by Dane Bagley
***
“Steve, are you okay?”
“I haven’t been okay in quite some time.”
“I know…I mean since yesterday,” asked Tammy cautiously.
“It is going to take some time. I’m no pacifist, but I don’t like senseless killing, of any sort. I would never take the life of one of my own.”
“It wasn’t alive; not yet anyway. It wasn’t a child, it was a potential child. It was hard for me to destroy the potential too, but I didn’t kill it…I stopped it—the potential I stopped.”
“I’m not sure that I will ever see it that way,” said Steve in a serious tone.
“Is it over with us?” she asked, truly wondering.
“No. I don’t know. I need some space…some time to think. I love you, but I don’t know how I can live with this; and right now you remind me of what could have been, and what is gone now. Listen, I am speaking too harshly. It’s not just you, and this. Something is going on that Central Command is not telling me. They’ve got something cooking that they don’t want to let me in on.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get much sleep. I need some rest. Just give me some time; let me sort this out.” He walked up to her and gave her a cool embrace and a short kiss.
Chapter 43
