Alone with You

Chapter One

Truett

D eath. It’s life’s only true constant. At any given second, someone was out there breathing their last breath. A heartbeat fading into silence. A soul escaping to a better place. At least that was what religious leaders and funeral directors would wax poetic about at services around the world.

I’d died once and it hadn’t felt like floating through the clouds. There were no pearly gates. No bright light guiding me home. Not one fucking ounce of peace to be found.

But then again, I’d died failing the people I loved.

Dying was the most god-awful, heinous, and terrifying experience imaginable. Or so I’d thought—until someone had brought me back to life.

Surviving. Now that was one level of agony that could never be matched.

I was a prisoner. Like a storm hovering on the horizon, Death followed me. Day in. Day out. The Grim Reaper became my own personal stalker. Unfortunately for me, my name had yet to be at the top of his list. No, my fate was worse. I’d become something of his tour guide, sentencing everyone around me to his wrath.

Therapists and doctors alike assured me that Death wasn’t a personified force chasing me around Earth. One even used the word delusional and asked if I’d considered medication. I shook a bag of pills at him and then not so kindly tossed his sorry-shrink-ass out of my house.

I wished I was delusional. I would have taken every fucking pill in existence if it could have made the horrors of my life figments of my imagination. I didn’t honestly believe there was a mythical scythe-toting being lurking in my shadow. But for fuck’s sake, something had to explain the ocean of pain I’d been drowning in for over half my life.

Call it what you will. Maybe I was cursed. Maybe in a different life I’d been a monster who deserved an eternity of torment. Regardless, delusion or karma, I wasn’t leading anyone else to their graves. When Death finally came looking for me, I was going to be ready, eager, and alone .

Always alone .

Blindly slapping around my nightstand, I killed my screaming alarm. My heart raced, the rude awakening never getting easier.

“Fuck,” I breathed as I pried one eye open. The sun streaming through my bedroom window blinded me. I let out a low groan and folded my forearm over my eyes, wishing I could block out my entire fucked-up life more so than the rays of the sun.

As I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, my back let out a loud creak. I kept myself in shape, working out virtually every day, but at forty-two, my body was all but revolting against me. I’d put it through hell in my twenties. Six years of jumping out of planes in the Army had done the real heavy lifting in the damage department, but I’d done my fair share of destroying it in other ways. Tequila had been my poison of choice for most of my thirties, but eventually I got my shit together. After that kind of abuse, I should have been grateful all I had were a few rusty creaks.

The aroma of freshly brewed coffee invaded my senses as I stood up and stretched. Thank God for auto brew. While sleeping naked was a definite perk of solitude, I’d learned the hard way that nudity and sloshing hot coffee did not mix. So, before leaving my room, I paused my pursuit of caffeination long enough to drag on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt.

The old house was noisy as I padded toward the kitchen. The hardwoods groaned under my weight, and even from the hall, I heard the fridge humming its pleas for retirement. From the air conditioner that sounded like it was following its dream of becoming a freight train to the horror-movie-worthy scream of my back door, everything needed an overhaul. My to-do list was almost two decades long.

Ah, the joys of home ownership.

Sipping my coffee, I got busy checking my daily voicemails.

“Hello, Mr. West, this is—” Delete.

“Hi there, I’m looking for—” Delete.

“Mr. West. Me again. If you could please—” Delete.

“Hey, asshole.”

My finger hovering over the delete button stilled as I recognized Daniel’s voice.

“It’s that time of year again when the wife insists on throwing me a birthday party no matter how many times I’ve begged her not to.”

I flipped my wrist and looked at the date on my watch. Shit. I’d totally forgotten that his birthday was coming up.

“Anyway, consider this your official invitation. No pressure or anything, but also, maybe show up and save me from three hours of small talk with people I don’t like. We’ll probably have enough food to feed a small country. So come hungry. Hit me back.”

I tapped the trashcan icon and made a mental note to renew his annual beer-of-the-month subscription.

The last voicemail started playing immediately and I basked in the sender’s frustrated tone.

“Mr. West, I need you to answer me. I—” Delete.

Amusing as it was, I did not have time for that shit. It was still early, but it wouldn’t be long before my work phone started ringing.

Working with veterans was my passion, but it didn’t matter how long they’d been in the civilian sector—they all still operated on military time. By zero six thirty, every single one of them had already finished PT, showered, shaved, and scarfed down some chow and was ready to kick the day in the ass. Myself included most of the time.

But today was different. Today was Wednesday.

