the living comes easy, and there’s always a fresh cooked meal
True love, they say, comes from sacrifice and pain
But why, I think, must it be that way?
What if I don’t want the horse?
Or destruction without remorse?
What if I would rather know the thoughts inside his head?
His hopes, his dreams, his lessons learned, his life outside the bed?
What if I want to feel his love at night and each and every day
As together, as a family, we with the children play?
What if instead of lucky deals, an easy life, and fresh cooked meals
I’d rather have a partner to help find hearts to steal?
What if true love is something more than sacrifice and pain?
Because I think I’d rather have a well-read man than royalty any day.
He’s a much better pilot than Emma expected.
She almost expected a crash landing, a total annihilation of everything she had worked so hard to achieve. That’s how she had felt the entire plane ride, expecting the worst, feeling on-edge, unable to relax.
But they landed safely, quietly, without any trouble at all.
This wasn’t good news. For the first time, Emma was experiencing the effects of not having a plan. She suddenly had no idea what she was supposed to do. She had been counting on building her plan during the plane ride, but since that hadn’t exactly worked out, she was stuck.
“What’s the plan, boss?” The stranger who hijacked her plane asks, smirking.
She crosses her arms over her chest, and refuses to leave her seat. She stares out the window, into the darkness of the dimly lit airport, the twinkling lights of a city glimmering in the distance. What is she going to do? Where can she go from here? No matter what, she’ll be followed. She isn’t safe anywhere, especially not here.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t come up with a plan.” He says. “I expected more from you.”
She looks at him, at the smug smirk on his face. She wishes he would just go away and leave her alone. She was having a hard enough time before he messed everything up. Who was he? What did he want from her? Would she ever know?
“Still not talking?” He asks. She looks back out the window in response. “Fine. Don’t. I’ll get us a ride to the city.”
He gets off the plane, and she takes a moment to make arrangements for her jet before following him. She’s lucky she has enough connections to make a plan as she goes because that’s what she’ll be doing from now on. Until she figures out what she’s up against, she’s going to have to take things one step at a time, a scary first for Emma.
A shiny black car pulls up in front of them before either of them has the chance to speak. The stranger makes a move to open the car door, but before he can, the driver’s door opens, and a figure dressed completely in black, steps out, slides over the hood of the car, and swings a fist against his jaw. The whole movement is a blur of darkness and motion.
“What the hell are you doing here?” The dark figure asks, gripping the stranger by the throat.
Emma gasps, recognizing the female voice, and the dark figure immediately drops the stranger, snapping the attention to Emma. The dark figure pulls off a mask, exposing the face and grin of the woman Emma came searching for.
“Hello, stranger.” The woman says. “Miss me?”
Love is in the Alphabet: An Excerpt
This is the first chapter from my free ebook. Download the whole book here or here.
Ainsley
I whip my head around to see the school’s soccer captain for the boy’s varsity team, Diego, grinning as he practically runs toward where me and my two best friends, Baylee and Cali, are sitting and eating lunch. Baylee, Cali, and I have been best friends since preschool, and since my name starts with an A, our trio has been commonly referred to as A-B-C. It usually doesn’t bother me, but Diego and his friends have a tendency to be obnoxious, and since it’s Friday, I can bet obnoxious will be an understatement. I roll my eyes at the thought, and take a sip of my water. Baylee does the same while Cali smiles widely at Diego as he reaches our table. Cali and Diego have been hooking up since the previous summer, and to the unknowing eye, at times it can appear that they’re an actual couple, but so far, nothing is official.
Diego pulls Cali up from her seat, and brings her into a hug that could be used for a scene in a sappy rom-com. Baylee and I look at each other, and I can tell we’re both wondering when Cali and Diego will finally announce themselves as a couple instead of just acting like one.
“Get a room!” Diego’s friend Freddy jokingly yells as he joins Diego in front of our table.
Diego and Cali break away from each other finally, and Cali sits back down. Her expression is something of a mix between elated from Diego’s affection, and slightly angry at Freddy since she’s convinced the reason Diego hasn’t officially asked her out has to do with the influence of his less-than-attached friends.
“Do you boys need something?” I ask.
“Yes. First off, we are not boys. We are big, strong men. Don’t forget that.” Freddy answers triumphantly, and Baylee smiles as she looks at him in adoration.
Baylee has had a crush on Freddy for years, but he never let on. Obviously these “big, strong men” aren’t perceptive enough to pick up on her hints. I don’t blame her for still liking him, though. With his rising status as the school’s football star, he’s quite a catch. It also helps that he has gorgeous muscles that male models only dream of having, longish, black hair that looks so perfectly styled you’d think he spends hours on it when he really just wakes up with it, and tanned skin. If he wasn’t so into himself, and didn’t care so much about sports, I would probably have a giant crush on him too.
Diego is also quite a catch. His incredibly tall and angular frame does much to draw attention to the size of his obvious muscles. His short, dark brown hair is constantly spiked up, drawing attention to his green eyes that contrast with his darkly tanned skin.
“And secondly, we would really appreciate it if you three fine ladies of the A-B-C went with the very sexy men of the D-E-F to the carnival tonight.” Diego finished.
The carnival takes place on the three mile stretch of beach in this town every year a couple weeks before summer break, and is pretty much the most talked about event every time. I’ve always found it to be more of a waste of time than anything else I could come up with to do, but I have to admit that with the guys there with us, it could actually be really fun.
