Page 5 of Remember, Love

3

Logan

“What the fuck is my angel doing on the cover of Maxim?”

I’m crushing the magazine, crumpling it in my fists.

“Your angel? That’s Bethany Ward. Hot-ass model.” My roommate at the VA looks over at me and snorts. “I wouldn’t mind tapping that either.”

I nearly lunge at him.

“Timpson. One more word and I will kill you.”

He shakes his head. “Crazy mothereffer.”

Maybe. But after two months, my leg and other wounds are healed and I have my memories back. Correction, all my memories except any of her. I’m being discharged with honors and they say I can go home. Today.

I stare at the magazine cover.

Bethany Ward.

My angel has a name.

I stare at the face peering at me from the front of Maxim. She’s in a tiny bathing suit. For everyone in the world to see. But that expression on her face, it hits me in the gut. She looks lost. Or like she’s searching for someone. Damnit.

I scrub my hands over my face.

“You know about her?”

Timpson grunts. He came in for an appendectomy. He’ll be out in a few days. “Yeah. The whole world knows about her.”

I clench my jaw. “How long has she been a model?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Four, five years.”

Timpson leans back on his pillows and turns his back. Discussion over. But there’s nothing more to ask. A sinking feeling settles in my stomach. A lead weight pulling me down.

I take out my picture, rub my thumb over her familiar face. Maybe I can’t remember her because I never knew her. Maybe I had this photograph as a pin-up. Some random printout from a magazine. Maybe my mind, after years of torture, made her into more than she was.

I choke back a roar. The doctors say I’m fine. That I’m recovered. But if she was only an illusion, if the soul-deep love I feel for her isn’t real? I’m not fine. I’m nowhere fucking near fine.

When the local guide with the gun carried me miles through the jungle to the nearest military outpost, all I could think of was getting back to her. Within hours I’d been medevacked. For two months of treatment I’ve dreamed of her.

Now, I see it all slip away.

“Lance Corporal. Thank you for your service.”

The military doctor has come in with my medical release papers. He shakes my hand. All the formalities have already been taken care of. I barely hear him.

I walk out of the hospital like a man falling back into his grave.

Bethany Ward.

She was never mine.

I get in the rental car and drive the long miles back to the small town where I grew up. My parents died in an accident six months back, while I was still in that hole. I groan. Everything, everyone is gone.

I pull off the highway and wind through the side streets. Finally, I turn onto the block of my childhood home. The house is mine now, until I decide what to do with it. I park the car and drop my head onto the steering wheel. Shit.

After I moment, I pull myself back together. I zip up the anguish that wants to spill out. I step out of the car and come to a dead stop.

“Angel?”

There she is, like a dream, standing in the driveway of the house next door.

“Logan? Logan!”

She knows my name. I stumble down to one knee. I clasp a hand to my chest. My angel knows my name. She sprints down the drive and flings herself into my arms.

---