by Hope Jones
When She Remembers
Copyright © 2019 by Hope Jones.
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Just Write Creations. Interior Formatting Alex Grayson.
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All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincide.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
DEDICATION
To my husband, thank you for everything you do. I love you more than words.
Chapter One
Henley
THE HARSH LIGHT ABOVE me caused a pained groan.
My head was pounding.
This wasn’t the normal “oh I have a headache, let me take some pain pills.” This was worse than that, way worse.
Why did it hurt so bad? I couldn’t remember the last thing I did.
Panic started setting in. I couldn’t exactly open my eyes because the lights were too bright, but I was ripping the cover off and getting the hell out of my bed so I could figure out what happened to me.
“Henley, don’t move,” a smooth, deep voice called to me, causing me to still instantly.
While the voice was quite attractive with its rough timbre, but having a smoothness to wash down the rough, I didn’t know who it was and I was pretty sure a strange male was not supposed to be in my bedroom.
Finally, gathering the strength, I cracked one eye open in the direction of the strange male sound and moaned in pain. The lights still hurt my throbbing head.
I heard a chair scrape across the floor which confused me further because I had carpet in my bedroom, so I shouldn’t be able to hear my desk chair move across the floor.
“Turned the light off, baby, open your eyes,” he said.
Baby?
Who the hell was Baby?
’Cause I know this unidentified man was not calling me that.
I was positive I didn’t have sex last night, so this isn’t a guy I just hooked up with after a party.
The last thing I remembered was studying for a huge exam I had coming up. My best friend, Tuesday, was trying to convince me to go to the sorority house down the street for a party. I couldn’t fail this exam, or I’d be in college for another semester than I planned, so I declined.
I wouldn’t have brought home a guy.
Hell, I wouldn’t even have left my and Tuesday’s apartment.
My future was too important to me.
“Baby,” I heard again, but it came with a light touch on my forehead, likely brushing my mousy brown hair off my face.
“Please don’t touch me,” I replied weakly, hating the way my voice was so meek, even to my own ears.
Silence filled the room, but I was no longer being touched, and I was thankful this stranger wasn’t a dick that didn’t listen.
When the silence went on for too long, I gathered the courage and opened my eyes again, this time not being bothered by the light. I looked to the left first and saw a sterile white room, hospital equipment, one of those moving hospital tables, and a small TV mounted on the wall directly across from what was supposed to be my bed. Gazing down, I realized I wasn’t in my bed. I was in a tiny hospital bed.
I had an IV coming out of my left arm and a blood pressure cuff on my right arm.
What the actual fuck?
I was studying.
What in the world could have happened to me to land me here?
Looking to the right, I found the source of that rough, but still somehow smooth voice. He looked rough, like he’d been in this hospital room for months. But the tiredness didn’t take away from the beauty he had. His hair was a golden-brown, cropped short but still stylish. His beard looked overgrown, but he wore it well. The lines around his mossy green eyes confirmed what I thought, he had been in this hospital room for a while, but that didn’t make any sense because I had no idea who he was, so why stay with me?
“Who are you?” I croaked, realizing how dry my throat was.
Pain flickered through the man’s eyes, slashing so deep I could tell my words cut him severely, before he got up and went to the little hospital table to my left and poured me a cup of water. He brought the cup to the table next to me and reached into the drawer for a straw.
I was even more confused.
Normally, a person would drink straight from the cup. I never drank from the cup.
Ever.
It was nasty to me.
Especially, if I wasn’t at home, like at a restaurant. You could wash a cup a hundred times, but you never actually knew how many germs were on it.
Not many people knew I had an aversion to drinking from a cup. Tuesday and my parents were the only people I had ever told.
Yet, this stranger got me a straw.
I chalked it up to dumb luck.
He handed the cup to me and sat down next to me.
“Maybe we should call the doctor,” he suggested.
My brows creased with even more confusion.
Why was I in the hospital?
The stranger pushed the nurse’s button on my bed, waited for a response and said, “Henley is awake. Think it’s best for the doc to come in here.”
“Yes, sir, he’ll be in right away.”
The stranger leaned back in his seat and gave me a tight-lipped half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. I didn’t know this man, but I could tell he was in pain. Something about the tightness around his eyes, and the subtle frown that caught the edges of his mouth.
Oddly, I didn’t feel uncomfortable around him. I wasn’t sure what it was but there was a familiarity that kept me comfortable. I was wary but not scared.
A light knock came at the door and then it opened. An older man who looked to be in his fifties wearing a cheerful smile, blue scrubs, and a white jacket came in the door.
