Life gives, and life takes away.
Charlie McGee knows all too well just how much truth that statement holds.
She was drowning, wasting away from guilt and sadness.
But when she meets Slayter Beck, he becomes the only calm in her ever-present storm.
Charlie McGee knows all too well just how much truth that statement holds.
She was drowning, wasting away from guilt and sadness.
But when she meets Slayter Beck, he becomes the only calm in her ever-present storm.
He's her light in the darkness. An angel in the midst of her demons.
All she wants to do is remember, and when the weight of that burden becomes too much, she tries giving up. But he won't let her.
He vows to help her remember.
Remember Phoenix.
CHAPTER 1
CHARLIE
OCTOBER 15,
2013
I don’t know why people say life is funny.
It’s not.
Life is cancer. Just when you think it’s all
smooth sailing, it ruins you.
I strum my fingers along to the beat of the music
as I take the last gulp of my beer. It’s a song full of color, and cheer, and
happy. And I hate it.
I was happy once, with a life I’d do
anything to keep… I think.
I imagine I used to wake up in the mornings and
make chocolate chip pancakes and pour a glass of orange juice without the pulp. I
hate pulp in my orange juice with its thick, chunky texture. It makes me gag. I bet
Phoenix hated it, too. But what do I know?
Nothing.
I know nothing because that is all I
remember—nothing.
Annoyed, I stop strumming my fingers. I hate
everyone dancing to the happy song with their smiling faces and laugh lines around
their eyes.
I hate the beams of light shooting from wall to
wall, all bright and colorful like it’s Christmas
time.
I hate everything
today.
Everything.
Two years ago today was the day everything
changed for me.
The day everything was taken from
me.
I wave to the bartender, needing alcohol to help
blur my heartache. “What can I get you?” he asks. I look up at his
extremely tall, extremely skinny, frame. His rectangular glasses sit atop his overly
large nose.
I know a nose never stops growing. I know eyes
always remain the same size throughout life. I could tell you what the square root of
a number is without a second thought, but I couldn’t tell you what I did for
my twenty-third birthday, or any birthday before that, for that matter. I
couldn’t tell you my worst fear growing up, or what it felt like when I fell in
love for the first time.
I couldn’t tell you anything, because I
don’t know the answers to any of that. Life took those simple pleasures from
me.
I jump as a hand brushes my arm, startling me
from my reverie. “Ma’am? What can I get you?” the big-nosed
bartender repeats.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I’ll have two
shots of whatever is good and strong. Lay it on me,” I answer as he walks
down to grab some shot glasses.
Within seconds he’s back at my side.
“Tab, or you tapping out for the
night?”
I grab the cash out of my clutch and count it. Shit.
I’m twenty shorter than I thought. I sigh. “I’ll tap out. I
don’t have my—“
A hand reaches across me, halting me mid-
sentence, and grabs both of my shots. Dumbfounded, my eyes follow, watching as a
guy downs them one after the other. “Excuse me?” I bark, shoving his
arm.
He tosses a hundred dollar bill at me before
looking at the bartender. “Get her whatever that was I just downed, plus me
two more. I’ll pay for all of them.”
Rolling my eyes at his audacity, I grab the money
and hand it to Big-Nose. “He’ll also pay my tab off.” I turn to
the rude, arrogant prick who jacked my alcohol. “Thanks,
asshole.”
A smug, pained grin hints on his face as he sits
down on the barstool next to me. He shrugs his jacket off and hangs it on the hook
underneath the lip of the bar. He runs his fingers through his golden brown hair,
disheveling it more than it already was, before rubbing the slight stubble peppering
his jawline. If I wasn’t pissed off at everything, including him, I would find
him attractive.
If being the operative word
here.
The shots magically appear in front of me. Making
sure my drinks don’t get stolen again, I quickly grab them both, downing
them one after the other. The burn of the alcohol makes its way down my throat. It
numbs me, but only for a second. God knows it won’t numb me forever.
I’ve tried.
“That good?” the guy beside me
asks smugly.
I cut my eyes in his direction and flip him off. He
grins. He grins, and laugh lines appear at the corners of his eyes. I automatically hate
him.
Laugh lines mean
happiness.
My mouth snaps in a straight line. Bitterness boils
inside of me because he has laugh lines, meaning he has reasons to smile in this
world. Or maybe I’m bitter because there is nobody in my world to make me
smile. At least no one I can remember.
“Sorry I stole your shots. I really needed
them. Bad day,” he confesses, before throwing a shot back. He wipes his
mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m Slayter, by the
way.”
I scoff. “Bad day, Slayter?” I spit his
name out of my mouth like it’s vinegar on my tongue. “I’m
sure it’s just been awful. Your girlfriend having her monthly visit so you
can’t get any for a few days?”
His stone gray eyes delve into me, like
they’re trying to read me, trying to know me. Oh, the irony of it
all.
“I wish,” he clips. “My
fiancée left a month ago, taking my daughter with her. Only for me to find
out today via paternity test, she wasn’t my daughter at all. So now I’m
without a fiancée, which I can handle, and I’m without the little girl I
raised for nine months, which I can’t.” He shakes his head, lost in
thought. I feel bad for the guy, almost enough to not hate
him.
I don’t have any clue what to tell him.
“Yep. Sucks a little worse than what I was imagining,” I spit out,
sounding every bit as sincere as I feel, which is not at
all.
His eyebrows scrunch together as he looks at me,
tapping his fingers on his chin. “Yeah.” He sighs. “Only being
able to live with her memory, and not her, for the rest of my life, is going to fucking
kill me.”
I roll my eyes, unable to stand his pity-party of
one any longer. “Yeah,” I sneer. “I’d also imagine living
with no memory at all for the rest of your life sucks, too. But you wouldn’t
know, would you?”
I slam my hands on the bar as I get up from the
stool, kicking it back with all my might. The metal legs screech along the dirty,
concrete floor before it topples over. I knew coming to this place was a bad idea.
It’s been two years today, and my emotions are everywhere. Every little
thing is pissing me off.
I went to bed last night with his picture clung to
my chest, praying, hoping, wishing today would be the day I would wake up and
remember. Remember everything, good and bad. At this point, I don’t care
what it is I remember, as long as I have something to grasp on to. I just want
something to be able to tell me, “Charlie, this is who you were
when you were you. This is what your life consisted of.” But no, I woke up
this morning with a memory as blank as the day I woke up from my
coma.
With tears in my eyes, I storm out of the bar. The
cool October breeze nips at my face, chilling me. Leaning against the black brick
wall, I grab the photo out of my jacket pocket. It’s worn, torn on the edges
from constantly being carried around. Even though it breaks my heart, I can’t
help but to look at it every single time I feel like the weight of the world is
suffocating me.
I rub the pad of my thumb over the photo, closing
my eyes, hoping this will be the last day I have to live with this black hole of pain in
my chest. A tear trickles down my cheek as the pain completely consumes me. The
pain of loss, of emptiness. The pain of not remembering the absolute largest part of
who I am.
Or who I was.
“Phoenix,” I whisper, “please
help me remember.”
Randa Lynn is an avid reader and lover of all
things romance. She has sketched stories since she could write, and decided to
finally pursue her dream in crafting real words from fictional
lives.
She lives in Louisiana with her husband, five
children, two dogs, and obese cat. In her spare time, she loves watching her favorite
movies, find recipes—that she’ll never cook—on Pinterest, and
find GIF’s that fit any occasion.
Her favorite things in life are her children and
husband, spending weekends at the baseball/softball diamonds, and reading, of
course.
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