Title:
Remembering Phoenix
Author: Randa
Lynn
Release Date:
March 14, 2016
Find on Goodreads
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.
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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