by Mandy Rosko
She was terrified this wasn’t what she thought it meant.
Jake’s head moved a little farther back, and his hands slipped away from her face and throat. “You’re… Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“What?”
Alice took stock of herself and realized she was trembling. It was all the pent-up nerves inside of her that wanted out, but Jake had probably taken one look at that and thought he’d scared her or something.
Her hands struck out faster than a cobra, and that was saying a lot, considering Jake was a snake shifter. Alice grabbed onto his brown leather jacket and held on tight. She was probably ruining it, but she couldn’t let him go. “No, I’m not…you didn’t scare me. Not really.”
“You’re not scared then?”
“I mean, I am, but…” She couldn’t look at him. This was too much. It was almost too much for her to handle, and the only way she could keep on talking was if she stared down at both of their feet.
They were almost toe-to-toe. Why hadn’t she remembered how big his feet were?
“I’m fucking petrified,” she admitted. “But not because you kissed me at a bad time.”
She could feel the way he stared at her, waiting for a proper explanation. Alice had to fight to take in proper breaths.
“I’m scared, because…because I’ve honestly thought about that, and almost nothing else, since the day the ambulance took you away when the police finally came for us, when they arrested Bobby and you told me to run. Then I thought you’d died, and I realized I probably didn’t even know your real name, didn’t know where you were buried…”
She had to stop going down that little rabbit hole. She’d blab forever about how much she missed him if he let her do it.
“I’m scared that you’re only kissing me because you’re testing yourself. That you don’t really mean it, or that you just want to see if it feels the same.”
She still couldn’t look at him, but she heard the tiny gasp he released when she said that.
And she was still gripping his jacket, like a teenaged girl holding onto the boy she liked while he was trying to break up with her. It was all kinds of pathetic, but she couldn’t exactly stop herself now, could she?
Jake sighed, and Alice held perfectly still when his hands came up to rest on her shoulders.
She expected him to push her back, but he didn’t do that. He just let his hands sit there. He wasn’t gripping her the way she was, but she still felt that burn. Everywhere he touched burned and tingled. Even her lips still felt warm and tingly, like she’d just had a spicy drink.
“I was testing myself,” Jake admitted.
Alice swallowed.
“But not in the way you think I was,” he said. She heard the smile in his voice, and Alice had to look up at him.
“I was seeing how long I could kiss you, or touch you, before I’d be able to stop myself. I don’t even care that the cop is watching us from his cruiser. I just had to do it.”
Alice bit down on her bottom lip. “It’s been ten years.”
“I know,” Jake said. “And we’re both different people. I wasn’t even myself when you were with me back then. I was as much myself as I could be, but I loved you. I wasn’t faking that, and I knew you were the one I’d love for the rest of my life when Bobby tried to shoot you. I couldn’t let him do it.”
“You nearly died for that.” She remembered the way he’d jumped in front of her, and then quickly shifted into his snake form after the gun went off.
He’d been so quick, and Bobby had panicked. The man had tried to stomp his feet down on Jake’s long body as Jake slithered forward so damned fast it almost hadn’t seemed real.
Which was when Alice had tackled the man to the ground, giving Jake the chance he’d needed to bite Bobby’s face.
It was enough to make the man retreat, and Jake had shifted back into his human shape.
For the first three seconds, Alice had thought they’d gotten lucky, that the bullet from Bobby’s gun had missed both of them.
Then she watched, horrified, as a bloom of red expanded across the white tank top Jake had been wearing. He’d fallen to the ground, and Alice had cradled him, trying to stop the blood flow before finding a cell phone and calling 911.
She’d thought he was dying then. He’d looked like he was dying, and he’d probably thought so too, which was why he’d reached up with a shaking, bloody hand and touched her cheek.
“A-Alice. I’m a cop,” he’d said.
And Alice had wanted to cry. She did a little, and kissed his cheek. “I know.”
She hadn’t known. Not really, but she’d suspected. A lot. Enough that it didn’t surprise her to hear him say it.
His eyes widened. “Are you a cop, too?” he’d asked, his voice raspy.
She’d really started to cry then, shaking her head. “No. I’m just what I’ve always been.”
“H-how did you know?” he’d asked. It had probably amazed the hell out of him, finding out that Alice had known. She could’ve had him killed so many times if she’d ever uttered her suspicion, but she never said anything.
Alice hadn’t wanted him to speak at all. It had seemed like a waste of energy, but she hadn’t wanted to quiet him either. If those were going to be his last words, then Alice wanted to savor every single one of them.
“You were always too good,” she’d said.
The ambulance arrived quickly, with enough cop cars to light up the warehouse where Bobby and his men had been hiding their stolen goods and drugs. More proof that Jake was a cop. Half of the city’s police force wouldn’t show up for a single shooting if Jake had been another nobody thug. She’d only had to say his first name.
Alice had stayed with Jake for as long as she could until she heard heavy footsteps stomping up the stairs.
“You need to go,” Jake had said in that raspy voice that scared the hell out of her.
