Free Bite Me (Woodland Creek) by Woodland Creek, Mandy Rosko

himself, like he’d just cheated on her or something.
    “I mean, she really saw me through some dark times. I guess I needed a free spirit around to remind me that everyone on the planet wasn’t a rotten asshole out to get ahead.”
    He’d needed someone who had reminded him of Alice, though now that he’d found her, it was just to see that her light had become a little darker, too. He hoped she hadn’t fallen as low as he had.
    Alice nodded. “Well, good. I…I thought about you sometimes,” she said.
    “You did?” Interesting. Very interesting. Please, keep talking. Say more.
    She nodded. “Yeah. I, ah, used to wonder about where you went after, well, after everything. I thought you were dead for a while.”
    “ What ?” She couldn’t have shocked him more if she’d punched him in the gut.
    “You did?”
    She didn’t look at him when she nodded. “Yeah.”
    Jake blew out a hard breath, and then he realized what happened and he groaned. “Motherfucker,” he said. He rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw bright squares. “I know what happened. Fuck. I’m sorry. I don’t know why it never occurred to me…”
    Alice nodded. “That Jake the Snake had to die in order for Jake Christopher Redfield to go back to his normal life?”
    He nodded. “Fuck me. That’s so messed up.”
    Of course his drug dealing, thug persona had to die. The fact that Jake had been shot had only made things easier to fake. He couldn’t even figure out why he’d thought that Alice would’ve thought differently.
    “How did you find out I was alive?” he asked.
    He’d wondered why she hadn’t tried to even send him messages when he was in the hospital. He waited for them, thinking for sure that she would’ve found a way to get a letter, a card, or an email to him.
    No letters came from names he didn’t know, and no cards came that didn’t have names or addresses attached to them. He knew all the people who sent him get well cards and even balloons. Nothing to make him think that Alice had sent him anything, or had found a way to visit when he’d slept. He’d requested the nurses leave the window open at night, knowing the large tree several feet away would help her glide into his room if she needed to.
    Still nothing.
    “I don’t know,” Alice said. "It was almost a year after you were gone, and then I started thinking about it. You were a cop. You told me you were a cop, so it wasn’t like I was making guesses about it,” she said. “And I started to think about all the movies I saw where the cop dies at the end, just to actually be alive. I’m not the best with computers, but enough weeks of Googling your name as I knew it, and I finally found an actual picture of you from the academy, and then I got your real name, and then I found out you were still alive.” The blooming color returned to her cheeks. “I couldn’t find out anything else. I tried to find out where you lived, where you worked, but I couldn’t get anything else. I even hired someone to help me, and he couldn’t get anything either.”
    “The fact that you found anything at all is impressive.”
    And sloppy on the part of the guys in charge of erasing his life.
    “I thought about trying to contact you, but when I couldn’t find…” She shrugged. “I guess I just figured I would let it go. None of what happened really mattered anyway.”
    “Hey, no, that’s not true.” Jake grabbed her by the arm, stopping her. He had no idea where they were. It seemed they’d just been walking aimlessly, and now there was grass and trees everywhere, and what looked like a school in the distance, but the cop car was still tailing them, so they were safe. She was still safe, and he needed to have this conversation with her.
    Might as well have it when he didn’t have to worry about someone jumping out at them with a gun.
    Or while in the shape of a giant dog.
    Her eyes were so damned wide as Alice stared up at him. Her pink lips