And I had a date.

A massive smile stretched my face. I was far from being known as Mr. Cheerful, but I wouldn’t say a grin was rare. Though, on Wednesday mornings, it was a permanent fixture.

Wednesday afternoons were a different story.

I dreaded them.

Agonized.

Turned myself inside out with stomach-churning anxiety.

But first, I got the morning—the sweet before the soul-crushing sour.

Ignoring the relentless ringing of my phone, I rushed through breakfast. Robotically, I went through the motions of preparing the usual: four scrambled eggs with yellow peppers, turkey sausage, a protein shake, and enough fresh fruit to open a produce stand. After that, it was a quick shower, a stop in the closet to get dressed for the day, and lastly, a drive-by at the coffee maker to snag my second cup of joe.

And then I was home.

Not home as in the building that had my name on the deed or the space where I laid my head each night. But truly home.

With her.

“Hey, baby,” I cooed when her angelic face appeared on my computer screen.

She didn’t immediately reply, as she was too busy playing with a set of plastic farm animals. I’d given them to her for her third birthday, but she’d only recently rediscovered them at the bottom of her toybox.

“Kaitlyn,” I called at the same time her mother urged her to focus on the screen.

Her head popped up, brown curls bouncing wildly. “Oh, hey, Daddy.”

My heart stopped at those two syllables. It didn’t matter how many times I’d heard it. Each and every time she uttered the word daddy , it temporarily illuminated the black hole inside me.

“Hey, pretty girl. How was your week?”

Her round face hardened, and her brown eyes narrowed as though she were a surly teenager rather than my five-year-old princess. Leaning forward on her elbows, she put her button nose only a few inches from the camera. “This was the worst week ever!”

“Uh, oh,” I mumbled, leaning back in my office chair. My girl loved to talk, and if this had been the worst week ever, I needed to go ahead and make myself comfortable.

“I hate school. Hate. It.”

“Why?” I chuckled at her fury.

“First, they told us Mrs. Rowell isn’t coming back to school. She had that stinky, rotten baby and forgot all about us.”

“Hey,” I scolded. “That’s not nice.”

She still hadn’t moved away from the camera, so I couldn’t see her face as much as up her nose. “Babies poop their pants, Dad! All of us in class use the potty like big kids. But nooooooo, Mrs. Rowell wants to stay home with that, that”—she paused for a half second before finishing with what had clearly become the foulest of all four-letter words—” baby .”

Slapping on a face full of outrage, I whispered, “How dare she?”

“And then they made Mr. Ward our teacher!”

Now, I had no clue who Mr. Ward was, but the way her voice hit a pitch that was usually only audible to dogs, I knew it had to be bad. Who knew preschool could be so tumultuous?

“Yikes. Is he awful?”

“He’s the worst!” she cried, finally leaning back in her chair so I could fully see her again. Her shoulders rounded forward in defeat. “I hate him. I don’t even want to go to school anymore. But Mom said if I stop going now, I’ll never be able to be a chicken nugget maker at McDonalds when I get older.”

Ah, yes. My girl had dreams—big ones. For your average five-year-old, just working at McDonalds, where ice cream was on tap and the French fries were always hot, would have been the peak of success. However, my baby’s eyes were set on the coveted and prestigious position of head chicken nugget maker. Hopefully when the time came, I could talk her into a slightly more lucrative career path, but until then, I just appreciated that she had goals.

“Oh, well, your mom has a point there, babe. School first.”

She let out an exaggerated groan. “It’s not fair. I just want Mrs. Rowell back.”

My chest got tight as she pouted. Yes, I was fully aware that it was ridiculous, but I was nothing if not a sucker. “It’s okay, baby. Mr. Ward might grow on you. Give him a chance.”

Based on the purse of her lips, she was not convinced, but luckily for me, goldfish and Kaitlyn had the same attention span.

“Did I show you Fiona Iona yet?” She lifted a plastic tiger sporting a doll’s tutu around its midsection toward the camera.

I smiled, my chest so full of love it physically ached. “She’s beautiful,” I whispered, my gaze locked on my little girl.

“She’s a ballerina. Mom said she’s going to get me some glue and pink glitter so we can make her shoes.”

“Oh, wow, that sounds…messy.”

“I don’t think the glitter will work though, because she needs to be able to take them off when she goes to work.”

“Ah, yes. Very wise. Obviously, she’s a career tiger.”

“Hang on. Let me show you her sister.”