“Who’s the E?” Baylee asks, positioning herself in a rather flirtatious manner as she gazes at Freddy, and Freddy grins.
“Evan.” Freddy answers.
Of course Baylee already knew that. Freddy and Diego are rarely seen without their quieter counterpart, Evan, and in Evan’s case, I mean quieter in a social aspect. While Freddy and Diego wreck havoc on and off the sports field, Evan raises hell as captain of the debate team, and hardly participates in any of the overbearing tirades of his two friends. In fact, right now I can see him leaning against the wall of the school building, headphones on, completely uninvolved in the bustling world around him. His sexily built arms are crossed over his powerful chest, and his foot is tapping in rhythm to the bobbing of his dark-curl-covered head. The gaze of his puppy-dog brown eyes is directed at nothing in particular, but I must have been staring for too long because he suddenly looks over at us, and I quickly avert my attention, imagining the laughs he’ll share later with Freddy and Diego over my obvious interest in him while he has zero interest in me. They wouldn’t be so wrong either. As co-captain of the debate team, I’ve had plenty of chances to develop a major crush on Evan, but he’s rumored to only date women who are already sharing their career success at their high school reunions, so my interest in him is one of my best kept secrets.
“We’ll talk about it and get back to you,” I say, snapping my attention away from my personal dilemma, “but not if you don’t walk away right now and leave us alone.”
Freddy salutes us jokingly and then walks away while Diego lingers a little longer, looking at Cali. Cali blows him a kiss, and he looks saddened by her lack of affection before turning and walking away. I bite my lip to keep myself from being annoyed by their obvious lack of communication. I’ve gotten into the debate with Cali a thousand times before, and it’s proven to be a complete waste. She’ll learn eventually that getting over her fear of rejection and actually speaking her mind solves much more than hiding everything inside and expecting everyone to read her mind and solve it all for her.
“So Cali, are you two official yet?” Baylee asks before taking another sip of her drink.
“Not yet. But I’m planning on changing that tonight if we go. I see you still haven’t told Freddy how you feel?” Cali answers.
“Nope, but I’m planning on doing that tonight if we go.” Baylee says, and then they both turn to look at me.
“I guess we better go then.” I say, and they both smile.
I wonder if I’ll actually have fun tonight, but even if I don’t, I’ll just be glad that my friends will be happy.
Three more hours until his past returns to punch him in the face.
A fictional interpretation of a song by B.o.B.
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Because a dream without the soul is just a dream.
When Emma returned to her hotel room, she began to pack her bags.
It was clear to her that she wasn’t going to get the answers she wanted, so she decided it was time to go find the answers on her own. The last place she could remember being close to answers was in Brazil. Normally, she wouldn’t dare return to the same city she had travelled to before, and she was certain she would be risking her life by returning with another stolen identity, but she was desperate.
She needed answers, and she needed them now.
It was a good thing she had already been planning to leave her current identity soon. She already had everything set up for a quick retreat. All she needed to do was pack her bags and make her arrangements for Brazil. Since she had already been there, it was much simpler than taking on a completely new identity. She could only hope the woman who had persistently badgered her, shoved herself into Emma’s fake life, would still be around to give her the answers Emma refused to hear at the time.
How could she have been so stupid? Why didn’t she just listen to the woman when she had the chance?
Now was not the time to beat herself up, though. There would be plenty of time for that on the flight. A flight that would be leaving at dawn.
She left a note for Madam Delveux’s driver. During her time with this identity, she had actually come to appreciate Geoffrey. But she couldn’t get him involved with her mess. So she left a note thanking him for his service, and telling him that she was leaving, that she hadn’t called him because she didn’t want to disturb him as an important and dire matter had required her immediate travel attention late in the night. Then, she hailed a random taxi to the private airport where she had a jet waiting for her. The jet was her very first expense, and definitely worth every penny. It had saved her life on more than one occasion, and had become a sort of home for her, the only refuge she truly called her own and felt safe.
Her hired pilot was waiting for her in the pit, ready to leave. She offered him a brief hello, and he waved his hand at her in response, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate the conversation. She took a seat in her favorite reclining seat, strapped herself in, and closed her eyes. As the jet began to take off, she finally allowed herself to relax. She was home. She was alive. She was safe. At least until the jet landed.
“Champagne?”
Emma froze. She recognized that voice, and it didn’t belong on the jet, her jet. She opened her eyes to find the stranger she had escaped from earlier, the frustrating man who refused to answer her questions, standing in front of her wearing a pilot’s uniform. What happened to her pilot?
Her heart beat fast, and all the color drained from her face as he poured them both a glass of champagne. He handed her a glass and she took it numbly, hoping this was all some sort of dream. Hoping she would wake up and none of this would be real.
“Congratulations.” He said, raising his glass. “You almost got away. But I did warn you it wouldn’t be that easy, didn’t I?”
He winked at her, and downed his glass before setting it and the bottle of champagne on the table in front of her.
“Still not speaking, huh?” He asked. “I guess I should let you sleep then. Maybe you’ll feel like talking in Brazil.”
Then, he turned on his heel and walked away.
A fictional interpretation of a song by Hey Monday.
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| Image by KAVOWO from Pixabay |
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