Loss… a word Elizabeth Haddington knows only too well. Despite the tragedies she’s endured, she’s been able to rise from the adversity she’s faced and begin her life again. Being a self-assured and strong woman, she knows she doesn’t need anyone to make her whole.
HHate, pain, and twisted memories are all Sawyer Bryant’s ever known. He’d slowly lost who he was and what he should’ve become. His only escape was the military… Eight years later, as an ex-Navy SEAL, he’s forced to confront his father and their disturbed and violent past.
Then one day, his life is turned upside down, when he glimpses a woman singing in her car at a set of traffic lights. Thinking he’d never see her again, amazingly he finds her performing with her band at the local bar. This chance encounter brings these two lost souls together. Once Sawyer gets a taste of her melodic voice, there’s no turning back. For Elizabeth, when she meets Sawyer… she realizes she’s fallen hard. But is this really love she’s feeling or does love build slowly over time? What happens when fate turns things around on you, creates flashes you can’t turn from… moments that will shape your life?
They are faced with the choice of darkness surrounding them or to rid themselves of the guilt and pain and move toward the light. This story is about life’s moments. How they can make you or break you, and one man’s hope that… Love, won’t judge him.
Sawyer was the first person to not define me by my parents’ deaths. My past felt so far away when I was with him. I could let it go. Let them go. My parents’ faces haunted me every night since that day twelve years ago. I was ready to set the memory free. I felt loved and I wanted him to feel the same. His childhood was dark and I wanted to shed light onto him, fill his heart with the white light of love, evicting the blackness that I saw flash across his eyes when he thought deeply to himself. I wanted him to get better with me. This was crazy. This man, this idea, this night. I loved him and whatever demons he had, my heart was ready to move on to something better, and that was Sawyer.
His breathing became even and I chanced a look at his face. His dark eyelashes fanned down. He looked like an arc angel. I situated myself on my side so that my body rested against his. I placed my head on his shoulder and kissed his cheek.
“I love you, too,” I whispered touching the skin of his cheek with my lips. “I do.”
His breathing stopped and I recognized when I looked up that he would be awake. I lifted up on my forearm and we watched each other in a deep silence.
Amanda Marie Johnson was born and raised in Valrico, Florida. She’s now surrounded by mountains with her husband and three children in Ogden, Utah. She attended Weber State University and graduated with her A.S.N. She is a full-time registered nurse and works on the mother/newborn unit. Reading and writing have always been something she is passionate about. She loves to write about the human experience, love and happily ever afters. Still Life is her debut novel.
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