Forget Us Not
By
Melissa Shirley
Forget Us Not
© Copyright 2017 Melissa Shirley
Published by After Glows
PO Box 224
Middleburg, Fl. 32050
Digital ISBN: 978-1-944060-30-5
Cover by Scott Carpenter
Formatting by AG Formatting
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Forget Us Not
Sam Camden is on the verge of losing the only thing he ever cared about—his wife, Makenzie. First, she tells him she wants a divorce then she’s in a car accident and awakes with no memory of their life together. As much as he knows telling her the truth about their relationship is the right thing to do, he can’t leave her.
When he brings her home, suddenly the house she hated is perfect, she finds the closet she filled to capacity ridiculous, and the man she’s barred from her bed is all she wants.
Makenzie knows something is wrong with her, but being married to the man she can hardly remember is more than she ever dreamed. She can’t remember her husband more than the feeling of safety he inspires, but as she watches him and the way he tiptoes around her and measures every word before he speaks it, and her memories come back in pieces, she’s torn between discovering the truth about herself and enjoying the contentment she feels with the life she barely recognizes.
Resisting their attraction to one another is harder than either is prepared to deal with, and together they have to figure out if they can overcome the secrets of their past or if it’s time to say goodbye once and for all.
CHAPTER 1
SAM
“I don’t love you anymore.” At the sound of her voice, I don’t move—not because I want to pretend to sleep, but because I can’t physically make my limbs cooperate. The air sucks out of my chest, and breathing is more of a task than I can accomplish.
I expected it to happen at some point, but just the same, it pushes a lump into my throat and tears I can’t blink away spring to my eyes.
She thinks I’m sleeping; I can tell from the whisper, and for a moment I consider letting her believe it. But I don’t. All I’ve ever cared about was Makenzie, and I won’t let her go without a fight.
“Is there someone else?” I hate the shake in my voice, but I’m on the verge of losing the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I can’t help it.
“No, but it isn’t like there’s an us anymore either.” She sighs long and hard into the silence of our room, and I imagine it in color, a deep shade of red—the color of anger, of heartbreak.
I blink against the light from the bedside lamp she’s flicked on. I wish she would shut it off because I don’t want to see the void in her eyes where all the love she’d shown me once lived. “That’s not true. There will always be an us.“ I stutter the words, but it makes them no less true, no less spoken with my heart as much as my mouth.
The pain in my stomach churns as I wait for her answer, for some sign she isn’t ready to give up on us, on all we’ve accomplished in the last five years. It isn’t as much as she wanted, nor as much as I’d hoped to give her, but it’s ours. We’d worked for it all together. Together we’re strong. Why can’t she see that?
All I can do is beg. “Don’t do this. Please.” I swipe my hand over my eyes. “If there’s even a little bit of love left between us, we can fight for it, get back what we used to have.” I want to reach out to her, hold her close to me. I need to breathe her in one more time. Desperation hardens my voice. “Why don’t you want to try?”
She clears her throat, a sure sign that whatever is coming next is going to cut me. “I made an appointment with an attorney for tomorrow morning. I thought we could go together—get it over with.”
Get it over with. The words play over and over in my head until I can’t escape them. I throw back the blankets and have a hand on the bedroom doorknob when she says, “Sam, we can still be friends.”
I glance back over my shoulder, afraid of what I’ll do as much as I need to see her one more time. “I’ll never be able to just be your friend.”
Instead of laying my head on the sofa and trying to sleep, I look around and see all the things she sees—the worn carpet, the faded curtains, the rip in the fabric of the chair we’d picked up secondhand. I hadn’t done right by her. I promised her the moon and the stars, and I gave her hovel instead. Why should she stay with me?
I focus on the worn spot in the once-plush carpet dulled by years of foot traffic. The more I look, the bigger it seems, until finally, as the sun rises, I shove all the furniture to one side of the room and begin yanking and pulling until there’s nothing left but the scuffed and scarred wood underneath. I drag the carpet out the door then arrange the sofa and tables so the room doesn’t look so bare.
As I work, I try to figure when we started falling apart. Was it the party for her best friend and her new husband who’d run off to Hawaii to marry on a sandy beach at sunset the week after our courthouse nuptials? They’d shown the slideshow about a hundred times, and each time, wistfulness lined Kenzie’s face, shone through the happy tears in her eyes.
I’d promised her we would go there, have our own adventures, and I’d failed her. A hundred times. Or a thousand. As I drop to the couch, I can’t blame her for not loving me or our life. I’ve let her down over and over.
I’ve lost the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I deserve it.
It’s been three hours. I know because I have watched every tick of the clock on the wall since I arrived at the hospital to find my wife lying behind a thick, dark glass. No one will tell me how she is. I can only imagine the worst since every time I close my eyes, I see the pool of blood under her head. Doctors and nurses have come and gone out of her cubicle, and each one who walks past without giving me an update sends my heart plummeting to the pit of my stomach. I’m scared I’ll never see her again, or hear her voice, or touch her face.
