Page 27 of Resurrection (Devil Dogs of the Apocalypse #3)

Aly

“Please, don’t do this,” I beg, the tears in my eyes not seeming to hold any sway over his decision. It’s already made, regardless of what I might have to say about it.

He takes me by my shoulders and stares down at me, placatingly, only I don’t want to be handled like a fucking child.

We’ve been planning this. Preparing for months for me to come join him down south.

To leave behind my life and everything I had ever known in New York to begin a new one with him in North Carolina. And now he decides to pull this shit?

What in the ever-loving fuck?!

He sighs, squeezing my shoulders when my body becomes infinitely more tense at how relaxed he is.

How the fuck is he being so calm?!

“Mi alma, this is best for both of us. Please, tell me you understand.”

No, I don’t fucking understand.

In the beginning, before he decided to join without even asking how I felt about it, I was there.

When he packed up all of his belongings and said his goodbyes, I was fucking there.

When he was ripped away early for bootcamp to fill a fucking quota, I was there.

When he graduated and, afterwards, was assigned to his duty station, miles away in fucking North Carolina, I was there.

I was there through every single life-changing, soul-breaking, ‘sorry, but if the military wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one,’ bullshit thing!

But now? All of a sudden, after everything we’ve been through, after all of the dedication I’ve put into the idea of us, he no longer wants me there.

I don’t fucking get it. Did something happen?

Did I do something? We’ve been together for years, through the good times and the bad.

We even spent the past couple of months apartment hunting in the area just outside of his new base.

We picked out fucking curtains! Hell, just this morning he declared his love for me in every physical way imaginable. What. The hell. Happened?

He picks up his bag and, with a frustrated sigh, turns to the TSA check-in line.

He was only visiting for the weekend. It was supposed to be one of the last before I permanently moved down to North Carolina.

He was just promoted to lance corporal. We had a party with stupid pretentious hors d’oeuvres and a freaking cake… .

Doesn’t seem like there’s much to celebrate now….

I try not to react impulsively. We’re in the middle of an airport, after all.

The last thing I want to do is cause a scene and get kicked out before I can properly talk to him.

But, in all reality, how is that even possible?

He spent the entire weekend with me. Happy…

with me. But now… forty-five minutes before take-off…

he decides to call it quits, all because he thinks it’s for my own good. As if I don’t get a say in any of this.

Regardless of my feeble attempts to keep them at bay, tears begin to fall down my face, my body resigning to a fate my mind can’t fathom or comprehend.

This is the end and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I’ve been trying to understand his logic for almost an hour now, and I’m still just as dumbstruck as when he first dropped the bomb on me.

He keeps on talking about ‘a better future’ for me, and that I don’t deserve to be forced to live this life he chose. That he wishes me the best…

It’s fucking bullshit.

“I love you. I always have and I always will. That’s why I’m doing this.

Please… remember that.” He kisses me on my forehead one last time and pulls back, searching my eyes with his own watery ones, hesitating for only a fleeting moment before he turns towards the gates, leaving me and our past behind him, never to be seen again .

Tears coat my lashes and my heart pounds wildly in my chest as the sounds of distant voices pull me from my nightmare. I wake slowly, in a strange bed, in a strange place… covered in crumbs?

Oh, awesome, the best part of waking up is Tollhouse in your bra cups….

I push the box over to the side and sit up. I’ve been thinking about him more and more lately. It has to be due to how close we are to the base. Or maybe I just miss him. It’s not as if I ever stopped missing him. Caring for him. Being angry with the big, dumb, stupid asshole.

Still, to this day, I don’t understand why he left me.

I guess, now, I’ll never understand because he was here .

I know he never changed duty stations; North Carolina was it for him.

In fact, in my long journey south after the contagion began, it was him I was traveling towards, hoping and praying he survived just as I had.

But then I remember Hawk telling me how the entire base was overrun and no one made it out alive.

Regardless of how much I try to hide it, the pain of knowing he was there during the initial outbreak hasn’t diminished in the slightest since the revelation.

