“You’ve probably wondered why I’ve called this meeting with you both this morning,” Jess said.

Alex and Dean sat across from her in the large conference room. With just the three of them sitting at the table the room looked awkwardly humongous and out of place. Jess found it very distracting, but she tried to remain focused. This had to be done.

“Sure,” Alex said.

Dean remained silent, but the look on his face told Jess that he knew what this was about.

“I really like both of you guys and I know that I’ve made things difficult by dating you both.”

“Difficult isn’t the word I would use,” Dean said.

“What word would you use?” Alex asked.

“Exciting.”

“Exciting?” Jess asked. What was he, high?

“What are you, high?” Alex asked.

Dean smiled at him.

“Well, anyway I have asked you both here because I have made a decision.”

“Drum roll, please,” Alex said.

“I have decided to choose…Alex.”

Dean didn’t move. He didn’t speak for several seconds. Neither did Alex. It was as if they both expected that she would either choose the other one or that she would never really choose at all. Jess wasn’t sure if she should say anything else or wait for one of them to speak, but the silence was awkward and deafening.

Alex cleared his throat before he finally spoke. “I have to admit that I feel a bit odd waiting on a woman to say she chooses me, but I have to say that I am flattered as well,” Alex said.

Jess wasn’t sure if she should be offended or if she should just be relieved that it was all over. The back and forth of everything was just turning out to be too much for her to take and she had found it was even starting to affect her work. She’d had to pull several all-nighters as of late and forgone sleep entirely on those nights just to maintain where she needed to be with her work. But she found this made her a bit dopey in court and that was not fair for her clients.

Dean snorted just then as if he was mock laughing at the whole thing. He was obviously pissed and Jess was a bit put off by his somewhat immature handling of the situation. Dean was a man who was not used to not getting his way and not getting what he wanted. Jess had the feeling that he had not heard the word no very often in life, especially when it came to women. It was reinforcing for her that she had made the right decision.

“This is somewhat humiliating, but I’ll have to accept it. Not to mention how tacky it is that you called a meeting to discuss this. You could have sent a simple text or email,” Dean began to stand up to leave the room.

“Dean, don’t be a sore loser,” Alex rubbed it in. Jess thought for a moment that Dean was going to turn and slug Alex, knocking him off the chair.

Dean smiled and flipped him the bird as he slammed the door.

“Well, he took that really well,” Alex said as he stood up and walked to the other side of the table. He kissed Jess sweetly on the lips. She felt like she was about two inches big right then. She hated hurting Dean’s feelings. She knew that he would never admit to having feelings, let alone feelings that could actually be hurt, but she could see in his eyes that his heart had been broken just then.

Was he actually in love with her? Was Alex? She felt that it was far too soon to feel that way about either man, but part of that had been because she had closed off her heart to the idea of it. She had decided for herself that she would not allow her feelings to become a factor and that was why she had allowed her stupid little game to go on for as long as it had. She had really been playing herself the whole time.

Now was different. She had decided that she was not going to let her heart become a piece of stone anymore. She was tired of planning out every little detail of her life. There was no passion to anything when you did that. It was like everything became emotionless and void of any sort of joy. She could not live like that anymore.

“He will be ok. He’s a big boy,” Alex said.

“I know, but you have to wonder what he is going to do now,” Jess said.

“I’m not so sure he will do anything other than get raging drunk and boink about twenty college girls from that Crow Bar place, where they all hang out. “

“Really? He goes there? He doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb?”

“Apparently not. I guess he still has the cool factor left over from his law school days. He used to go there all the time, but then he chilled a bit with it. Now he may start back again. Or he might find some other place entirely.”

“Well, good luck to him.”

Alex pulled her close in his arms. He felt strong and warmly inviting wrapped around her.

“So, why did you pick me?” Alex asked.

“I’m not exactly sure, but it just felt right. Sometimes you have to follow your heart.”

* * *

Jess was feeling pretty good when she drove up to her house. The day of work had flown by and it had ended up being a pretty productive day in court. She was actually starting to think that she might get Dr. Jones' sentence reduced from fifteen years to five by having him take a full psych evaluation that would declare him to be a pervert essentially and that he was incapable of helping himself. He had a problem and a need that screamed out for him to satisfy it. He was a sex addict. She was pretty sure that at least one of those things was true and it was going to become apparent in court. The man had issues; there was no doubt about it.

