Please note: This has not been beta-read.
Witness protection wasn't an enjoyable experience. At first, it was a struggle just to fit into life as Rachel, let alone carefully place herself in a community and blend in.
For the first few weeks, it was quiet solitude. Lonely, of course, but she was alive.
And then came Maximus. She found out she was pregnant nearly two months in. She knew the date he was conceived because it was the only time they had ever slept together.
That next morning, she had witnessed a terrible thing and her life as she knew it was erased-eradicated.
And Ray would never see her again. He would never hold their son, see his first steps, hear his laugh, or...
Or meet him.
She had been failing to talk herself out of calling him when the circumstances of her position came about.
She was pregnant. Alone. Hiding.
And if she called him now, there was a good chance that she would be only one of those things before she died-alone. She could lose not only the man she loved, but the child they created. So she never called. And he would never know.
Years later, she placed an ad on a dating service website.
It was a few months and failed attempts before she met a man she felt she could fall in love with.
His name was Burton Guster, and he was a wonderful man.
She never returned to the website, her relationship with Gus taking off in ways she couldn't have ever imagined.
But a message blinked there, waiting: "Neela?".