by Haley Weir
“The crowd was getting a little fired up. Maybe it was an accident.”
“No,” she said. “The only thing he saw was an obstacle in the way of his climb up the corporate ladder. He didn’t see a person at all.” Sapphire sighed and leaned her head against the shoulder of her best friend.
“Can I ask you a more personal question?”
“Sure. You know pretty much everything about me.”
Brock hesitated. “Do you ever wonder why you’re here? Like what you purpose in life is?”
Sapphire turned to look into the silvery blue eyes that always calmed her in times of stress. She wondered why such a deep question had come to mind. Sapphire shrugged and tried her best to answer. “I’ve always thought that we were never meant to live for ourselves. I think who we are and why is based on what we mean to other people. It doesn’t matter what we believe ourselves to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“My name is Sapphire, but a name is not who I am,” she said. “Who I am differs in the eyes of each person. To you, Sapphire means friend. In your eyes I am a friend and nothing I think will ever change that. Why am I your friend?”
“Because you are strong, passionate, considerate, and honest.”
“See? I am alive. I am the one living as Sapphire and yet it is you that gives my life meaning. You provided the ‘who’, the ‘what’, and the ‘why’ of my existence. You know me as Sapphire White. I am your strong, passionate, considerate, and honest friend,” she explained, watching the bewilderment on his face slowly transition into understanding. Brock regarded her with something like admiration.
“That…almost makes sense. It’s about perception.”
“Sure,” Sapphire replied.
Brock snorted at her blasé response and climbed onto the couch to sleep off the wine as she shuffled into the bedroom to pass out across the top of her mattress. “Goodnight,” she shouted happily.
“Night, Saph.”
CHAPTER ONE
Six Years Later…
Haden Springs, Wyoming
Sunlight crept over the small town nestled away in the mountains and spilled through the curtains of Sapphire’s room at the clinic. A beam of light warmed her face and she opened her eyes with a grimace. She lifted her hand to block the sun and tried to sit upright. Suddenly, hands wiggled under her shoulders to assist in the movement. “Brock?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Saph,” he rasped in a sleep-roughened voice. “You’d think after spending a year and four months in a coma, you wouldn’t want to sleep through the rest of your life. How are you feeling?”
“What bothers me the most is that I can’t remember what happened.”
“You were out on a walk in the forest and climbed up to an outlook,” Brock explained. “Your foot slipped and you fell. It was a long way down and your body was severely injured. When you fell into the river, you were swept downstream until you were able to pull yourself onto land. The fires were at their peak and you nearly got caught in the blaze. Someone found you and brought you here.”
“I know all of that. Something that dramatic could only happen to me,” she huffed. “My luck might be terrible, but something else happened. I saw something, but I can’t remember what it was or why it was important.”
“It’ll come back to you in time.” Brock ordered her breakfast and sat with her until he was called away to work at the fire station.
Sapphire listened to the clock tick by the hours, more than eager to get home to her cats. A soft knock sounded on the door and it pushed open to reveal Dr. Anders McKinney. Since she arrived in Haden Springs, Sapphire had always felt a strange spark between her and the handsome doctor. Her rotten luck and terribly clumsy disposition often landed her in the clinic. Everything had been fine until he eventually started to avoid her, most likely thinking she did it on purpose just to stalk him or something.
The truth was that Sapphire was cursed with the inability to walk in a straight line without tripping over her own feet, running into walls, or stubbing her toe on a nonexistent bump in the road. Around Haden Springs, she was the crazy cat lady who always dyed her hair outlandish colors and could never keep a steady job. Her cheeks flushed violently as Dr. McKinney approached the bed. “I was going to hand your file over to a different doctor, but your friend Jenny specifically requested that I stay on the case.”
“I’m sorry to be an inconvenience, doc.” When he said nothing to contradict her, Sapphire lowered her head and set her breakfast down. “I should be out of here soon. No need for you to worry. We can get back to living our lives and pretend none of this ever happened,” Sapphire suggested.
“I’m your doctor, Miss White. There’s no need to be so upset. You’re my patient and I want what’s best for you.” Dr. McKenny checked her over with clinical detachment. “I think that would be for us to keep things as professional as we can. This time might have been different, but can you honestly say that you’ve never come to this clinic just to see me? That you’ve never gotten injured so that you—”
Sapphire held her hand up to stop his accusations. She instantly felt nauseous. “You’re ego is out of control,” she said. “I’ve been this way my entire life, so don’t go thinking you’re something special. You are handsome, Dr. McKinney, but everything you just said made you the least attractive person in this town.”
He stopped in the middle of his examination, a hand floating just inches from her heated face until it dropped. Dr. McKinney nodded his head and grabbed his chart. The door closed a bit harder than usual. Sapphire threw the tray of what remained of her breakfast at the wall. “Who does he think he is?” she hissed quietly.
Clumps of gooey oatmeal and orange juice slid down the wall. Sapphire hobbled out of the hospital bed and began cleaning the mess away. She limped into the bathroom to grab a few rags and returned to her scrubbing, but once that was finished, Sapphire couldn’t seem to stop. Hours passed and the entire room glistened. The cold tile pressed against her cheek as sleep claimed her healing body.
