Chapter 8 Phoenix
PHOENIX
The wind sliced through my jacket, driving icy raindrops into my already-soaked clothes like needles. I wiped the water from my brow, repositioned the flashlight on the log behind me, and scanned the woods. I wasn’t the only predator out here—not this deep in the mountains, not after dark.
It was that strange, in-between hour—twilight giving way to night—when the world turned a murky shade of blue.
The rain hadn’t let up all day. A cold, relentless downpour that mirrored the storm I’d unleashed in Dr. Rose Floris’s office.
And as wild as I’d been, the skies had outdone me by afternoon.
No sunset tonight. Just a heavy gray shroud pressing down on the ridgeline, promising more chaos.
More rain. Maybe enough to wash the image of that sharp-tongued, infuriating doctor from my head.
Rose Flower—as I’d dubbed her—had hair black as raven’s wings and just as glossy, like the chrome fender on my Harley.
Her eyes were wide, almond-shaped, and so dark I found myself wondering how many shades of black existed.
Hooded lids gave her a look of permanent skepticism, while her lashes—long, dark, and feathered—were pure sex.
Her bone structure was sharp, maybe Eastern European, the kind of face sculpted for cold beauty and colder rejection.
Her body? Long and lean, with just enough curve to keep a man up at night.
And when she finally opened her mouth—that mouth—she spoke in a tone as sharp as her cheekbones and as commanding as the designer suit she wore.
But it wasn’t the eyes or the voice or the suit that haunted me.
It was the lips.
Those fucking lips.
Crimson red. The exact shade I imagined when I thought of her name—Rose. Also the exact shade her cheeks had turned after I’d done the unthinkable—bribed her with money and sex, then flipped her office like a rage-fueled gorilla.
Over the course of the night, I convinced myself it was for the best. Rose Floris, with her judgy eyes and cool detachment, was everything I never wanted in a woman.
And yet…
She had the upper hand.
And I hated that.
Not just because I wasn’t in the habit of letting a woman have control—unless it came with whips and chains—but because this woman, this shrink, held the key to my freedom.
She had power over me.
The irony burned.
A bead of sweat slid down my temple as I gripped another nail. Focus, I told myself, but the rain buzzed in my ears like a swarm of bees, and the pain between my temples pulsed like stingers.
Damn headaches.
Focus, Phoenix.
With every swing of the hammer, raindrops snuck past my collar, little devil’s fingertips sliding down my back.
The sensation was temporary, though. I focused on each one, at the exact spot on my spine where the feeling faded to nothing, reminding me of the science experiment I’d turned into. As if I needed a reminder.
Numbness. Complete loss of feeling in random spots of my body. That was one of the many symptoms—as they called them—that had slipped by Dr. Buckley and his team. My team of “medical professionals,” as they liked to call themselves.
“Temporarily mentally deficient”, the tests read.
I gritted my teeth and pounded the nail, the smooth rhythm I’d established began to waver.
It was coming. The mood swing brewing in my gut like licking flames, igniting me from the inside out. My pulse started to increase as I warned myself to get a grip before it happened, but in an ironic twist, this only ignited it more because I knew I couldn’t control it.
These types of mood swings were new to me—not the anger, the rage; I was very familiar with those emotions.
The type of anger I’d felt since waking up from my coma was an entirely new kind of mad.
An immediate, uncontrollable wave of white hot fury that gripped ahold of me like a bear trap, vibrating until it exploded out of me.
Tossing a computer on the floor? Ha, that was child’s play.
Only a touch of what this new—impulsive—Phoenix was capable of.
And honestly, the doctors had no idea how bad it really was.
Of course they didn’t. They’d never been shot in the head before.
My jaw clenched as I connected with the nail, again, and again, each hit harder than the last.
It always started with a rush of heat over my skin. Then came the tremors. My warning signal. I’d tell my brain—stand down, you lunatic—as if it were a separate being. Then, boom—adrenaline. And I was gone.
Gone to the fury.
When it took over, I didn’t exist anymore. Just the rage. Sharp, merciless, and utterly detached. Verbal tirades, physical destruction—nothing was off-limits.
I wasn’t the Hulk. The Hulk turned back into someone decent.
Me? I stayed wrecked.
Eventually, my brothers would drag me out of it—sometimes with brute force, sometimes by treating me like a toddler having a meltdown. I hated that more than the rest. Their pity.
Things would slowly begin to register, and the first thing I would notice would be that look in my brothers’ eyes.
