by Celia Crown
In those hours, she had a turmoil battle within herself. She’s happy to see her family and the extended family of buff uncles. Laura believes that’s what she should call them, but that sounds a little weird. It’s too complicated and she doesn’t even want to get the terminology down to the precise title.
However, she hadn’t seen Dean yet and she’s scared to.
On a bad day, Laura wishes to forget.
Forget the numerous case files. Forget the court dates. Forget responsibilities. And most importantly, she hates herself for wanting to forget Dean.
Dean isn’t someone who is easily forgotten. He’s the butane hellfire that scorches her soul and leaves his burnt footprints on her heart.
She thought of him every day, a compulsion she can’t control.
It’s why she’s hesitant to go to her mom’s wedding early. She’s going to the wedding because it’s her mother’s big day and she will never miss it even if the world was ending. It’s just the thought of seeing Dean again after two years frightens her.
Being in Nevada means that she will most likely be seeing Dean again, and he won’t see her as anything other than Brenda’s daughter.
She shouldn’t bring her hope up for anything.
He doesn’t recognize her, after all.
His name makes her heart sore, her nose itches as she closes her eyes.
Some would say loving someone for two years is a long time, but she doesn’t think so. Ever since Dean, no one has ever made her feel alive. Around six months ago, she began to date again. A couple of boring dinners, uncomfortable lunches, and awkward blind dates later, she gave up on finding someone who will make her heart soar.
It would be a lie if she hadn’t thought of ways to avoid running into him.
She’s a coward, afraid to get hurt again.
Their love was passionate, and their breakup was explosive.
She was young when they met. An intern shadowing a prominent lawyer at a fancy law firm and he was the violent and ill-tempered criminal sitting at the table with his defense attorney.
It was love at first sight. She sat with the other townspeople in Nevada’s courthouse while he stood with his defense attorney fighting his bail against her mentor. Their eyes met, and it felt like the world died around them, Laura still remembers the feeling of her throat closing and heart thumping madly.
Time spent with him was something she’ll always treasure. She still loves him, even after what had happened. Laura believes what they had was real, but he thought everything they were is lies fabricated to help the prosecutor win the case.
She hasn’t been to Nevada since the day she ran out of the hospital. It’s better to forget him and move on because he’s convinced himself that the Laura he loves is a fragment of his imagination. He didn’t let her tell her side of the story, and she thinks that it’s not going to change his mind about her when he looks at her with so much hate and regret.
Regret loving her. That broke her because she did love him.
At the age of twenty, experiencing the biggest heartbreak in her life, she grieved for them. Grieved for the memories that are lost in his mind after the doctors pronounced amnesia on him.
She left Nevada the very same day.
“Laura, which one is better?” Honey’s inquiry voice brings her out of the depressive mood.
Her amber eyes absorbing the beautiful writings on two pieces of papers. It’s practice for the cake decoration, her sister does things differently. She uses calligraphy words to perfect the curves and lines when she draws on the clean surface of the cake. Then, she uses the steadiness and professionalism of a top neurosurgeon scalpel techniques to make the designs perfect.
Utilize every skill, as Honey had said with a wide grin.
Once her sister is committed to something, there’s nothing anyone could do or say to change her mind.
“Left.” Laura points at the finer and more simple designs.
Mavis sips the mysteriously colored drink she’s made behind the bar and grimaces, “It looks like chicken scratch.”
“Excuse me,” Honey scoffs in defensiveness, “This is true art.”
“It’s lines and a sorry excuse of a second-grade cursive writing.”
Honey opens her mouth, but Laura chimes in. “I think it looks perfect.”
Her sister smiles happily, “At least someone appreciates my creativity.”
“Well, you lost your home to creativity.” Mavis passes the glass of failure to the bartender to dispose of as she starts on a new concoction.
Laura chuckles as her sisters banter back and forth with their men holding the urge to roll their eyes at the stupidity that’s coming out of their mouths.
She flips the catalog of flower arrangements on the table as she sits in front of Honey who is torn between drawing and arguing. Arguing won because her hand stopped their movements and favor all her energy on smiling and teasing.
She personally likes gardenias, but her mother loves pink roses. Pastel pink symbolizes gentleness and admiration; traits that suit her like the goddess she is, and Laura’s heart overflows with contentment as she watches Brenda and Nate whispering to each other with a clear air of love between them.
Laura misses it, the feeling of love that gives her the courage to do anything.
The courage that Dean gives her when she doubts herself.
“Who’s that?”
Her amber eyes snap up to Mavis, her blue eyes blinking owlishly at the door. Laura furrows her eyebrows and turns her attention to the opened door that has her heart abruptly stopping.
A mess of dirty blonde hair falling over a set of deep brown eyes that keeps her up at night. His height and body size made him tip his head down to get through the bar door as his haunting eyes zones in on her, a flash of recognition flashes in them as her heart gives a hopeful beat.