Strong, familiar arms lifted her up…
She did not have time to lie down and catch her breath. The winds guided the fire along the east end of the forest, which was right in her path. Sapphire cursed her miserable luck and looked around for any opening. She spotted one and dashed toward it. The water on her clothes weighed her down, so she kicked her skirt off and continued running.
Above the snapping and sizzling that assaulted her senses, she heard alarms reverberating through the trees. As she tried to figure out what direction they were coming from, a wall of fire exploded in front of her. She tried to turn back toward the river, but she was surrounded by flames. She used what remained of her wet clothes to dampen the grass in hopes that the flames would not overcome her.
“Help! I’m over here!” Sapphire screamed until her throat was raw. She coughed and covered her mouth and nose with her hand, but the flames were too high and the smoke began to choke her. Eyes streaming with tears, Sapphire curled up into a ball and tried her best to stay alive. Not for herself, but for Brock, Tilly, Destiny, and even Jenny. They depended on her, especially Brock. She was his stability in a world that had thrown him away.
Sapphire came awake with a start. Her arms flailed around as she tried to swat out the phantom flames. A sharp pain speared through her head and she collapsed, clutching her skull with trembling hands. Those arms wrapped around her, but the dark clouds beyond the window cast shadows into the room. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the light and still she could not see who held her. “I’m so…so scared.”
“Ssshhh…”
The smell of the man broke through the fog and she breathed him in. Like the arms around her waist, the scent was also familiar, like an autumn rain in the forest. “Sleep,” a deep voice commanded. Sapphire began to panic when the arms unfolded from around her. She reached out and grabbed the man’s wrist.
“Stay. Please…just until I fall asleep.” The tone of her voice sounded so pitiful
in the darkness that on any other night, Sapphire would have been embarrassed. She released him and curled onto her side. The bed dipped in behind her and a secret smile curled on her lips for the first time since she had awakened from her coma. Part of Sapphire knew that the stranger was most likely an intern or night nurse, but she took comfort in being held.
Part of her never wanted to sleep alone again. Sapphire remembered the silly pact that she and her friends had come up with to join the Kodiak Dating Agency. If Jenny “The Ice Queen” Owens could find love using it, then why couldn’t Sapphire?
When she woke up the following morning, her entire body ached. She crawled out of bed and showered right away. The clothes that her friend Tilly had brought her were much more comfortable than the gown she had been wearing since she arrived at the clinic. Sapphire had everything packed and ready to go by the time the nurse came in to administer her medication.
“How long will I be walking around like a baby deer?” she asked in exasperation.
“The doctor says you’ll need physical therapy for a while. You were in bed for over a year, Miss White. Your muscles will need time to get back to what they used to be.” The nurse changed the bed sheets and went to fetch the discharge papers. Sapphire signed herself out of the clinic and hoped that her friends had remembered to pick her up.
She sat outside on a bench for over an hour before someone finally answered their phone. Jenny arrived soon after the call ended, apologizing profusely for being late. Sapphire let it go to avoid an argument and slid into the passenger seat. “Where’s your lovely husband?” she asked. “I thought Dorian would be here.”
“Brock and Dorian got called in to take care of the fire. Brock said he would have called, but he didn’t have time before they had to throw on their gear.”
“Where’s Tilly and Destiny?”
“Tilly had meetings with the parents of her students this morning,” Jenny said. “Destiny got a huge shipment of books for the shop and had no one there to help unload. I’m so sorry, Saph. Everyone was just so busy.”
Sapphire wrung her hands in the fabric of her skirt and looked out the window. Jenny sighed and nudged her arm. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Sapphire questioned, her tone a bit snippy.
“Act like you don’t matter or that you’re some sort of burden.”
“It’s hard not to feel like one,” she snorted dryly. “You’ve all moved on with your lives. It’s not that I blame you. I know a lot has happened since I fell and it’ll take me a while, but I’ll make it through this.”
“And we’ll be there to support you. We know what you’re going through—”
“Do you?” she asked doubtfully. “Because I don’t recall anyone else in our friend group nearly dying and then missing over a year of their life. And to make matters worse, I can’t remember what happened. I get that you’ve all been through a lot, but none of you know what I’m going through.”
Jenny’s shoulders slouched forward as she gave an apologetic look. “You’re right. We might not be able to understand, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t sympathize with your situation. Bad things have been happening and we might be busy lately, but you’re still our friend and we love you.”
A deafening silence fell over the car as Jenny drove Sapphire home. She unlocked the door at the foot of the staircase. Her knees buckled halfway up to her apartment, forcing her to sit down and crawl on all fours the rest of the way. When she felt as though she could stand without feeling sick, Sapphire climbed to her feet and opened the door to four hungry cats meowing at her feet.
“Mama’s home, babies!” she cooed. It felt good to be missed. Sapphire walked into the kitchen to fill their bowls, but noticed that an automatic feeder had been stocked to the brim with their cat food. The litter boxes and potty pads had been changed recently as well. “Who’s been taking care of you?”