Irritation, exhaustion. And the worst—pity.
Then, they’d hang around for a while, making sure I was “okay.” They’d even altered their schedules since “the incident” to ensure I was never alone at the house. They’d changed their lives to accommodate me.
The doctors told me the symptoms I was experiencing were consistent with traumatic brain injuries. The rage, confusion, blocks in memory, damage to my fine motor skills—all normal and would subside within six months to a year.
A year.
I, the oldest Steele brother and heir to the Steele family fortune, had become a drain on the family.
No one said it out loud, but my role as CEO of Steele Shadows was in limbo. Days that used to be spent catering to clients and bar hopping were now filled with manual labor—fence mending, field work, whatever I could find to remind myself that I still had purpose. That I could still do something.
Then the sun would fall. And the dark would come.
Sleepless, endless, brutal nights. I’d pace for hours, eyes locked on the mountains, waiting for daylight.
Waiting for something that felt like me again.
Then I’d wake up and do the only thing I knew.
I worked. I pushed past it. Mind over matter.
Out here, alone in the woods, swinging a hammer, where I could pretend I was still whole.
A swift gust of wind kicked me off balance. A distant crack had my head lifting, the sound echoing through the woods around me. I glanced up at the pine tree above me, its branches bending with the weight of the rain. Branches were beginning to break.
I positioned another nail on the wood, noticing the throbbing prickles at my fingertips. I drew the hammer back and connected but the nail didn’t split the wood. Again, and again. The nail didn’t budge.
The damn thing wouldn’t budge.
I checked the tip of the nail like an idiot. Yep, it was sharp.
I cleared my throat, a murmuring commentary telling me to keep my cool. With a slight inhale, I repositioned the nail, blew out the breath, then slammed it again. This time the hammer tumbled out of my hand, landing on my boot.
I surged to my feet, lips snarling to stifle a scream. My breath came out in rapid puffs of steam around my head. I began to pace to release the energy building inside me. Pacing, pacing, pacing, I squeezed my hands into fists, talking myself off the ledge.
I can do this, I told myself.
I can do this, I can do this, I can do this…
Clenching my jaw, I plucked the hammer from the muddy ground, kneeled back down at the fence and pounded that damn nail until it went in.
Seconds faded into minutes, minutes faded into an hour as I worked on that fence, all rational thought replaced by the need to meet my goal.
To finish what I’d started—which should have taken twenty minutes.
Twilight faded into an inky blackness, the rain a deluge as I hammered nail after nail, picking up the hammer each time it slipped from my weak grip to start again.
I would not give up.
I’d removed my jacket sometime after the first half hour, welcoming the precipitation against my skin. I had tunnel vision. Nothing else mattered other than mending that damn fence, a normal job for old Phoenix, a challenging one for new Phoenix.
I was into my third hour when a familiar snort pulled me from my focus, a big, black nose nudging my shoulder. I set down my hammer and turned to Spirit, my four-year-old Arabian horse. Her milky white body seemed to glow through the darkness.
“You find what you went looking for?”
Another snort.
“Good.” I stroked her coal-black mane, slick with rain, and found myself picturing Rose Flower’s hair.
“Got a little chilly on us tonight, didn’t it, girl?” I glanced at the fence, then back at Spirit.
A moment ticked by.
“Okay. I hear you. Let’s get you back to the barn.”
After collecting my tool bag and jacket, I pulled myself onto Spirit and together, we made our way through the woods, slow and steady through the cold rain.
I focused on the smooth rocking of her steps, an easy rhythm we’d established over the last few weeks, unlike months ago when I would take her on sprints through the fields.
We didn’t need directions, we didn’t need light.
This was our land and we’d walked it together countless times since “the incident.”
That slow, easy rhythm.
I gripped her reins as she soared over a wooden fence before making our way across the open field. I listened to the sound of the rain, the thump of her heels on the ground, the silence, the stillness around me.
I closed my eyes and tipped my head to the sky, letting the rain slide down my face, feeling each drop, focusing on the sensations that I could feel. I pulled off my T-shirt and tossed it into the air.
Wash it away, I thought. Wash it all away.
I breathed deep, chasing that scent of spring—flowers, rebirth, hope. But there was nothing.
Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was me.
Spring was supposed to mean renewal. New life.
I hoped so.
Because if this was my new reality, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep pretending I was okay.
And that question—the one I couldn’t outrun—returned, heavy as ever.
Who am I now?