His pants stretch tight against his strong thighs as his big hands hang to his side, Laura is speechless for a moment with a mind of numbness. Her tongue lays heavily as the inside of her mouth becomes cotton dry with her eyes unable to let go of his intense gaze.
Her Dean still looks the same.
Smoldering rage and seething wrath.
“Dean.” the new president of Noir nods his welcome.
One of the brothers in the back shouts over everyone’s head, “I thought you were rotting in your house! You’ve been in prison for two years and the first thing you do when you get out is to cope up in your depressing ass home for a week!”
The man doesn’t give any answers as he holds Laura’s eyes, her heart spikes up a new rhythm that has her body struggling to do many things simultaneously.
She wants to run up to him, smother him in kisses and tears. She wants to hide and pick up the pieces of her heart that are slowly falling apart again after seeing him. And most of all, she wants him to hold her and call her name.
“I’ll put the order down for the flowers,” she murmurs, tearing her eyes from the man and Honey jerks her head back to her.
She must have seen the glassiness in her avoiding gaze to the floor, the wheels are turning in her head as she nods wordlessly.
Sometimes Laura detests how observantly smart her sister is, Honey has always been someone who looks like an airhead, but she’s very perceptive.
“Okay,” Honey answers as Laura closes the catalog.
She picks it up and tucks it under her arm and turns her back to the door and his boring stare. Walking out the back door is suspicious to those who’re paying attention to her, but most are going up to Dean and talking animatedly about what he’s been missing.
Laura doesn’t look back when the bar’s backdoor closes.
Chapter Three
Dean
Watching her slip out the backdoor causes a sharp sense of fear that punches him in the guts.
It’s the same panic that settled in his stomach when the woman ran out of the hospital room two years ago. He was helpless to the pain that tore through his body a
nd he was seconds too late, it allowed her to fall through his fingers.
Not this time.
Dean dashes out the door, his brothers’ voices yelling over his thumping boots. He turns the corner to where the only way the backdoor can lead out, her body breezes through and down the street. Her back gets smaller as he makes a greater effort to catch up to her.
His hand locks on her elbow, her glowing amber eyes fly up to his in shock. His heart slams against his ribcage with a screeching halt as a shiver drops down his spine, she feels it too. The electric thrill can be felt through his hand on her trembling elbow.
“Where are you going?” his voice is rough and difficult to contain his emotions.
“Flower shop,” she stutters.
The same soft, beautiful voice that plagues his mind.
“I’ll go with you.”
Her little head nod is enough to satisfy him. Dean keeps his hand on her elbow, holding her close to him as he sorts through his thoughts.
“What’s your name?” his voice rasps.
He feels the subtle twitch under the winter coat, his brown eyes bore into her amber ones. She looks away, biting her bottom lip that tests his control to not kiss her.
She’s beautiful, he thinks.
A purr almost comes out, Dean knocks away the simmering volatile mood that tends to leak through the cracks of his willpower.
“Laura,” she whispers, and he almost didn’t catch it. “Laura Lewis.”
“Laura,” he tests her name. It falls naturally on his tongue, as if he had said it so many times that it’s accustomed on his lips.
He tells her his.
“I know.”
Her brows pinch together, pretty eyes hastily blinking away the wetness that forms while her lips wobble. She’s upset, a trail of anger claws at his lungs when the next breath leaves him abruptly.
He’s not upset at her, he’s angry at himself for causing her to have that expression.
“I’m sorry.”
Laura tilts her head in confusion. He’s much taller than her so she has to look up, and he steps closer. He needs to be close to her, an addiction poisoning his mind, it forces him to seek her out to get his fix.
“Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, but if it means getting her to smile at him, then he’ll gravel on the floor for this woman. Dean wants to say sorry for the tears she shed at the hospital, he wants her to know he’s sorry now for the pain in her eyes.
Maybe he did something to her in the past, maybe he hurt her beyond redemption because she ran away from him with an apology of mistaking him for someone.
He knows it’s not true. She was crying for him; the emotional pain and tightened shaking arms, she was afraid he’d push her away, He wouldn’t do it then, he won’t do it now. He will hold onto her and not let go until she’s ready to give him answers to the missing memories.
He won’t force her to tell him, the thought of forcing her to do anything infuriates him. Dean’s protective, and it’s a feeling he’s familiar with because even though his brain has forgotten, his body is on autopilot when it comes to her.
It remembers everything.
“You were at the hospital,” Dean states plainly.
Laura hesitates, “Yes.”
“We should get going.”
A quick change of subject irks him, but he’ll ask questions later.
Spending time with her is his top priority right now.
He’s not the type to make small talk, he’s more content on watching her. He slows his pace to her side as she begins to walk to the flower shop, she doesn’t look back at him to see if he’s following and he has a feeling she knows he’ll follow close behind. Closer than what is normally acceptable, but he’s starving for her attention.
He takes in details of her; the loneliness reflecting her gorgeous amber eyes, a protective layer of thick coat wrapping tightly around her body, and the pair of small hands shoved deep into her pockets. A desperate attempt to control herself from touching him when her expressive eyes clearly begging for his hands to caress her soft skin.
