Free ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES by K.W. CALLAHAN Page B

amongst the slime that he plied with vice to govern his city.  Given time though, Ava was confident that she’d eventually get her quiet mansion.
    They therefore decided upon a high-rise condo near downtown.  Jake liked it because he could easily control who came and went from the building through a single generator-powered elevator.  Ava liked it for the views.  From their penthouse suit on the 30 th floor, Miami still appeared to be the city she once knew.  With the exception of the occasional out-of-control building fire or vehicle left to burn and smolder on the streets far below, she could almost imagine it as the once-vibrant city in which she had grown up, a city that she had left while still a teenager because of a man – a man named Gonzalo. 
    At the time, she hadn’t realized it – as a naïve 16-year-old, she hadn’t realized much of anything – but she now understood that Gonzalo was the only man she’d ever truly loved. Being four years her senior, she admitted now that he wasn’t the best looking guy she’d ever known, nor the smartest, nor even the guy with the best personality, but there had been something between them, something that had bonded them immediately, almost instantaneously.  Even now, she still couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was.  But after not seeing him for nearly a decade, she couldn’t deny that it was there, and it was undeniable and irrepressible.  She felt it in the pit of her stomach every time she imagined she was with him again. 
    She guessed that this was the way she made Jake feel – as though he could do anything, be or beat anyone, overcome anything.  That’s how Gonzalo made her feel.  With him she had experienced sensations she’d never felt with anyone else.  She felt powerful, sexual, yet feminine all at the same time.
    Jake made her feel some of those things, some of the time.  But she admitted it just wasn’t the same.  Something wasn’t there.  Something was missing.  She had tried her best to forget Gonzalo, but he was always there, always lurking in the back of her mind.  Something Jake would say or do would remind her of him.  A touch or a way Jake looked at her would have her seeing Gonzalo’s face instead of his.  Even just a song or something someone said would bring visions of her love rushing back, and as hard as she tried to force them away, they always remained.  It bothered her.  Even in her dreams, when they were about a man, it was Gonzalo she was with again, not Jake.  She just couldn’t rid herself of those mental images and emotions the thought of him instantly invoked. 
    At first, after Ava had left Miami, she’d thought that her love for Gonzalo had just been hard to get over.  She figured that the impression a first love left was tough to shake.  But as the years passed, and men came and went, she began to long for what Gonzalo had given her.  She’d thought it was replaceable, that she just had to find the right guy, but eventually, she realized that she was wrong.  It wasn’t the sex so much, although the sex was incredible; it was the feeling she had when she was around him.  She guessed that it was the feeling of love, although it’d been so long, she wasn’t sure about that anymore either.
    Their split had been quick and painful.  It was a silly spat, a lover’s quarrel that now seemed so meaningless.  In fact, Ava couldn’t even remember what it was about. It was a breakup they’d gone through more than once – a passionate exchange in the heat of the moment – and Ava assumed it would last a few days, maybe a week, just as it had in previous breakups.  Before she knew it, they’d reconcile and be back together again and things would be fine. But Gonzalo – in a fit of angry revenge – had slept with another woman.  And soon thereafter, he’d had found out that the woman was pregnant. 
    Gonzalo swore up and down to Ava that the child wasn’t his, but it hadn’t mattered.