“How are we doing, Mrs. Vano?” he asked joyfully.
Vano? Who was he talking about?
“You must have me confused with a different patient. I’m Henley Westbay,” I corrected, trying to figure out what was going on.
The doctor’s eyes darted to the man next to me but quickly came back to me.
“I see,” he said disappointedly.
He rolled a chair up to my bed and pulled a tablet off the bedside table, opening it.
“How long has she been awake?” the doctor asked, directing the question to the stranger at my bedside.
“Ten minutes, maybe.”
“Any complaints?” He directed the question again to my bedside stranger.
“None verbal. She was wincing at the light though, so a headache. Her throat sounded ro
ugh, so dry throat.”
The doctor nodded, typing into the tablet silently.
After a tense silence, he looked at the man and me and said, “All normal things after what you’ve been through.”
Clearing the dryness in my throat, I asked the question I was now terrified to hear the answer to. “What exactly have I been through?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” the good doctor asked instead of answering my question.
I accepted his redirect and answered, “Studying for my final in my and Tuesday’s apartment. Tuesday had just left to go to a sorority party that she begged me to go to. I stayed behind. What’s going on?”
The man next to me hissed like he was stung by a bee and my eyes darted to him again. He was sitting with his feet planted wide and he hung his head low but not before I saw the immense amount of pain cross his beautiful features. I had hurt him again with my answer. I didn’t understand.
Feeling a hand grab mine, my attention went back to the doctor at my left side and his face was a mask of sympathy.
“I’m so sorry to bring bad news. You were in an accident. We placed you in a medically induced coma for two weeks to protect your brain. When you were brought in, you had severe head trauma and swelling on the brain. We relieved the pressure but felt it best to keep you in a coma. What year is it?”
My head spun with the news that I had been in a coma for two weeks. It spun that I was even in an accident. I don’t remember getting in the car. I remember studying and that was it.
“2014,” I rasped.
Tears were filling my eyes and making my saliva thick.
The doctor’s face fell even more.
I began to realize that maybe I had lost more time than I thought.
“One of the symptoms of your head injury is memory loss. It could be as little as a couple of days or weeks, or it could be as severe as a few years. Unfortunately, we weren’t sure how severe it was until you woke up. You’ve lost five years of time. It’s 2019.”
My breaths came out in ragged pants.
I lost five years!
How the hell did I lose so much?
Oh my God.
My chest felt like it was being sat on by an elephant and I couldn’t breathe.
Struggling to grasp my hospital nightgown off my chest, I scratched and tugged, trying to catch my breath.
The monitors around me began beeping wildly, but I couldn’t pay that any attention. I was currently losing my ever-lovin’ mind.
Actually, I already lost my mind, so really, I was just losing my shit.
“Do something!” a male voiced growled, but it sounded like I was hearing it through a cup. My vision started dotting black, and I realized I was close to passing out.
At that point, I didn’t care.
I wished they’d put me back in a coma so I could wake up from this nightmare.
Chapter Two
Henley
MY HEAVY EYELIDS FINALLY lifted after several minutes of trying and failing. They felt like weights were holding them down and it was hard to keep them open.
Unlike last time I was awake, the lights were off, and the curtain pulled shut. I wasn’t sure what time it was, and my disorientation was scary, but I kept a lid on it. I didn’t want to have a panic attack again.
I couldn’t remember a time when I was as freaked out as I was when I first woke up.
It was uncontrollable though.
A doctor telling me I had lost five years.
Five years of my life.
Gone.
Poof.
The itch in my throat reminded me I really needed some water.
Sitting up slowly, so as not to get dizzy, I saw the same stranger from earlier sleeping in the chair at my right.
In normal circumstances, I would find him attractive.
Really attractive.
His golden-brown hair looked as if it needed a cut, but the person it was attached to said screw it.
A darker, but no less sexy brown beard framed his face and made his sharp cheekbones stand out even more.
His elbow was propped on the arm of the chair, his face in his hands, causing the muscle in his forearms to bulge and flex.
My cheeks flamed when I realized I had been staring at the stranger who freaked me out a little when I woke up the first time.
Quickly averting my eyes, I went back to my original task of getting a cup of water.
I threw my legs over the crappy hospital bed, careful not to accidentally touch the stranger’s chair.
My feet hit the floor and I was dangerously close to the hot man that hadn’t left my side. I didn’t want to wake him and deal with the intimate way he looked at me, so I scooted off the bed, and stood up way too quickly if my dizzy head had anything to say about it.