It takes him a while to notice how she’s taking shortcuts around town that only locals have intimate knowledge of. She’s been here before, it further proves that she knows him.
Soon, he reminds himself, Dean will get his answers one way or another.
Laura sneaks little glances at him and pulls her eyes away when she’s caught, it’s adorable how a grown woman can be so innocently hesitant, as if she’s afraid to upset him.
He doesn’t have that thin wall separating his rational thoughts and uncontrollable fury. Her presence serves as the purpose of water to his volcanic temper, he likes the feeling. It’s been years since he feels this eased and content, he’s angry all the time and the issue stems from genetics as the prison’s mandatory psychiatrist points out. That he doesn’t deny, he embraces that as his strength to protect everyone close to him.
His juvenile record is dirty as hell; fights, vandalism, and petty crimes that smears his name across town like wildfire. The court gave mandatory therapy sessions with a psychologist to change his behavior because he was a juvenile, he had to sit through the boring hours.
That didn’t work, it did the opposite. It made him angrier. The hours wasted and the condescending voice of that woman telling him he’s sick and needs help rubs him the wrong way.
He breaks the office lamp over her head on his seventh visit.
Obviously, he was jailed and the family of the psychologist pressed charges, he was remanded to the state’s custody.
His father was more interested in chasing after anything with legs, and his mother was long gone. He didn’t know where, she just packed her stuff one day and disappeared from his life.
The second time he received professional help was when he was sentenced to two years in prison with his anemia state. He lost something priceless to him and it infuriated him beyond reasonable levels. Every little thing sets him off because he tried and tried to remember what the hell happened in the last five years that made him seek comfort for the phantom warmth that his body was used to.
By far, he was the first prisoner to take on a group of men that’s been labeled as the higher-ups in prison hierarchy. He had aggressions to let out and they were picking fights, so he entertained them and shed so much blood that he was put into solitary for the rest of his twenty-three-month sentence.
The court mandates he has weekly therapy sessions with a psychiatrist, it was a man who thought he knew Dean better than himself. He was prescribed some mood suppressant pills to relax him so he doesn’t have explosive rage all the time.
No one tells Dean to do anything he doesn’t want to.
The court knew, the inmates knew, the guards knew.
The psychiatrist didn’t, and Dean firmly growled that he would not take the medication. The man refused to listen and stated some law that he can make him take the pills if it means the safety of other inmates.
He choked the man with his bare hand.
Guards subdued him with tasers and batons, he was sedated with the alternative form of pills. Dean felt no needle piercing his arm, but he felt something swooshing and eating away the redness he sees in his eyes.
Even with the drugs running through his system every week, the irritation was still there like a leech. Fights still happened and if Dean were to say it himself, he felt even more resentment toward everyone.
He was going through withdrawal from the precious comfort he craved through the dissonance between mind and body.
The only thing that kept him from going insane was that there was a possibility he could see her again, he wasn’t sure how, but he knew in his gut that she is the key to his terrifyingly wide hollow memories.
It frightens him, she frightens him. The absurd amount of power she has over him is surreal. However, he doesn’t feel threatened by the hold she has on him, and he liked it. She’s grounding him to real
ity, alleviating his unbalanced temper.
“Do you want to come in?” her voice takes him out of his thoughts as she stops at the flower shop door.
He twists the knob and pushes the door open, coming face to face with a woman’s pale face of fear. Dean doesn’t find pleasure from scaring people, he doesn’t feel anything other than annoyance because when he asks for something, they stammer and take long ass breaks between words.
“What can I do for you?” the woman’s weak and unsteady tone lean towards a higher pitch.
Laura smiles, calming the owner down immediately.
“I’m here to order flowers for a wedding,” Laura finds the shop name over at the fliers, “Doris?”
“Ah, yes.” Doris smiles shakily back, casting Dean a cautious gaze.
His brown eyes watch Laura as she mentions all the details of the type of flower she needs, when she needs it, and how many batches of pink roses is required. The more the better, he hears her say and he briefly wonders what her favorite flowers are.
No doubt it would be expensive.
Her coat is neat and straightened, a status of money and power. His taste in women coincidentally matches his other two brothers. He likes beauty and brain. He likes Laura. A woman he knows nothing about, but not pursuing her is not an option.
He wants her. He had her before, and he still wants her now. If he can’t recall the past, then it can screw itself and he’ll make new ones with her.
After he gets her to admit they were together before.
If it weren’t for the prison incident that caused him five years of his life, he would be holding her hand now, instead of standing down and giving her space. Cornering her and taking away her choices could make anyone spooked and run, especially if it’s Dean doing it.
He’s not dubbed the berserker for simple reasons.
“Thank you.” Laura nods her gratitude, slipping the receipt and credit card into her pocket.
The woman, Deloris or whatever reiterates all the finer details to Laura who listens attentively.