Alice shook her head. Jake’s face was a blur because of her tears.
“You won’t survive a cage. They’ll make sure of that. Go away. Have a—a life,” he said, and then clenched his bloody teeth. “Get out of here.”
He said each word on what sounded like a pained breath, and Alice became aware of the noises all throughout the warehouse. Cops shouting, stomping feet on the old wooden floors, even a gunshot or two as the last of Bobby’s men at the time fought for their money and freedom. It would only be a matter of time before they found Jake and her together.
And Alice knew he was right. She wouldn’t survive a cage. Even if she spent a couple of days in a jail cell, that didn’t mean she would be safe. What if the people she’d just turned in came after her?
Her fear got the better of her. Alice took one of Jake’s hands and pressed it down on the wound. Jake grunted.
“Sorry, hold it there,” she said then kissed him one last time and backed away.
She shifted into her squirrel form and ran her little furry ass for the nearest window just as the cops broke down the door.
If they noticed the rodent leaping from the window and gliding toward the nearest tree, no one said anything. Their focus was probably on their bleeding friend.
Alice stayed in her tree. It had been a dead tree, no leaves, but she was small enough that no one noticed her as she watched Jake being pulled out of the building on a stretcher and being loaded into an ambulance.
Bobby was put into a separate ambulance, and that was the first time she’d gotten a look at his face. It hadn’t been melted by that point, but swollen up like a balloon. He’d been vomiting, and looked very much out of it. He didn’t put up any kind of struggle as he was carried to his ambulance on another stretcher thanks to Jake’s venom.
She’d selfishly hoped he would die, because then she and Jake would have nothing to worry about.
But Bobby had survived, and during Alice’s daily check on the news, she saw his picture online amongst the list of those who had died.
And now, look where they w
ere. Almost ten years later, they were completely different people, older, more jaded, and they were still being affected by what happened back then.
“You saved my life,” Jake said.
Alice looked up at him sharply, eyes widening. She shook her head. “No, I nearly killed you.”
“I was fine. The ambulance got there in time and it just hurt a lot after, but you did save me,” Jake said. “You could have outed me at any time, but you didn’t.”
“I loved you,” Alice said.
“Do you still love me?”
She bit her lower lip and nodded. She couldn’t hide that from him. She couldn’t hide anything from him. Even back then, there had been something about him that made her want to spill all of her secrets to him, that had made her want to tell him about her father, about how she’d ended up working for some very bad people.
Yeah, she’d suspected he was a cop, or at the very least, a soul like her—lost to the world, thrown into things that he had no business being in.
“I don’t even know you,” she said.
At least that was true.
Jake let go of her shoulders, and he pulled back just enough to take off his jacket. He hooked it over one arm and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt.
“What are you—” Alice noted the snake tattoo he had on his forearm. A diamondback rattlesnake. “Thought you would’ve gotten rid of that,” she said. It was common for people to have tattoos, even people who didn’t have criminal records, but Jake had his own ink that he’d been pretty proud of back then.
“I got rid of almost all the others, except for this one,” Jake said. “The others will go soon enough, but this one I wanted to keep.”
Alice frowned. Without thinking, she reached out and touched his arm, pulling him closer so she could have a better look. “Something’s different.”
Then she spotted it, the thing Jake had wanted her to see.
The rattlesnake was coiled around a little rodent with big black eyes. She didn’t have to ask to know it was a flying squirrel. It was her.
The snake wasn’t surrounding it in a way that suggested it was about to eat the critter, either. The artist had done an amazing job in changing the snake from looking like a fearsome creature, into something that appeared to be protecting the squirrel itself. She was jealous of how well done it was, knowing that her lousy skills, little that they were, could never compare to this, but her throat closed for a different reason.
“I didn’t know you that well back then either,” Jake said. “But I did know I loved you.”
He was going to make her cry again. He really was.
“I knew I liked you whenever you got all sassy with me and told me to bite you, and I knew I loved you when I took that bullet for you. I especially knew I would never forget you when you told me that you knew I was a cop that whole time.”
“Snakes and rodents don’t get along,” Alice said, repeating the same words she’d coyly told him one night after they’d finished having sex in her bed.
Her bed, which had been a mattress on the floor back then.
The first time she’d told him that all those years ago, when something frightening had been building between them that Alice didn’t want to name, his response had been to leave, but then to come back and show her a cute video clip of a snake and a hamster living together in harmony in some science lab in Japan.
“See?” he’d said, smiling like he was proud of himself. “They gave the hamster to the snake for him to eat, but he doesn’t eat him. They even named him.”
“They did?” she’d asked. “What did they name him?”
“Snack.”
Of course, he would remember that exact same situation.
“Don’t make me remind you of the snake and the hamster.”
Alice laughed. She couldn’t help it.
The only thing that would make this more movie-perfect was if it would start raining, but Alice never liked the idea of kissing in the rain. Getting water in her eyes while she was trying to have an emotional conversation didn’t seem so great. Especially when she couldn’t stop herself from crying anyway.
