Dead or Alive

"Becca, that was a different life," I told her. "I had to leave it behind. I haven't been that guy for years."

"So who are you," she asked. "Jack? Jackson?" She tossed my wallet on my bed. "Jack doesn't have medical insurance. Jackson, however, has credit cards. Call me when you figure out which one you are."

---

Hours later, as I was discharged with an angry red scar on my forehead and a small bottle of pain meds, the hospital administrator came and confirmed my worst fear. Though I had been originally admitted as Jack Smith, my ID and credit cards had confirmed me as Jackson Sloane: software developer, millionaire, and supposedly dead. After I'd been gone for a year, I had been declared dead. I knew this already; it was Allison's last-ditch attempt to get my money. But I had already moved my millions into multiple funds and accounts that she had no access to, so she was still broke.

The usage of my credit card had alerted the authorities in my hometown, and there would likely be someone coming to investigate. I now had limited time to get things in order.

I went to my apartment first, now around midnight. A note on my door from Becca assured me she had Roscoe and the kittens. I grabbed most of my clothes and my valuables and bagged them up. I left a note for Mrs. Monroe that I'd be back for the rest and to pay the rent.

Then I went to Becca's house. The lights were out when I arrived, but I knocked and rang the doorbell until the lights turned on. Becca opened the door and found me there. "What the hell?" she asked, looking sleepy but wide awake now. Her blonde hair was disheveled; it was the first time I'd seen her without her trademark ponytail. She wore a long T-shirt as pajamas, and I couldn't help but wonder if there was anything underneath.

"Becca, I'm sorry. I'm leaving, but please, before I do, let me explain."

"Explain? Leaving?" she said, confused. "No. Come inside right now." She dragged me into the house. I spotted Roscoe and her kittens in a makeshift bed of blankets as we passed the den. Becca sat me on the living room couch, then stood over me. "Now, explain."

I told her about my life as Jackson. My parents died when I was in college, so I had no living family. I was living with my girlfriend Allison until I found out she was cheating on me. She only liked me for my money, and I'd been planning on proposing until I found out. Then I disappeared, and Jackson was considered dead, until I showed up at the hospital.

"Now, there's going to be people showing up here, looking for me."

"People?"

"Probably the police, maybe the press," I said, "but definitely Allison. As soon as she hears, I guarantee she'll be in Sanford, looking for me." I gulped, and finished, "That's why I have to leave."

"You're not leaving," Becca asserted.

"But..."

She stopped me with a hand over my mouth. "No. You're staying right here. We'll figure this out together."

"We?"

She kissed me. "I get it. Believe me, I do. She hurt you, so you left. Just like I did from Dan. But you left like a coward. That ends today. You need to confront her, and get her out of your life for good."

I sat, stunned. "Why would you help me after I lied to you? After I lied to everyone?"

Becca didn't say anything in response. Instead, she leaned in and kissed me. She held my face in her hands, and she held my heart with hers. I realized she was right. I couldn't leave Becca. We hadn't said so out loud, but we were in love. I loved Becca more than I'd ever loved Allison, and I knew somehow that she loved me more than she'd ever loved Dan.

Becca pulled me up from the couch, pressing her full body against mine as our kiss deepened. She felt warm, and I felt her tongue dancing with mine, and her hands circling my waist.

My cock started to rise to the occasion, and Becca felt it. She took my hands, and wordlessly led me up the stairs to her bedroom. A single bedside lamp lit the queen-sized bed where she'd been sleeping not long ago. Becca kissed me again, then helped to strip my shirt from my chest, and toss it on the floor.

Then she stepped back, and in the dim light, I watched her remove her long shirt and reveal herself to me. She wore blue striped boy-short panties, but the rest of her body was now bare for me. Her shirt gone, she shook out her long blonde hair and let it fall to her shoulders. I let my gaze take in her pale skin, her medium-sized breasts topped with pointed pink nipples, and her slender waist with a perfect navel. "Am I pretty?" she asked, with a bit of self doubt. This was probably the first time she'd been with any man since her ex-husband.

"You're gorgeous," I said, and I meant it sincerely. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." I stepped forward for her and took her back into my arms. I pressed her flesh to mine, and we both got goosebumps from the sensation.

I led her to lay on her back on the bed. Becca let me remove her underwear, revealing a small, well-trimmed, pale blonde bush guarding her flower. I wanted so much to savor the moment, to taste and tease every square inch of her body, but Becca had no patience for that. When I tried to kiss between her legs, she pushed me away. "No, not tonight. Just make love to me. I need you now."

