Hopeless Hero

When the taxi pulled up to my apartment, I paid and reluctantly climbed out. In that moment, I would have preferred staying in a musty old taxi cab forever than face going back home for a week.

I couldn’t believe that after just one phone call, my sister had gotten me to agree to an entire week in Savage. I was nowhere near back in town yet, but I already hated her for it.

There was a lot of pride among Savage residents. With the town’s military connection—being the base of the Savage Soldiers—there was a strong sense of patriotism there. Most families in the area had been there for many generations and had no intentions on leaving.

Hence, those who left, like me, were frowned down upon.

After letting myself into my apartment, I pulled my dark hair back into a ponytail and grabbed my suitcase from my closet. I sighed deeply and rolled my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to go back to Savage, but there was no way out of it now.

My entire life started and ended in that small town. I was always the girl who wanted out. When I went to college just a few miles away, it was with one goal in mind-- get the hell out of Savage. College had been my one chance to start the life I’d always wanted.

r /> Yet, that was the reason my parents had always liked Allie better. She was the townie and was totally happy to stick around Savage forever. She’d gotten married at the ripe old age of nineteen and had popped out three kids in five years, just like most of the girls in the area tended to do.

But me? I’d had other plans. Plans that hadn’t included Savage.

In my last year of college, I’d been still living at home with my parents. They’d been secretly hoping I would give up my dream of becoming a big city lawyer and settle for practicing family law right there in my hometown.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” my mother had asked a hundred times. “You could still help people and this way, the people you help would be the very same people you’ve known forever. What could be better than that?”

My response was always the same. “New York City, Mom. New York would be better than that.”

I had never even considered staying in Savage until I met Zane Prewitt.

Zane was muscular, broody, dark, mysterious, and a Savage Soldier—the kind of man every twenty-one year girl wanted, and I had been no exception. While I wished I had played hard to get, I had fallen for him hard and fast.

I would have loved to say that he’d wooed me slowly, but that’s not how it happened.

Zane had simply walked into Kellan’s Pub one night and boom—I was a goner. From the second his dark brown eyes locked with mine, I fallen head-over-heels for him. And the more time we spent together, the more I liked him.

Our sexual chemistry had been intense, unlike anything I’d ever experienced. There had been nights when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other no matter where we were. We would collide in the backseat of his car, or even in the bathroom at Kellan’s.

Anywhere, any place, our bodies reacted to each other like magnets.

But most importantly, he understood me. I could talk to him about things my family only made fun of. I’d even told him how I wanted to move to New York after passing the bar exam, spending hours gushing over all the things I would do if I lived there. He never once told me I was being stupid. He had always supported my dreams because he’d had dreams of his own.

He had told me all about how badly he wanted to rise in the ranks among the Savage Soldiers. He’d been in the military since he was eighteen, but his dream was to do something that really mattered and to him, that was working his way up to carrying out missions for the Savage Soldiers, just like the men he’d grown up admiring.

“It’s my purpose, you know?” he’d told me one night sitting in our booth at Kellan’s. “I don’t know how else to explain it. When I think about the one thing I was put on this earth to do, it’s that.”

I guess I should have seen it coming; all the signs were there. Yet at the time, all I saw was his ambition and it only made him sexier to me. If I had opened my eyes, I may have been able to prepare myself, and maybe I would have seen the signs in time for me to get out. But I hadn’t, and the night he told me he was relocating was the worst night of my life.

He’d come to me that night with a huge smile on his face, announcing he’d been selected for a mission. There was just one catch though—he had to be relocated. Indefinitely.

Yet, his dream had come true and he felt important. Seeing the excitement in his eyes, I knew I didn’t compare. I was nothing more than a loose end he needed to tie up before being shipped out.

I took a deep breath and threw a pair of underwear into my suitcase.

The more I thought about that night with Zane, the less I wanted to go home. I even went so far as to pick up my phone, ready to call Allie and tell her to shove it, but I restrained myself.

As much as I hated to admit it, Allie was right. I couldn’t hide in New York forever. No matter what Zane had done to me back then, I still had family in Savage who needed me.

Besides, hadn’t I done okay despite Zane? Hadn’t I recovered from the heartache and made something of myself? Wasn’t I a big city lawyer?

Hell yeah I was.

I imagined walking through downtown Savage. It was easy to picture the streets lined with people from my childhood. Mr. Jacobs, the banker. Tonya Alans, the town gossip. Melanie Daniels, the prom queen who married the quarterback of the football team. They would all wave at me somewhat hesitantly, their smiles forced because they wouldn’t know what to expect from the new Alicia Joppa. I’d spent so much time away that all they knew about me was from town gossip.

They would corner me and ask questions about my life without really wanting to know the answers, and I would give the answers proudly not giving a damn what anyone thought.