It takes two more hours before I’m allowed to see her, but it could have taken a year and I wouldn’t have given up hope. Now, I wait for her to open her eyes, to show me she’s still in there. When she does, I’ll feel better, if only for a minute, until the weight of our words before the accident crashes in on me again. I hope she didn’t see the car coming. I hope I haven’t driven her to try… No. I can’t think like that. Not now.
They told me Kenzie has a broken wrist, a concussion with complications, and some badly bruised bones in her legs. But she’s going to live. And to me, that’s all that matters.
CHAPTER 2
SAM
The dreams are horrible, punctuated by memories of her anger. I’ve been on the wrong side of it for such a long time, but until she wakes up, I’ll have to believe this is all my fault. This time though, there’s a calm right in the middle when I imagine her soft touch on my brow, her whisper of soothing words. Of course, it’s only my imagination. Though she loved me once, that’s no longer th
e case. She was on her way to see a divorce attorney when she was hit. Once again, a fault in our story that belongs to me.
I’m almost tempted to go, to see if that will help her decide to come back, but I can’t. Leaving her has never been a choice for me. I’m without the will or the ability to walk away, no matter how tough our times, how loud our fights.
I’ve called her mother. If sitting in a room with people who hated me enough to take Kenzie’s trust fund is the only way to bring her back, I’ll do it gladly. I will endure the looks of contempt, the unbridled judgment in their faces. I would do that and so much more to see her eyes one more time.
I watch her sleep, a smile fading in and out across her lips. I can’t remember the last time I saw her face light up, and I can’t begin to guess what’s made her so happy, but I doubt it has to do with me. And that breaks my heart.
Six years is a long time to love someone so completely, but with Makenzie, I knew it from the minute she walked in the bar. It was Dad’s then, and I wasn’t much more than a glorified bartender, but she looked at me. From that moment forward, I belonged to her.
It’s been that kind of day… Dad is “sick” again, and AmyJo didn’t show up, so I’m working a double. Customers are lined up three deep, and I’m sweating my way through slinging my thousandth beer down the bar when they walk in…a bachelorette party.
They’re the Webster’s definition of trying too hard to fit in on my side of town. Over-styled hair, cowboy boots that have likely never met fresh soil, and sequined tank tops in every shade of the rainbow cast them as outsiders in a place where men have stopped talking, and women have started glaring.
“Hey, handsome. How about a Jack and Coke?”
“Sure thing.”
These are the only words I can manage because this one is so damned pretty I can’t think of anything real to say. My tongue is suddenly too big for my mouth. My God. She’s beautiful in ways I can’t understand.
But for all the striking features and the body that has me hard enough to cut glass already, it’s the eyes…bluer than a summer sky, blue enough I’m thinking in poetry.
I put her drink in front of her. “It’s on me.”
She lifts the glass in salute then sets it down. “What’s your name?”
“Sam. What’s yours?” I’m nothing if not smooth.
“Makenzie. My friends call me Kenzie.”
“My friends call me Sam.”
She grins. “Is that short for Samuel?”
It’s not short for anything. My name is Sam, but I’ll play along. I shake my head.
“Sampson, then?”
I’m leaning with both elbows on the bar, and she reaches out to give a little tug on my long-ish hair. Oh God. Not a biblical reference. With my luck, she’s a convent candidate. “No.”
“Samhain? Samoa? Samurai?”
I chuckle. “No. No. And no. My name is just Sam.”
“Well, just Sam, I’m not going to bother being coy. Okay?”
I like her already. “Sure.”
“I think you’re hot, Samuel.” I can’t take my eyes off the finger she has running laps around the rim of her glass. “And if you have a girlfriend, I am fully prepared to hate her, sight unseen.”
“Hate’s a pretty strong word.”
“It’s a pretty strong feeling, Sampson.”
“Good thing I don’t have a girlfriend then.”
“How’s that possible?” Her words aren’t slurred, but in my experience, only drunks and psychopath ex-girlfriends are this direct. I’m hoping she simply holds her alcohol well.
“I’m saving myself.” I lean in, hauling out every weapon in my pick-up-chicks arsenal. “Waiting for the right girl to stroll in that door and take me away from all of this.”
I’m being summoned to the other end of the bar by Billy Pratt who likely just wants a beer or a roll of the dice. I wave him off, but he shouts about empty cans, and I have no choice. “I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time, Samoa. I’m not going anywhere.”
And she means it. When I come back, she’s right there looking up at me with those damned baby blues, batting eyelashes that can’t possibly be real. “I missed you, Samoa.”
I wish I had a witty comeback, but I stand there grinning like a fool instead.