“Come here,” Jake said, and he put his arms around her and hugged her. He hugged her so tightly that the squeeze almost hurt, but she didn’t mind it. She actually kind of loved it. She loved him. More than anything else in the entire world.
His hands moved up and down her back in a slow motion slide that was so comforting and soothing it chased away everything else. Alice didn’t come out of her little Wonderland, even after Jake spoke.
He had to say it again, louder this time, before she could hear him.
“Alice,” he said, shaking her a little.
The tone of his voice was jarring after the romantic moment they’d just shared. “What? What is it?”
The look on his face wasn’t pleasant. He was frowning, and his eyes scanned the road in all directions.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, having a look with him. “I don’t see anything.”
“Yeah, exactly,” he said, which was about when Alice finally came out of it and realized what the problem was.
The police cruiser, the one with one of Rickman’s men in it that had been following them…it wasn’t there anymore, and they weren’t exactly on a road with a lot of people.
There weren’t any people around at all, and certainly no more shops on this street for them to run into for safety.
“M-maybe they’re just switching shifts?” Alice asked, hoping against all hope that was the case. The burning feeling in her gut that promised her an ulcer later on said it was something much worse, and then she could swear she heard a deep, rumbling growl coming from somewhere to their right.
She and Jake both spun around just as a massive Rottweiler stepped out from its place in the shrubs, way off from the road and in the grass.
Alice swallowed hard. Bobby hadn’t left with his friends after all. In the next moment, the dog charged.
Jake pushed Alice back. He had seconds to act. “Run! Get out of here!”
The dog barked as it ran, already almost upon them, but then it slowed to a trot, and then came to a complete and full stop ten feet away from them.
“What’s he doing?” Alice asked, clutching to the back of Jake’s shirt.
“Don’t know,” Jake said, keeping himself firmly in front of her in case the dog decided to lunge.
It was highly unlikely it was a real dog. It had to be Bobby. The smell was right on target for it to be him.
Also, the one side of the dog’s face was pretty fucked up to look at. It definitely wasn’t a real dog. No point in even entertaining that hope.
“What do you want, Bobby?” Jake called. He didn’t take his eyes off it, but he turned his head slightly to address Alice. “If he does anything, run back to Main Street and get Rickman on a phone,” he said.
He was going to find out the name of that cop who’d left them to this, and then kick his damned ass for leaving them high and dry.
Alice didn’t answer, so he was going to take that as an okay.
The dog in front of him shifted. Partly. Bobby pushed himself up onto his hind legs, and his paws turned into feet and hands, most of the fur on that muscular body falling away, but he didn’t completely melt out of his dog form. The head mutated into something that looked between vicious dog and malicious human. Bobby now had a permanent ‘fuck you’ sort of scowl on his face, thanks to the number Jake had done on it with his bite, but while his head and face was in between human and dog shape, he kept his extra-long, sharp-looking teeth right there for Jake to see. He just knew Bobby was thinking about chomping those suckers down on his flesh.
When Bobby spoke, his voice sounded somewhere between an actual human voice and a growl. It even kind of looked like he might be smiling in some crooked, toothy way.
“I always thought you might’ve fucked off somewhere, been alive this whole time,” Bobby growled. He was still smiling like he was proud. “I thou
ght that smell was familiar when I slashed the tires on your car, but I couldn’t entirely be sure.”
“So you just slashed my tires for the fun of it?”
“Yes,” Bobby said, still smiling at Jake with that fucking stupid, asshole smile. His eyes held none of the friendliness that one would think of when they thought of a dog, when they glanced over at Alice.
Jake stepped to the side, now completely in front of Alice, preventing Bobby from even looking at her.
“Just let her go. This has nothing to do with her.”
That eerie smile left Bobby’s face. “It has everything to do with her. That little bitch was feeding secrets to a goddamned undercover cop.”
“Hey, come on now. There’s only one female dog here that I can see.”
Okay, not the best comeback in the world, but he was shocked it had the impact that it did. Bobby actually scowled at him, like what Jake had said had really bothered him.
“You shouldn’t be here, Bobby. You can’t pay off your parole officer enough to keep this from getting out and from going back to prison. For the rest of your life this time.”
Another sinister, deep-throated growl left Bobby’s muzzle, and his body started to change as he slumped forward. “I don’t care,” he said, and then he was a full-on Rottweiler again, slinking forward with red murder in his eyes.
“Okay, I really hate to say this, but you have a better chance of running if you get into your squirrel form,” he said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Alice said as Jake backed up, pushing her back with him.
Jake quickly put his leather jacket back on. He’d need the padding for the extra protection against those teeth.
“Not kidding, now go!” he snapped, and didn’t look back to make sure if she did it or not as he charged the dog.
Bobby tried to run around him, but Jake tackled him, wrapping his arms around the beefy neck and yanking him down as Bobby turned on him and bit and slashed with his claws.
