Burning Love

Chapter One

Colton

A second chance. A fresh start. A new beginning. That's what everyone is telling me. For the past ten years I have been living in what I thought was my life. I had a good job, a roof over my head, and a woman I adored. Then one hit to the head by a ninety mile an hour baseball turned my world upside down. I was living as someone else.

It felt like when you put fruit in a blender and hit purée. Everything blended together. My life before and the life I was living as Christian Gallagher. It all came flooding together until I could barely see straight. I had a wife and a daughter and a life with them that I loved very much. We had plans and a future and it was all ripped away in an instant. I woke up in the hospital and it was like someone had taken an eraser to my memories. I was forced to start life all over again with no family, no friends, and no memories of who I was.

All I had were the snippets of life that were in Gallagher's file before he joined the marines. Parents were killed in a car accident. Grandparents were long gone. He became a ward of the state. He bounced around from foster home to foster home. I came home with nothing. It was a very dark time for me. Nothing felt like home to me. The feeling of not belonging was crippling. It got to a point where I didn't want to live anymore.

In that darkest hour an angel came and rescued me. That angel was Kara. She was waiting tables at the diner down the street from my apartment when I came in for what was to be my last meal. Kara saw a desperate man fighting with himself to live. She sat in that booth with me and kept me talking until the sun came up and that urge to kill myself was gone. She saved me that night.

After her shift, she walked me home. She stayed there while I slept. It was the first night since I came home that I actually slept. Kara messaged me every day after that to make sure I was okay. I jokingly referred to them as proof of life texts. She would bring me dinner every night and helped me get the help I needed. She really helped me get back on my feet. Without her I would not be here today. I owe her everything.

As the months and years went by our budding friendship blossomed into a strong connection. We spent every day together. She encouraged me to join the fire department to fulfill my urges to help people. Kara wasn't just my angel, she was becoming the woman I loved. She owned my heart and I was ready to marry her when our world was turned upside down again.

I woke up in another hospital bed, but this time I remembered everything. My past as Colton and my present as Christian. Both worlds colliding all at once. Part of me desperate to see the woman I married all those years ago. And hold my beautiful little girl in my arms. Ever present was the life I had created as Christian. There was Kara and everything we shared. We had this amazing life together, but I also had built a beautiful life with Lucy and our daughter. I was being pulled in a million different directions with my emotions. I felt an obligation to both sides, but I was also struggling to make sense of how this could have happened.

How does a mistake of identity happen in this day and age with electronic finger prints and massive background checks? My photos were always linked with my documentation in the Marines as well as my finger prints. I know Christian and I looked a little alike but was it that significant of a similarity that would have so many people confused. What I found out later during the investigation was that the doctor working on both me and Gallagher had gotten our dog tags mixed up in all the chaos. Instead of admitting her mistake she covered it up. Going as far as switching our finger prints and records just to keep her from getting her medical license revoked. The doctor was already on thin ice for past mistakes and if this mistake had gotten out, she was going to lose everything, so she made the choice to ruin my life and everyone who mattered most to me.

For ten years my wife and daughter thought I was dead. Their whole lives were ripped out from under them. My parents buried a son that wasn't really their son. So much pain caused because that doctor was only thinking about herself. I have never laid a hurtful hand on any woman, but I wanted to strangle the life right out of her. Now I am left picking of the pieces of not just one life but two lives.

It has only been a couple of months since I got my memories back. I came home to find my daughter was no longer the baby I left, she is a thriving eleven-year-old. And my wife is in love with another man and as of today she will be my ex-wife. Before all of this I never imagined my life without Lucy by my side. After my retirement from the Marines we were going to move back to her home in Seattle and open the coffee and book shop she always dreamed of having. She has the dream, but she did it without me. She thought I was dead, so I can't blame her for moving on with her life and finding love again. We aren't exactly the people we were when we got married. Life changes and people grow and change. Even though I have my memories back, I am not the same man I was ten years ago.

I am not the same man I was three months ago. I still love Lucy, but it's not the same as when we first met. I may not have been Colton at the time of meeting Kara, but my heart was the same and it fell for her and her heart. I still love Kara more than anything, but she only knows me as Christian. She knows nothing about this stranger, Colton. After all of this could she still love me even though I am no longer Christian? It's a question I have been asking myself a lot lately.

I am trying to give her some space to process. Lord knows I have a lot to figure out myself. I don't want to push her if she is not ready. This is a complicated situation, more than any other relationship. It's a lot to ask a person who fell in love with one person only to find out they are a completely different person, to love this new person. I can't imagine a world without Kara.

I sit staring at the divorce papers sitting on the table in front of me. One part of my life is ending while the other one is still unknown. The rest of the world is moving forward while I am still struggling to catch up with my feet cemented to the same spot. I don't know if I will ever be able to find my way out of this.

With each stroke of my pen my heart breaks a little more. It breaks for me, for Lucy and for Bailey. This was not the way I wanted our lives to be. But this is the hand I was dealt and it's up to me to find a way to live again.