“Cat got your tongue?” The ice in her glass tinkles as she pushes it toward me. “I’ll take another.”
We chat for a while with the occasional interruption for me to do my job before she leans in close, and I catch a whiff of her perfume. I sway with a different kind of intoxication.
“I feel like we’re at a place in our relationship where I can tell you something very important.” Her voice is an almost whisper.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She waves me closer. “I’m a little bit drunk. I think my bartender might be mixing my drinks a teeny bit strong.” She holds her thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart.
“I don’t know. He’s a pretty stand-up guy. Maybe you just don’t know your limits.” I take her hand and press a kiss against her knuckles.
Her laugh is like a purr, and my body tightens. “Oh, trust me. I know my limits, but I’m very curious about yours. Let’s test those a little.”
She already is. I want nothing more than to be alone with her. Naked and alone.
She yanks her phone out of her pocket. “Give me your number, Samir.”
I rattle off the digits, and she snaps my picture then punches the screen a few times before turning it around to show me. “Samwise?” If she’s a Lord of the Rings fan, I have to marry her.
“I’ll call you tomorrow. I mean today.” She rolls her eyes. “Who am I kidding? I probably won’t make it to the parking lot before I’m dialing your digits.”
“I’ll be waiting.” For as long as it takes.
CHAPTER 3
MAKENZIE
Every time I wake up, new details hit me with fresh and equal amounts of horror and disbelief. A husband. I. Have. A. Husband. And I can’t remember one thing about him. Do we laugh together? Are we happy? Do I love him? I mean, I must. I married him, right? But these are the questions spinning on repeat through my mind as he rubs my hand over and over between his much larger ones and rests his head next to my hip.
***
I would pretend to sleep forever waiting for the moment my thoughts clear and I know who I am, but their whispering is driving me crazy, and I have to pee. I open my eyes in increments, adjusting to the pain brought on by the light. I’ve watched him sleep…even ran my fingers through his hair…breathed in the familiar scent that inspired such grand feelings of safety.
Since I don’t know why I’m here and in such condition, I shouldn’t trust my instincts, but I do. Due in one part to the fact I have no choice; another part as a matter of bladder urgency; and finally because I recognize something in him aside from his smell. He’s a man I can trust. I’m sure of it.
He stands up next to my bed, and I’m shocked at the size of him. Taller than I imagined, built sturdy but muscled with a breathtaking smile, he leans over the bed to brush the hair out of my face as a tear drips down each of his cheeks. Yeah, my instincts are right. Would a man responsible for my current accommodations cry because I opened my eyes? If he’d done this to me, put me here, he wouldn’t want me to wake up.
“Hey.” He lifts my hand to his face and holds it there before pressing a kiss against my wrist. “You’re back.”
I nod, vaguely aware of pain at the top of my head with each move. I tilt left and right. There are no invading tubes or monitors attached, only a heavy and somewhat awkward cast extending from below the curve of my elbow to the knuckles on my left hand and a brace of some sort covering the leg propped on a pillow. I wiggle my toes to some degree of pain. Immediately, I decide that toe wiggling is a skill set I can live without.
A man and woman I think must be my parents are hugging one another at the end of the bed, smiling at me, and I nod slowly at
them. They all speak at once, asking me questions I can’t answer with any degree of certainty. I hold up the casted arm, straining against its weight.
The doctor breezes into the room, shines some lights in my face and breezes back out. I suppose if I was going to die or was in some sort of danger, she would have taken a few minutes to hang around, but apparently I’m going to be fine. It doesn’t stop my family from hovering or my bladder from pulsing with a need for immediate attention.
“Here’s what I know. My name is Makenzie Camden and my birthday is December 11, 1987. Don’t get excited. These aren’t memories. I just read them on my bracelet. From the tan line on the finger sticking out of this cast, I know I wear a wedding ring, which indicates a marriage that I”—I smile because it feels right—“sure hope is to you.” I turn to the man still cradling my hand, and those images of my dreams come back with vivid clarity. “And that must make you my parents.” My mother’s smile is warm, but my bladder whines in protest. “What I don’t know is what magical power is going to get me from this bed to that bathroom before something embarrassing happens.”
“I’ll get a nurse.” My mother is out the door before I have a chance to stop her.
I don’t have time for that. “I imagine that first carry over the threshold probably didn’t strain your back much? I mean, I’m pretty small, right?”
A chuckle bubbles out of him. “Didn’t even break a sweat.”
“So, a repeat performance wouldn’t be out of the question?”
“Not at all.” Showing the care one would take with a baby, he holds me against his chest. The smell of him is intoxicating—a woodsy cologne and something maybe familiar, but I can’t be sure. All I know is I like it. A lot. When I glance away from him, a woman in cheerily decorated scrubs is standing in the doorway.
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