Page 39 of Holiday with the Aliens

I didn’t dream. Not any dreams that I could remember. Though there was half a thought about calamari. It dissolved into nothingness before I could grasp the memory. And when I woke, sunlight streamed in.

And I was alone.

Not the first time I had woken up alone in bed after inviting a man to join me. But I was shocked at how much it hurt. My stomach dropped and I ached. Why? Why had he left? Why did I care? Was I not good enough?

I had to stop thinking it. If I kept thinking about it, I was just going to go crazy. Guys always left. And besides, it wasn’t like I really knew him. We had just been thrown together in a crazy situation and that was it. There was nothing more. I didn’t even care about him. I didn’t even know his last name.

Was Aldyn even his real name? No way to know.

I would move on. And it wasn’t like we had even slept together. Well. We haven’t had sex. So it was okay. I’d be fine.

Right?

I turned over and curled up into a ball, still burrowed under the covers as if the warmth and softness of my mattress and blanket were enough to shield me from the harsh reality of the world. No one stayed.

No one cared.

I wasn’t worth it.

Was that bacon?

There were only a few things that could pull me out of my pity party and the scent of cooking meat was one of them. I threw the covers off and got out of bed. I was still wearing the clothes from last night, everything except my shoes. The shoes that Aldyn had so carefully taken off.

And there he was, standing in my kitchen and taking two sandwiches out of a bag from a restaurant that was just down the street.

“I thought you must be hungry,” he said. “I got two different sandwiches. So whichever one you like more you can have. The cashier didn’t know if you had a favorite order or anything.”

He’d gone and gotten me breakfast? I didn’t know if a guy had ever done that for me before.

I marched right up to him and captured his lips’ searing kiss. This was what we were supposed to do the night before. This was what we were supposed to do forever, a small part of me whispered. But my grumbling stomach interrupted what I was sure was going to be one hell of a make out session and I pulled back with a sheepish grin. “I guess I am hungry,” I had to say. I realized I hadn’t even eaten dinner the night before. Of course I was starving.

But Aldyn was smiling at me as he handed me a sandwich. Bacon and eggs and cheese and bread. Was there a better combination? I had taken two bites when the smile dropped off his face. He put his sandwich down and looked at me seriously.

“We need to talk.”

Chapter 14

Aldyn

Ihad planned to wait.

What was another few minutes, an hour, when it came to the rest of my life? Our lives? But as I stood there in Jody’s kitchen. I knew I couldn’t wait another minute.

My body craved her. I didn’t know how much longer I could resist. But she needed to know this before we went any further. She took another bite of her sandwich before putting it down, and then she took a seat at her small kitchen table.

I sat opposite her. I would have rather held her close as I spoke, but it was probably better than we weren’t touching. I didn’t know how she would react. There were horror stories of Detyens proclaiming that they’d found their mate and their mate rejecting them. Would she? I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. But she needed to know who she was to me. She needed to know what I wanted.

And I wanted everything.

“What’s going on, Aldyn?” she asked.

I should’ve let her finish her sandwich. Especially now that the words were caught in my throat. We had survived the horrors that had been thrown at us the night before, so why didthis seem harder than the actual battle we had engaged in? I didn’t know. I couldn’t know.

“Do you know much about Detyens?” I asked. Some humans were fascinated by us. They looked up every bit of information they could find. Especially a couple of years ago, when my people had helped rescue the planet from certain destruction. There was a growing Detyen population and more and more of my brethren were finding their mates each year. Did she know about that? Did she care? Or was she one of the humans who didn’t pay much attention to the aliens who were coming to this planet?

“I remember seeing a few news reports,” she said. “But I can’t say that I dedicated too much time to my research. I was busy.” She looked away from me as she said busy. I didn’t know what it was supposed to mean, and I wasn’t about press. Her life before we met was her life. I wanted to know everything she would tell me and more, but it didn’t have to be today.

“There’s a lot to tell,” I said. I wasn’t even sure where to start. The destruction of my planet? The fact that we died if we didn’t find our mates? The Detyen Legion?

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