Page 2 of Accepting Fate
Instead, I set out to have the full college experience. Because if my life was going to end at any moment, I wanted to have at least lived a somewhat happy life first.
I focused on classes, attended football games, and met more friends along the way. Allie and I even started a t-shirt tradition to document our time at college. We got each other a shirt whenever we passed a test and after each football game we attended. And then for our birthdays or basically any celebration, we got another one. I have so many t-shirts now that I can’t even count.
School and time flew by and before I knew it, graduation was closing in. I had to think about a more permanent place to land. Despite my persistence to move forward, the danger was still there and I needed peace of mind. I’d been taking various self-defense courses so that if the time ever came, I could defend myself, but I felt the need to be as far away from New York as possible. Alabama just wasn’t far enough. Not to mention, I was missing cooler weather and good hiking trails.
According to Google, the west coast was my best bet. And when I saw that Oregon and Washington were at the top of the list, I had a memory flash through my mind.
It was of me and Mom. She was on the couch and I was on the floor, sitting between her legs while she braided some intricate weaving into my long brown hair and dialed in on her show.
The opening scene was a view of the Seattle Space Needle. That show always made her laugh, or more times than not – made her cry. Even when she had more bad days than good during the week, she would always give me recaps of the newest episodes.
As the memory hit me, I felt like Mom was sitting right there beside me. I could hear her sweet laugh that was so infectious and distinct that I know I will never forget it. The feeling was bittersweet because, although I love my mom, I found myself wishing she was like that all the time. But life is too short to focus on all the negative memories. I wanted to always remember the happy times.
After that moment, my mind was made up. I spent a week researching hospitals in the Seattle area, as well as the town itself. Mt Rainier Medical Center caught my attention not only because of its name but the fact that it was a level one trauma center, which was exactly what I was looking for post-graduation.
The last few days of college passed in a blur, due to Allie and I religiously studying for the national exam. We didn't leave her father's office for a month straight, but we passed with flying colors on the first attempt. Both of us were so happy we cried for an hour straight before her mom made us get all dressed up and took us out to celebrate.
A few days later, with my car packed to the brim, it was time to drive the grueling forty hours to Seattle. I said a very heartbreaking goodbye to Allie and her parents. The t-shirts we exchanged that day are still my favorite. Since Allie was taking a job as a NICU nurse in Florida, her shirt had a gator wearing a stethoscope while riding a surfboard. Mine had a seahawk with a stethoscope around its neck, riding on top of a ferry boat. I would miss that girl, but starting my new life in Seattle was just what I needed.
The journey to get there was hard and some days, I wanted to give up but as far as life goes, I was doing okay. The only problem was, I knew I’d never be totally happy until my demons disappeared for good.
Though I built my life as far away from those demons as possible, the questions still lingered in the back of my mind and the worries I took from that house were still with me. I told myself that it didn’t matter anymore and tried to accept the fact that I may never know if my gut feeling was right.
But then, almost eight years later, someone left a note on my car.
I knew what it meant, and I just hoped my mother and I didn't share the same fate.
Chapter One
Logan
"Lolo,remindmeagainwhy the hell we are using our only day off and the hottest day of the year to move you into this house that looks straight out of Twilight?” Harper yells from the front door.
I shake my head and laugh as I walk up the last few steps to the loft. Harper is very much a Pacific Northwest girl. After going to school in Alabama, a sunny 40° day is nothing to me.
Leaning over the railing in the loft, I yell down to her, "Because I’m sick of paying a stupid amount of money for that tiny ass apartment that I only see from the inside of my eyelids!”
I hear her mumble what I’m sure is cursing me a thousand ways to Sunday. I don’t expect anything less from her. Harper’s personality is just as dominating as her flaming red hair.
Harper took me by surprise when I first met her. I was walking into my first shift in the emergency room at Mt Rainier Medical Center and saw, more like heard, a girl yelling. I walked around the corner and I expected to see a wife yelling at her husband. But it was Harper.
She stood there, a tad bit taller than me with her hair in a high ponytail that extended down the middle of her back, in black scrubs and black Nikes. She was staring straight up at a very tall older man, her green eyes full of fire, pointing her finger in his face and cursing him with every name in the English dictionary.
I was so shocked that I stopped right in my tracks. The moment I saw the man place a hand on her arm and aggressively push her away, followed by Harper’s fist connecting with his face, my trance was broken. I ran up behind the asshole, who was still standing despite Harper’s amazing left hook, and tapped him on the shoulder. As he whipped around, I punched him right in the crotch. The douche canoe doubled over in pain and I put both hands on his shoulders, sending my knee straight up into his nose as hard as I could. Blood gushed from his face, and he fell to the floor. I quickly jumped out of the way, so he didn't crush me.
For such a big man, he was a baby when it came to pain.
Once the guy was down, I pulled his arm behind his back and sat on him. I folded my arms over my chest and when I looked up at Harper, she was smiling like a kid in a candy store and plopped down next to me on the asshole's back. We sat in silence waiting for security and since then we have been inseparable.
I still don’t know to this day what that guy did to deserve the wrath of Harper Olivia Masen, but it secured a bond in us that has been strong for over three years now. She may be a pain in my ass with all that sass. And she will never replace Allie, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.
I break out of my memory of that unforgettable first day to get back to the task at hand. It doesn't take us long to move all my belongings into my new two-story cabin in Cliff Haven, a small town that is located thirty minutes from the hospital in Seattle.
After I put down the last box and Harper leaves with me promising to buy her coffee every day for the next month, I sit down and take it all in.
The quiet and serenity is what I have been craving. I was stuck in a studio apartment in downtown Seattle paying an obscene amount of money per month. I hated it so much that I would pick up extra shifts so I could spend as little time there as possible.
I found out about this place purely by luck. I was talking to Harper at the nurses' station about my hatred of the apartment, when a little old lady, whose name I learned later to be Mrs. Wanda, with hair white as snow, came up to the desk. Her husband's door had been open, and she overheard us. On the spot, she offered me this place for half of what I was paying for the apartment.