I dropped my pants and boxers, and allowed my dick to stand tall and strong. "Do we need protection?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. I'm good. Just don't come in me."

I rubbed my dick against her wet pussy, gathering its slickness, then pushed inside. I looked to Becca's face, and found her watching me intently. Our eyes locked, and she nodded, giving me clearance to go deeper. I pushed more, and her tight canal gave way for me.

"God, you're so big, Jack," she groaned. "Oh, you have no idea how much I wanted this."

"I wanted this too," I said, pumping slowly inside her. "You feel amazing, Becca."

"Jack, oh, yes," she cooed beneath me. "Fuck me. More, fuck me more!"

I hadn't been with a woman since Allison, so I wasn't sure about my endurance. I didn't want to go off before Becca; that might ruin this wonderful experience. So I fucked her slowly, but with long, deep strokes, trying to keep myself under control. But each stroke, Becca started moaning, "More, harder. Harder!"

I pulled almost all the way out, and then really slammed my dick all the way in. That was apparently what she wanted. "Yes! More of that!" I gave her that kind of powerful driving until I couldn't anymore, I was almost at the brink. "Becca, I'm close," I grunted.

"Me too, Jack, almost there," she told me. "Keep going, almost there."

I gave her another good slam, making our bodies clap loudly. "Where should I come?" I asked.

"On my stomach," she said, pointing. "Now, give it to me."

I went as hard as I could, knowing I was close, but so was she. It was a race to the finish, but in the end, Becca beat me by a second, loudly announcing her climax with a "AHHH!" Her body tensed up, and I quickly pulled out and sprayed everything I had onto her taut tummy.

I let myself fall to the bed. Becca scampered to her bathroom and returned with a towel. She wiped my juices off herself, then wiped my dick off too. After some quick bathroom visits to pee, she and I settled into her bed, her head resting on my chest.

"Jack?" She whispered as we were close to sleep.

"Hmm?"

"Did you prefer to be called Jackson in your... previous life?"

"Usually. My mom called me Jackie."

"Do you want me to call you Jackson?"

I thought about it for a second, then answered, "No. I'm done being Jackson. Call me Jack."

"Jack Smith? Or Jack Sloane?"

"Jack Sloane. I guess it's time for me to take that part of my life back."

---

We awoke in the morning to Roscoe howling for food. Being a mother, recovering and nursing, is apparently hungry work. She ate a lot, much more than normal, then went back to her sleeping kittens.

We had a quick breakfast before it was time to go back to my apartment and face whoever was waiting there for me. I was going to go alone, but Becca climbed into my truck, insisting she should go with me. "You don't know what you're walking into, so you may need backup," she told me.

Two cars waited for me at the apartment. One belonged to the local sheriff. The other had license plates from my home state, and it looked like it belonged to the two police detectives who were talking to Mrs. Monroe.

When we pulled up, she pointed at me. "Is that the man you're looking for? Jack, come over here this instant."

I walked over to them, with Becca right behind me. "Good morning. I'm Jackson Sloane."

The detectives looked at each other. One was a fifty-ish year old man, mostly bald. The other was a younger woman with short brown, but she was very muscular, looking fresh from being a beat cop. Their shared look suggested they didn't think the case would be this easy. The woman spoke first, "Do you have ID, Mr. Sloane?"

I showed them my driver's license and we all went into my apartment. I told them the brief version of what I'd done. I had been too afraid to confront my cheating girlfriend, so I disappeared. I'd been living here for two years under a false name, using only cash. The hospital stay and the use of my credit card had indeed alerted them, but they admitted that they wondered if it would just be someone else using my missing credit cards. Becca sat with me the whole time, holding my hand.

I hadn't done anything particularly illegal, so they were willing to let me go. "Just for now," the seasoned older detective said. "Don't disappear on us again, we'll still need to figure out how to bring you back from the dead."

The sheriff added, "And I'm sure the IRS will be in touch about back taxes."

I nodded and shrugged. "I figured that. And no, I don't plan on going anywhere." I squeezed Becca's hand, and she squeezed mine back.

As the detectives and the sheriff went to leave, Becca and I walked them out. Suddenly, another car pulled up and quickly stopped, almost hitting the sheriff's patrol car. Allison popped out of the driver's door and spotted me. "Baby!" she squealed. She made to start towards me, then stopped suddenly when she saw Becca standing close behind me. "Who's she?" Allison demanded.