Jess was looking forward to just relaxing and enjoying a nice evening of quiet television and a few glasses of wine. She and Alex had made plans to go out the following night. He was going to take her to some new fancy restaurant he had heard about that was supposed to be all the rage. Jess was never up on any of these types of things. She just didn’t pay attention to where all of the cool kids hung out these days. But Alex seemed really excited about it. After dinner he was taking her to the opera, which she had never really been to before. It sounded boring and weird, but she was willing to give it a shot.

She walked into her quiet, dark house, instantly poured herself some wine and sat down on the couch without even bothering to remove her work clothes. Somewhere between leaving her office and the twenty minute drive home the exhaustion had set in.

Even though the day had been good the overall week had been brutally stressful. She sipped her wine slowly, enjoying the flavors swirling around in her mouth and then swallowed it. She felt like she needed a vacation - a real vacation without any drama or anybody. In fact, thinking of it right then she decided that the perfect vacation for her would be to coop herself up inside her house for a month and never step foot outside. If she didn’t have to see or talk to anybody for a while that would be just fine with her.

That included Alex, even though she really liked him. It was just one of those times that she just wanted to be alone. It would pass. She knew herself too well. If she were away from people and away from her job for more than a few days she would be tearing her hair out by the roots.

She was in the middle of her third episode of Breaking Bad when the email came in to her phone. She thought about ignoring it because something really intense was about to happen with the show. She had never watched that show when it had aired originally but she had heard so much hype about it on Facebook and at work that she decided she just had to check it out.

Her phone buzzed again as she continued to ignore it. She was tired of people having so much access to her and she was tired of feeling chained to the world by a piece of electronics. She had wanted to throw her iPhone against the wall so many times. Jess had actually stopped herself a few times while in the middle of the act. The anger issues were something that she was working on. She wondered how Alex might react to the first time she lost her shit and weirded out on him. Well, if he really loved her he would find it endearing and give her a sweet kiss to let her know that everything was ok. She smiled at the thought.

Her phone buzzed again. It seemed that she was popular all of a sudden and she was already wishing she could take back every wish she had ever made to any magic genie she had ever seen.

Jess grabbed her phone after putting Breaking Bad on hold. She finished off her glass of wine, enjoying the buzz begin to kick in and checked her email on her phone. She noticed she had three messages from the same sender, but she didn’t recognize the name. At first she just imagined it was some scammer looking to trick her into giving out her credit card number or trying to hack her email. Or it could be a virus or some other piece of malware that was trying to accomplish all of the same things.

She figured it was probably nothing and opened it up anyway. It was a message that said “Stay away from him, Bitch!”

Jess felt her heart skip a beat as she leapt up off of her couch. She suddenly felt very much alone and very much afraid. Jess was not the type of girl who felt fear that often. She was always in control and she had a firm idea of who she wanted to be in the world and nothing would ever stand in the way of that. She had decided that a long time ago.

But she was very afraid now.

She had dropped her phone on the floor when she leapt up, almost knocking over the bottle of wine that had about one glass left in it.

She began racking her brain for possible subjects of whom could have sent this email to her. Who had access to her email address? Who knew about her and Alex? Was it Dean? She figured that he might not take this type of humiliation lying down; she didn’t share Alex’s cavalier attitude about the whole thing. She was a bit more cautious and now it was turning out that she had been right. Dean was going to demand that they not be together.

It had to be him, right? Unless… it might have been that woman from the bar that night when she had first gone out with Alex. Who’s to say she was going to give up so easily? Or it might have even been any number of scorned lovers that Alex Mathers was hiding in his past. What had she gotten herself into?

She poured the last bit of wine and drank it down swiftly. She picked up her phone and dialed Alex. It rang several times before going to his voice mail. She dialed him again and the voicemail picked up again.

Damn! Where was he? She was starting to feel like the type of woman she had always swore she wouldn’t be. She wasn’t about to start defining herself by a man and she wasn’t going to get clingy or weird and demand to know where he was every second. That was not going to happen. She was going to remain the strong and independent woman she had always been.

But right now she really wished she could hear his voice. She needed to talk to him about this. She was not a nervous person, but she had a strong feeling that all of this was going to end up going south in some way.

Her breathing was coming in short gasps as the tears streamed down her face.

Was this message only the beginning? She was going to be damned if she gave in and left Alex alone. The more she thought about their relationship, and she had been thinking about it often, the more she realized how much she was actually falling for Alex. She saw the way he looked at her and knew that the feeling was well reciprocated and every time she looked into his eyes she felt like she was on top of the world. There was no way in hell she was going to be intimidated by a faceless voice.

But she needed to talk to Alex.

They needed to find out what they were dealing with.

Before things got worse.