“Woah,” I mumbled under my breath, throwing a hand behind me to balance myself on the bed.
“Careful,” a deep timbre whispered in my ear, catching the breath in my throat.
Strong hands grabbed my waist gently and my spine tingled with the electricity that came with it.
The touch was soft, barely there, but I felt every bit of it like the man’s hands were on fire and searing through my hospital gown and leaving a mark on me.
He must have heard my breath catch because his hands moved from my waist to my elbow quickly and the heat of his body left my back.
“Sorry, was trying to catch you,” he mumbled, sounding confused and hurt.
For some reason, I felt bad for my reaction to him. I knew I had no reason to feel guilty, but clearly, he knew me well enough to stay at my bedside. I wasn’t sure how long I had known him before the accident, but it had to be a couple of months at least.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, peering over my shoulder and catching his eyes.
He gazed at me as if he knew me, but I was a stranger. That feeling sucked.
I found myself comfortable around him.
I felt at ease.
His gaze was unnerving, but he made me feel something.
I wasn’t sure what that something was, but I knew it was big.
He gave me a soft, barely there smile that was meant to comfort me, but did the opposite.
“Who are you?” I asked.
I needed to call him something other than bedside stranger.
He looked torn, but ultimately said, “Graham.”
I rolled his name around in my head while studying his features. Now that he was awake, I could see the color of his eyes and they were a greenish-blue that stood out a lot with his dark hair and even darker beard.
“Graham,” I repeated. “It fits you.”
Some of the gloom and doom left his face and the corners of his lips tipped up in a small, more genuine smile.
“That’s what you said when we first met,” he told me.
Curiosity got the best of me and I turned to face him fully, needing every detail of when I met him. Graham’s hand stayed on my elbow, and his other hand found the small of my back, holding me close to him.
I didn’t mind the contact that should have felt foreign but was the complete opposite.
“And how did we meet exactly? Who are you to me?” I rapid fire asked him.
Graham opened and closed his mouth, exactly twice, trying to find the right answer. There was no right or wrong answer. There was only the truth and I hoped like hell he’d give it to me. I knew I had been in an accident, but I didn’t need to be coddled. I needed answers.
“Henley!” someone exclaimed next to me, the voice sounding extremely familiar.
“Tuesday?”
My brows furrowed when I broke eye contact with Graham and saw my best friend who didn’t look like I remembered.
I guessed five years had changed her. Before I lost my memory, Tuesday was a tall, blond, and pink-headed fairy. She was short, no taller than five foot three and that was pushing it. She kept her hair long, blond on the top and pink toward the ends and it was always curled. Her style was n
othing other than “I don’t care.” She wore whatever was most comfortable that went with her punk rock vibe.
Now, she looked as if she was going to a job interview and needed to look a certain way for it. Her hair was dyed a deep brown with gray streaks through it. It was still long, but nowhere near as long as I remembered, only hitting a little below her collarbone. It was also stick straight, no thick, chunky curls like I remembered. She had nice, black slacks on, a baby pink silk shirt tucked into the slacks, and a leather jacket covering her arms. She was a little taller, and when she moved to my side, I noticed it was because of the fuck me pumps she was wearing.
Don’t get me wrong, she looked hot, just not the Tuesday I remembered.
Tuesday pulled me into a fierce hug, trying to hide the tears that were welling in her eyes by tucking her face into the spot between my neck and shoulder. Tuesday never did like showing her emotions very much.
“We missed you so much,” she said in a relieved breath.
“The last thing I remember is you trying to convince me to go to a party down the street from our apartment. It feels like that happened last night, but you’ve changed a lot since then,” I told her, pulling out of her embrace to grab her by the shoulders and get a good look at her.
She had a few more laugh lines around her face, but nothing else I could visibly see that changed.
“I heard you lost five years, I barely believed it. I’m just so happy to see you, even if you don’t remember the birth of my daughter.” She laughed, moisture still rolling down her cheeks unabashedly.
“You had a daughter?” I yelled, shaking her in shock.
“Yeah, she’s almost two now. Her name is Tarryn, named after you.”
My eyes filled with tears and spilled over in no time. I felt like I was robbed of seeing my niece being born, being named after me and the first two years of her life. I had never been so happy and angry at the same time. I had never pictured Tuesday settling down long enough to have children and I was so upset I missed every moment of it.
“I can’t wait to meet her again,” I told Tuesday, shoving my anger down and hugging her hard.
“Me either. I’ll be happy when you can get out of this hospital and come over for dinner so we can catch up. I want to help you regain your memories.”
