Mind Lies
Authors: Harlow Stone
HARLOW STONE
HARLOW S
TONE
SPIRITED HEROINES AND THE HEROES WHO LOVE THEM
The Ugly Roses Trilogy
Reading Order:
Frayed Rope
Concealed Affliction
Blinded by Fate
Standalone Novels:
Mind Lies
Written by
Harlow Stone
All rights reserved.
Registered Copyright through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Trademarks:
This book identifies product names and services known to be trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective holders. The author acknowledges the trademarked status in this work of fiction. The publication and use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
© 2016 Harlow Stone
ISBN: 978-0-9940376-7-1
Edited by Gregory Murphy at Gregory J. Editing
Cover Images purchased from Adobe Stock
Cover design by Harlow Stone
When Jerri wakes up from a twenty-two day coma post car accident- her memory is gone.
Well… most of it.
She doesn’t remember the friends she wakes up to, her home or the business she owns. The only thing she remembers is
him
.
Locklin.
Her pretty and reckless.
The passion between the two in her dreams is far too powerful to be a cruel joke of her amnesia filled mind. Portia
—
Jerri’s best friend of ten years
—
has no idea who the man is; leaving the doctors to think thirty two year old Jerri’s lost her fucking marbles a few decades too early.
But Jerri doesn’t give up.
“
Sing to me, Jerri girl.”
Determined to find the motorcycle riding Irishman who begs her to sing in her dreams, she does just that.
Sings.
One woman, and one heartbreaking YouTube video, Jerri finds out exactly why Locklin never comes. She finds out why sometimes memories of the past are best left exactly where they came from.
The past.
#LOVELOCKLIN
“This is the last time,” I tell them.
Tears fall freely down my cheeks, but my voice is steady.
Clear.
Definitely not strong, though.
No.
Because I’m breaking.
What they see on the outside: The beautiful dress, shiny hair. Shoulders squared and perfect posture where I stand poised like a woman who has her shit together on the small stage....
It’s a lie.
A ruse.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
A gift, the packaging far prettier than what’s to be unwrapped.
I feel like a fraud, but I don’t tell them that. I feel like I’m dying. All these cracks that have continuously hurt my heart are ready to crumble.
Ready for it all to fall apart.
I’m
ready to fall apart.
They don’t know what it’s like to stand up here, calling out to the love of your life, crying to him for months, begging him to find me. To hold me and shelter me and put me back together.
But he never comes.
He never crushes me in his strong arms and tells me that I’m not crazy . . . and that he’s here. He never shows up to tell me he loves me, needs me, will never let me go.
He never comes.
He never shows up.
The crowd begins to boo. Not because they don’t want to hear me, but because they don’t want me to give up the fight. They don’t want me to let go.
I’m not a quitter, but sometimes you need to know when to stop, when to toss in the towel. Because no matter how many times you cry your heart out in front of strangers, the end result is always going to be the same. Always going to end the same.
With me.
Crying my heart out.
Alone.
Not with the man I’m supposed to share my life with.
I take a deep breath, reciting pretty much the same thing every time I sing to him. The only difference is that this time the crowd is much larger. This time, it’s not Portia aiming a web cam at me while I search for my soulmate.
The one nobody knows.
The one the doctors tell me could very well be a product of my overactive imagination due to my amnesia-filled brain.
Lies.
But I know in my heart he’s real.
I know he’s out there.
Because I can
feel
him.
Giving a light smile, the same one that never reaches my eyes, I tell them again, “This is the last time. I don’t think I’ll be able to speak after I do this, so I’m going say what I need to now. And I hope you’ll listen.”
I watch them all, those who I can see clearly, as they settle into their front row seats with their eyes trained on the stage. I wait for the hushes and murmurs to die down, all eyes on me, before I continue. “I can’t thank you all enough. What started out as an idea and a YouTube video riding on nothing but
hope
—you all clicked
view
or
share
and turned it into something viral overnight.”
Applause and cheers echo throughout the theater. I absorb the sound’s positivity, the vibrations filling me before adjusting the mic to continue. “If it weren’t for people like you, and my best friend’s support, we wouldn’t be here; and if we weren’t here, he might not hear me call for him.”
I pause to swallow past the lump in my throat. “That video-gone-viral gave me hope.” My voice breaks on the word “hope,” but I power through. “It gave me hope that the man in my memories would come back to me. It gave me hope that after so many of you shared that video—I wouldn’t be without him. Millions of people have watched that video, and I was sure that he’d be one of them.”
I blink, letting tears roll freely before giving my audience another empty, watery smile. “But he’s not here,” I softly say.
Shaking my head, I sigh. “I can’t keep doing this. Singing to the man I remember, the last song we sang together. I
can’t
. Not because I’m giving up, but because it hurts too bad.”
Wiping my cheeks, I lift my head, prepared to give them my signature line: “Maybe I imagined him. Maybe my amnesia is fierce and playing cruel tricks on me. Or maybe, just maybe,”—I pause waiting for them to say it with me—“I’ve lost my fucking marbles.”
My hollow laugh joins more boisterous ones. I watch as a few tissues are drawn from purses, people discreetly wiping their eyes. They’ve followed this love story as I have lived it. They’ve watched me cry my heart out for the man I used to know.
The man in my memories.
The one who never comes.
“So this is it, ladies and gents. This is the last time. Not because I don’t love him. Not because I don’t think of him often, but because it just hurts too damn bad.”
Squaring my shoulders, I face my cheering squad with little determination and a lot less hope. “So, to the man with dark hair and beautiful, bright blue eyes whom I remember, . . .” I pause, letting that term hang loosely because I’m a woman with amnesia who remembers nothing aside from him. After they chuckle, I finish, “who goes by the name of
Locklin
. This is from me, to desperately missing you.”
The lights in the theater dim, the spotlight above remaining lit while I sing to the man I love.
Whether or not my mind lies, I give it all I have—my heart, my soul, my love—and sing to the man from my memories, begging him to come to me.
One.
Last.
Time.