Sapphire knew the signs of her friends being in her apartment, but none were present. No teacups on the coffee table from Destiny, no fashion magazines from Jenny, and no takeout containers from Tilly or Brock. Someone had definitely been taking care of her apartment and her pets while she had been away, but left no trace. Sapphire tried to remember if anyone else in town had access to her home, but came up with nothing.
Half the town refused to speak to her because of the never-ending feud between her and Michael Adair. A memory sparked in her mind; she was surrounded by flames. She gasped and fell to her knees in pain, knocking over the potted plant on her counter.
She ignored the throbbing in her arm and grabbed ahold of the enormous creature. It waited just long enough for her to climb upon its back before it tore through the forest once more. Sapphire held on for dear life, burying her face in the soft, damp fur that smelled of spring soil and berries. When the heat no longer threatened to scorch her flesh, the bear stopped. Sapphire climbed down and watched as it shifted into a man…
A wet nose brushed against her arm and Sapphire was startled out of the memory. Why would she imagine herself riding on the back of a bear?
CHAPTER TWO
Dr. Anders McKinney slammed the door to his office. He kicked over his chair and swept his arm across the desk. Papers fluttered to the floor like giant snowflakes as he struggled to contain his anger. Sapphire White was the most insufferable person he had ever met. The fact that she had taken the liberty of signing herself out of the hospital before her final examination was reckless and juvenile.
Someone knocked on the door, adding to his boiling frustration.
“What?!” he snapped.
The door opened to reveal the last person he expected to step foot inside his clinic. Michael Adair, his oldest and most trusted friend. Both tragedy and camaraderie had kept them close through the years, even when Anders had spent a few years in Italy. Michael took a seat in the chair across from the desk as though the office wasn’t a complete mess. He folded his hands in his lap and said, “I think you should use the services. It worked well for Dorian. And after finding out that Sapphire White is your soulmate, you’ll need a distraction.”
“Wasn’t it you who brought up this whole soulmate theory in the first place?” Anders picked his chair up and sat down. “I’m not interested.”
“As I said before, my work has made self-love and romantic love into a science. Algorithms help me calculate compatibility and make the courting process easier for both parties,” Michael reminded Anders. “Soulmates are just nature’s way of doing the same thing. We aren’t like everyone else, so our reactions to these things will be different.”
“We aren’t that different,” he argued. “The four of us are a product of evolution and nothing more. An unexplainable pattern in nature, a new branch of evolution, but that doesn’t mean that our next step is triggered by soulmates.”
“I disagree.” Michael held his stare with eerie intensity. “Soulmates are without a doubt the next step. And the step after that would be fatherhood—”
“Hold on! Don’t come into my office and lay all of this on me at once. At the end of the day, these are your theories, not facts. If I wanted a relationship, I would have started one by now.” Anders curled his hands into tightly clenched fists. “Unlike you, Michael, I’ve been in a relationship before. I’ve been intimate with a woman. I know what I’m missing out on and it’s never really been that special.”
“I get it. The last time you let your guard down, your worst nightmare came true, but that doesn’t mean that every woman is like Nora.”
“Don’t,” Anders growled. “Nora was different. She wasn’t the reason I ended up at the facility. They used her to manipulate me. She loved me and tried to help in the end, but I was too far gone. Blame the animal inside, not the woman who tamed it.”
“Do you remember that time in the forest? When we faced off with the hunters?”
There was no way Anders could ever forget his past coming to haunt him.
“We know you and your friends are hunters, that y
ou kill creatures like us and cash a check big enough to take away the guilt,” Michael said. “But all we want is to live normal lives. Your fires have hurt so many people and no one has died by our hands. Let her go and we can continue this conversation peacefully.”
“That isn’t true, now is it?” Corey goaded. “You see…one of my friends has been digging around as much as you clearly have.” He whistled to signal the attack. Patrick and Travis came out of the trees with their guns pointed at the other two monsters. “We don’t take kindly to murderers.”
“It was an accident—”
“Shut up, Anders!” Michael growled. His gaze returned to Corey’s as he snarled, “We came here to get Jenny and that’s it.”
Anders moved away from the desk and pressed his forehead against the glass of his office window. His stomach roiled in protest of having to remember that day. If the hunters in the forest wanted to ruin him, they could do so without much trouble. “You know I never meant to harm anyone, Michael. They tortured me with their experiments until I was no longer a man. Coming back from the brink to find myself walking barefoot and covered in blood through the desert in Nevada was…it was hell.”
“But you went back for her.”
“I did, but I wish I had never watched the surveillance tapes,” he murmured. “I wish I hadn’t seen the carnage that I caused…what our kind was capable of.” Anders closed his eyes and tried to banish the horrid thoughts from his mind. “Companionship is something I understand and it’s something I’m open to, but don’t expect me to use your services to find a distraction or a soulmate.”
“Good,” Michael said. “I’ll send Lori your paperwork. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you’ve changed your mind about what you want in a companion,” his friend said cheekily. “It’s been three years since you took the survey. You might have a different compatibility.”
“If this is you trying to insinuate that finding out about Sapphire being my…soulmate,” he said the word begrudgingly, “has somehow changed me, then you’re wrong. I’m the same as I have always been.”