I didn’t care about Fiona Iona , much less any of her siblings, but if Kaitlyn wanted to talk, you could be damn sure I was listening.

For the next fifteen minutes, I watched as she did a parade of her toys. She told me their names, nicknames, nicknames for their nicknames, and lastly, what she actually called them. I laughed as they became more and more ludicrous. My personal favorite was her gray stuffed horse. His name was Salty. His nickname was Pepper. His nickname for his nickname was Peppy. And what she called him? Well obviously, Woogity Boogity Salty Lillian Bogie West. At least she had given him our last name.

When her mother finally told her it was time for her to go, my heart wrenched. I had known it was coming. It was getting late and she had to get to school, but I hated saying goodbye. I’d see her again, but a week was a long time to wait. If I was lucky, I’d be able to squeeze in a few quick chats over the weekend. Though nothing compared to our Wednesday mornings together.

“I love you, Daddy!” She blew a dozen kisses my way.

I caught each and every one, pretending to press them all over my face. “I love you too, baby girl. Have a good day at school.”

“Byeeeeee!” she sang as her face got really close to the camera again.

And then the screen went dark.

Just like the rest of my day.

Wednesdays. The best and the worst of it. Such was the definition of my life.

I stared at the computer for a few minutes, lost on how to move on with the rest of my day. But like clockwork, my phone started ringing all over again. That was my sign. My distraction for the next eight hours.

Recruiting in the civil sector was time consuming, tedious, and as close to being cupid as a mortal could get—professionally speaking of course. After almost a decade, I was damn good at my job. I’d never been the stereotypical fast-talking recruiter who wooed both companies and candidates by verbally painting a utopia of perfect matches. I took a slightly less orthodox—and a lot more realistic—approach.

Trust me, I liked a paycheck just as much as the next guy, and commissions were fantastic when I managed to place candidates in roles. But the people I worked with weren’t the average twenty-three-year-old kid, fresh out of college, where the hardest part of their lives had been whether to visit Mommy’s beach house or Daddy’s yacht for spring break.

The men and women I worked with were combat veterans who had risked their lives to defend our country. They were usually transitioning into civilian life later in life after what had surely felt like ten careers in uniform. It was a scary transition; one I knew well. Those vets deserved more than to be guided into careers fast and carelessly. It was the companies who were paying recruiters. Qualified bodies in jobs were the goal. But fuck me, nothing drove me crazier than the lazy, half-ass work required to place a retired Sergeant Major in a managerial role he was going to find monotonous and mind numbing within the first three months.

That’s where I came in.

I was no salesman, but I could research the fuck out of a candidate. Ya know, real wild, revolutionary shit like taking ten minutes to check their social media, reaching out to their previous chain of command, or hell, I don’t know, maybe one phone call, soldier to soldier, that didn’t have them reciting me their résumé. It wasn’t rocket science, but the perks of working from home for six figures, a 401(k), five weeks of paid vacation, and full health benefits were enough for me to be cool with letting my boss assume it was.

Best of all, I got to escape my life for a solid eight hours. Focusing all my attention outward on someone else rather than the clusterfuck permanently rolling inside me.

It felt like part of my penitence. Helping soldiers and their families instead of failing them as I’d done all those years ago. I couldn’t change the past. I’d been through enough therapy to have accepted that. But damn, every time I closed my eyes, I wished I could.

Well, at least until five o’clock, when everything went to hell.

Quitting time should have been celebrated. Even for me, when the only difference between on the clock and off the clock was relocating from my home office to my home couch.

However, on Wednesdays, I stayed at my computer as long as humanly possible, procrastinating on the inevitable and driving myself mad.

The clock never stopped. That damn minute display mocked me with each unyielding tick.

It was less than a mile from my house, though it might as well have been a fifty-mile death march for the way my heart pounded when it was time to leave.

Outside of my front door, my brain became hyper aware, a world of stimuli ricocheting inside my head.

The sun was too bright even on the cloudiest of days.

The cars passing sounded more like they were landing at an airport.

The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth. It wouldn’t be until later that I would figure out if it was because I had chewed a hole in my cheek or if it was merely memories that wouldn’t let go.

I damn near hyperventilated walking down my driveway.

My lungs seized as I turned onto the sidewalk.

Lightheaded, vomit clawing at the back of my throat, ears ringing, I had to voluntarily constrict every single muscle to compel my legs to carry me away.

Those few blocks never got easier.

Every single Wednesday, I died inside as I made that trek.

And yet somehow, the trip home was always worse.

Alone.

Always alone.