In other words, execution.
He swallowed. He wasn’t afraid to die, but he was afraid not to live. And he’d realized over the summer that before he’d met Allison, he hadn’t been living. It had been a shell of a life.
“Peter,” his father said, letting all the warnings and pleas remain silent. His father had come to warn him, to beg him to return without a fight.
He shifted in the bed, reaching for his boxers, which had been left haphazardly on the floor. He pulled them on under the covers then stood next to the bed. Allison made a move like she was going to join him in his stance next to the bed, but then she obviously remembered she was naked and clasped the blanket tighter against her chest.
“I need a minute,” he told his father.
The room cleared, and he held no illusions that he and Allison could escape. There were choices to be made, none of them easy. As he thought, he pulled on his clothes.
“Peter?” Allison looked up at him from her position in the bed, looking vulnerable and sexy, and he knew he’d always remember her looking at him like that, with wide questioning eyes and her blond hair in a tousled waterfall around her head and shoulders.
He kneeled on the bed next to her. In his hand was his wallet from which he extracted every dollar of the two hundred he’d brought with him. “Here.” He tried to hand her the money, but she remained staring at him, unresponsive.
“Take it.” He left the pile of money on her lap.
“I don’t understand.” A single tear slid down her cheek, but she brushed it aside, and no more followed. “What happened to running away to New York with me? What about living your life like a normal man?”
“It can’t happen. There are things I didn’t understand yesterday.” He deliberately kept silent about traitors and execution. That was his burden to bear. He wanted Allison to live here with a clear conscience.
She gaped at him.
Her lips parted, but he didn’t let her get any words out. He leaned over and clasped her cheeks in his palms. Their lips met for what he guessed would be the last time. “I love you. And I will always love you, but a happy ever after for us was never in the cards. I let myself believe it for one foolish night, but reality’s come knocking.” He gestured to the door where his father and team waited. “Now go make yourself the most famous singer in America. If you ever need me, you know where to find me.”
He backed off the bed, scooped up his backpack, and slammed out of the hotel room without a look back. One look back, and he’d say screw it all to the world and stay with her for every second they had left.
But unfortunately if he stayed, they would only have fleeting seconds remaining. He had to go.
1985
Allison slung a towel over her neck and hustled into the dark dingy dressing room of the club she called home for the night. The show had been one of her best ones of late. They always were when she felthimthere.
She’d never spotted him; he never let her, but she always knew when Peter showed at one of her gigs. The first time it had happened, she thought the zinging of her skin and racing of her heart were simply nerves at playing her first legit club, but then she’d gone to the dressing room and found a little plastic model of R2-D2 sitting on her makeup bag.
The message had been unmistakable. Peter had somehow snuck in and left it for her. She now had a collection of roughly sevenStar Warsfigurines. She wondered what tonight’s would be. She smiled when she saw it was Princess Leia in her metal bikini, the fantasy of a generation of fanboys. This time, there was a note under the figure. Two words:I know.
Laughter mixed with tears at Peter’s arrogance. It took balls to borrow Han Solo’s famous response to Leia’s telling him she loved him. Arrogance, yes, and knowledge, because in the five years since he’d left her in the hotel room, her love for him hadn’t dimmed.
On a very rare occasion, she thought about taking a lover for a night just to ease the ache of never being held, never sharing her body. But she never did. There was no replacing Peter. What made it worse was the knowledge that she didn’t have to. She knew the option to return to Maryland and be his match was always on the table. She could return to him at any time.
But after five years in the music industry, she was starting to gain traction. She had an agent now and a song that was getting some radio play in smaller markets. If she left now it’d be the great unknown. She’d wonder forever what if. No, she couldn’t return to Peter yet, but maybe someday.
1990
“Hey, Commander. There’s someone at the front gate who says they want to talk to you.”
Peter looked up from the map on the conference room table and stifled a sigh. Enhanced the soldiers under his command they may be, but they had a lot to learn. No one he wanted to talk to would show up uninvited at the Program front gate. “Tell him to go away. With force if necessary.”
“It’s a she.”
Now all the soldiers around the oblong table were paying attention. Women didn’t often show up at their gates unless they’d been specifically invited, which hadn’t happened for a few years.
“She kind of looks like that singer Allie Peete. You know,” and he started to sing a few bars of Allison’s biggest hit to date.
Peter was up and out of the conference room before his soldiers reached the chorus, because they were all singing by now.
Maybe someday we’ll be together