Mini chapter to get you ready for the next installment. Please please please R&R! I love getting feedback.
When she returned to work, she wasn't the same. Her irreverence was gone. Joe's death had transformed her, the hard way, into a full-grown woman. The charm and innocence she'd had were no longer a part of her, or if they were, they were safe guarded somewhere deep inside.
What she'd had with Joe could never be replaced. It could never be duplicated, reopened or revisited. She'd had it and lost it. The parts of her that had been brutally ripped out were replaced, slowly, with a steely strength, and something dark, something calculating and patient.
In times of tragedy, people cope differently. Alex's method of coping was to retreat deep inside herself, and let that dark, patient thing take over. The thing that was too powerful to be given reign most of the time. The thing that could do anything, be anything, anyone. It was the thing that flipped any confrontation on its head, and calmly, if silently, informed everyone that what they thought they knew was wrong. This thing that could make grown men stutter and tremble when she fixed them with one look.
He had fled. He'd wanted to give her a handkerchief for her tears when she collapsed. He'd just been in the right place at the right moment, and caught her. Once they'd gotten her inside, he disappeared, hightailing it to the closest dive bar to drink himself into a temporary amnesia. Guilt shot through him, twisting cruelly. He'd never, ever wanted this. And how arrogant of him to think it mattered.
He couldn't forget how he'd wished, from time to time, that he had gotten to her first. How did their lives keep intersecting, but never at the right moment? What was the right moment? Why did they keep meeting? It seemed like a cruel cosmic joke, meant to torture him by forcing him to witness the love and hope of this woman destroyed. But that wasn't true, he reminded himself. It was that chance meeting at the diner, so many years ago. He was inspired to be like her, to meet her again, and consciously or not, that's what he did.
It was a slightly calculated coincidence and a lot of random chance that conspired to push the two of them together. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Two years later, their paths would cross again.