Kinsley fell in love with Phoenix Maverick, an NHL player for a team she never imagined supporting. But when Kinsley suffers from a head injury and forgets the last six years of her life, she struggles balancing being the person Phoenix fell in love...
Recap: Kinsley met Phoenix at a game for the first time that she remembers. He asked her out on a date.
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Late September. 2016
"So, what, I'm dating him?"
Sadie walked through the kitchen, hands full of vegetables and ingredients, her bare feet padding across the hard wood floor. It was eleven at night but she had to work tomorrow and wanted to get dinner organised ahead of time.
"Yeah. Dating is a word for it."
"Do I love him?"
"Yeah."
"Sadie," I slammed a hand on the countertop as she went about putting potatoes and carrots on a cutting board. "Again with the being vague. Like, where has he been? The injury was three weeks ago and I'm just hearing about this now?"
Her knife went through the potato's, with quick efficiency. "Do you really want to do this right now?"
"No, I'm asking for no fucking reason."
"Sheesh," she mumbled, getting a leek out of the fridge. "Fine. He was there, Kins. The night it happened. He was the one who took you to the hospital. You had no idea who he was when you woke up to him lifting you out of his car. He thought it was just. . . temporary."
"He was at the hospital?"
Getting there had always been an insignificant detail. The last thing I could recall without haze was Sadie sitting next to me while a doctor fired seven thousand questions off and then insisted we do a CAT scan.
I felt fine. Sort of sore and nauseous. But Sadie quietly sobbing next to me after a bump on the head seemed dramatic, even for her.
Little did I know, the fact that I thought I was going to be late handing in a paper for management and communications class because I wasn't in my dorm writing it, was the real cause for concern.
"Fine, whatever," I said, getting a glass off the shelf. I felt dehydrated and sort of sick, I filled it up and leaned my back against the bench. "How come he didn't come and see me?"
Sadie threw a handful of potatoes into her slow cooker. "So, when he arrived, I was there. He'd called ahead and told me what happened and where he was taking you. You recognised me but not him so the doctor asked him to wait outside. Which he. . . wasn't happy with, but he listened.
"The doctor did what he does, ran some tests, all of that and diagnosed retrograde amnesia. He had no idea how long it would last. Bla bla bla. You know all of that. It'd been hours at this point but Phoenix was still waiting. The doctor and I talked to him and we all decided it was best to give you a bit of time to adjust to . . . your new normal."
"It feels like you guys hid this huge part of my life from me."
"That wasn't it," Sadie snapped, ignoring her meal prep to look at me. "You had to process losing six years of your life, Kinsley. We didn't want to unload enormous amounts of information on you at one time. Phoenix agreed to wait for a little while, let you ease back into life and come around when it wasn't all so. . . daunting."