Seeing her now, hearing her suddenly jealous, set something off in me. I was suddenly more angry than I'd ever been in my entire life. I yelled, "Who the hell do you think you are? Showing up here, acting like you care about me at all, when all you cared about was my money! All you cared about was more money for more drugs and more booze. All you cared about was me funding your party lifestyle while you cheated on me, again and again, with whoever you wanted! And you think you can just demand things of me? You think you have any say in how I'm living my life? After how you treated me? After how you used me? How dare you even show your face to me?? You..."

I stopped, only because I had suddenly run into the arm of the older male detective. In my rage, I had unconsciously walked forward towards Allison, screaming my vitriol at her. She had backed up a few steps, and her face was a mixture of fear and confusion. I had never spoken to her, or anyone else, like that before.

I turned and looked at Becca. She was surprised, and a bit frightened, but she nodded to me. I knew what she was thinking. This screaming rage wasn't exactly healthy, but I'm a way it was what I needed. I had bottled up all of my feelings for years, and it all exploded in a matter of thirty seconds.

I backed away, and went back to stand with Becca. "Allison," I said, much more calmly. "You need to leave, and don't ever come back here."

Allison started to beg, "But baby, I missed you. I still love you. Please, come back home."

"Not going to happen. You never loved me. I may have been a coward, leaving the way I did, but I don't regret it. This is my home now."

Allison was going to say more, but the sheriff interrupted her. "That's enough. Ma'am, you need to leave the property."

The female detective suddenly reappeared from her car. "Don't let her leave," she instructed the sheriff. "I just ran her plates. This isn't her car. Ma'am, why are you driving a car registered to a convicted drug dealer?"

Allison went pale. "What? Umm, I don't know... well I mean I know the guy, but I didn't know... I'm not involved in..."

The sheriff pulled her arms down and behind her back. "Let's go down to the station and sort this all out," he said as he cuffed her.

---

Long story short, Allison's business had gone so downhill that she had borrowed money from one of her clients, a drug dealer, and was transporting drugs to pay him back. That is, in addition to the sexual favors for him and his partners. When they got her to the station, she confessed to a lot of things. The detectives took her statements and got warrants for multiple dealers back in my home state.

I never saw Allison again after that day. I couldn't feel bad about the hole she'd dug herself in. I did, however, go to therapy. I never wanted myself to go into that kind of anger again. I knew that Becca's ex was an angry, abusive man, and while she assured me I wasn't anything like him, I wanted to make absolutely sure I never got to that point again.

Speaking of anger and relationships, Doc Keller unexpectedly showed up one morning at Pete's, and apologized to Becca. He said he missed his best friend, and was extremely saddened when Pete died before the two men had reconciled. Becca forgave him.

My relationship with Becca intensified after that final confrontation with Allison. A few short months later, it didn't take much effort for her to convince me to move out of the apartment and into her house. I was spending most nights there anyway.

Roscoe, now fixed, came with me to Becca's. We tried to make her an indoor cat, but she hated it and wanted to be outside. She made her new home in Becca's shed. We gave away the two brown and black kittens, and we kept the little grey girl as an indoor cat. We named her Monroe, after Mrs. Monroe, even though the old woman still disliked cats. Monroe, unlike her mother, was perfectly content to be a pampered, indoor, lap cat.

One benefit of having my identity back was that I had access to my money again. Becca didn't know how much I had until I showed her. Not all in one place, of course, but half a million here, two hundred thousand there, much of it safely invested and earning interest. I didn't have to do any more contracting jobs, but I still did them for fun.

An immediate difference between Allison and Becca is how they treated my money. Allison lived off me like a leech; her company rarely ever actually made a profit. Becca, on the other hand, was very hesitant to take a dime, even when I offered. She insisted that the coffee shop was doing just fine, and it was. But she accepted a few nice gifts, like a mani-pedi at the fancy spa in town, or a few hundred dollars for a nice dress, or an expensive dinner for two at the ritziest restaurant in town.

Maybe those three gifts spaced out would have been more subtle. All together on one weekend, she wasn't too surprised when I offered her one more gift, a sparkly one-carat diamond ring.

That night, my fiancee rode me so zealously that I thought I might have a heart attack. When I told her so, she grabbed my face and kissed me, and told me, "You better not. You already died once. I'm going to make sure you stay alive for a long, long time."

THE END