I miss him. Even though I’ve moved on with Jax, Cole, and Hawk, I miss him. Our love wasn’t one you could simply walk away from. Well… at least in my case, it wasn’t. I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore either way.

Deciding I need to free myself from the clutches of past relationship Hell, I shake out my body and head to the bathroom.

There’s no running water, but I’m still able to at least pee without having to go outside.

The voices from the main living area continue with urgency, so I take the cue to walk over to the kitchen and find some sort of caffeinated beverage.

Fingers crossed for some spicy bean juice...A whole damn tub of the stuff...I could bathe in it at this point.

“So, what do you think we should do? Camp out here until we run out of food again? Try to find a replacement vehicle now that we’re out here in the boondocks and no longer bogged down in the city?” Hawk asks.

“We could try looking for a new car or truck, but good luck. It took us all damn night just to find shelter, and unfortunately, the old residents of this place left with whatever vehicle they must have had.” Jax replies looking frustrated.

Like really frustrated. Even from way over here, I can see the vein above his eyes is practically throbbing out of his head.

You can totally ease his frustration by tending to something else that throbs...

“Shut. Up. You. Whore,” I whisper to myself, regaining my senses.

“What’re we clucking about, boys? Anything I can help with?

” I call out as I look at Hawk and Jax sitting at the little table in the kitchen, their hair, equally wild and disheveled.

It looks like they’ve been pulling at it from the roots for hours now.

Jax seems to have gotten some sleep, but not nearly enough if the deep, dark bags under his eyes are any indication.

Jax sighs, drawing me in to his arms for a quick kiss. “Hey baby, how we feeling? Did you get any rest?”

“I got what I got,” I say quietly, not wanting to elaborate on what rest I was able to get, or the ghosts that visited me when I did.

Mindful of my grogginess and my lack of wanting to explain more on the topic, Hawk reaches a hand out, guiding me into his arms before pulling me down onto his lap.

I release a comfortable breath as he surrounds me with his strength before bringing us back to the original discussion.

“So, you two were trying to come up with a plan? Replacement cars and whatnot?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hawk replies, kissing the spot just behind my ear.

“What if we just keep on going? We were walking all night long, surely there’s got to be something or some sort of town coming up soon,” I suggest just as Sadie trots up to us.

Dropping my hand, I give a few scratches behind her ear, causing her tongue to flop out in a happy puppy grin.

“This is a major road in the south. I can almost guarantee there’s going to be a diner or a truck stop in the next five to ten miles. ”

Jax leans forward at my suggestion, resting his elbows on the table, his hands clasped together under his chin.

“Hmmm, you’re not wrong but humor me for a second as I play devil’s advocate.

Say we do find a vehicle. First thing’s first: does it start?

We got lucky back at the estate since there were dozens of vehicles to pick from.

But that was a special occurrence and, statistically, not very likely to happen again anytime soon.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say we hit the lottery and manage to find a car or a truck that miraculously starts.

We still need to make sure it also has fuel.

It’s not as if we can just walk up to a gas station and fill it up like the old days.

Gas pumps run off electricity and, even if we procured some sort of syphon, we then need to find a gas station all the way out here in bumfuck nowhere to suck it up out of the tanks. ”

I side-eye Jax and purse my lips, drawing out my rebuttal. “ Buuuuut, what if we manage to find a car... at a gas station... that also has some sort of syphon thingy inside the gas station itself? What then Mr. Doubty-face?”

Jax decides to growl at my optimism, squinting his eyes skeptically in my direction.

“While that is technically a possibility in the realm of a very rare probability, let’s be honest and look even further ahead.

Even if the extraordinarily unbelievable happens, and we’re able to find a car within the next day or two, there’s no guarantee that there won’t be any blockades between here and Tryon Palace.

You saw how overcrowded the roads were as we got close to Jacksonville, the piles of cars literally blocking access to certain areas.

We were lucky to escape that as we did. Tryon Palace is located in another large town.

What if it’s worse up ahead?” He adds, pulling me out of Hawk’s lap and into his, rubbing his hands down my sides soothingly .