"Hey, I'm in my place. I'll be over in ten."

"Fine," he huffs. "Hurry the hell up."

When I enter my sparsely decorated apartment, I flip on the lights and notice a letter on the fold-out table in the makeshift dining area. Taking a quick glance around the space, I note the lack of stupid knickknacks Sasha put around the bleak room and start to realize something is off. Setting my helmet down, I stutter-walk toward the note with trepidation.

It's in Sasha's handwriting. She never leaves notes . . .

Not taking my time, I rip it open and read it.

Carter, I'm sorry. Maybe one day I will be able to repay you.

-S.

Repay me? What the hell is she talking about? Is this her way of breaking up with me? Through a fucking note?

This can't be real.

Confused, I read the note again, not that it's really long, I just need to make some sort of sense of all this. She'll repay me. Repay me for what?

Repay me for . . .

My mind races, my stomach starts to churn, a cold sweat drapes over my skin, and a sinking feeling takes root within my soul.

No fucking way . . .

She's the only one who knows, the only one who has access.

In disbelief, I walk-sprint to my bedroom, tear open the bottom drawer of my dresser, and open the box stuffed in the back.

Completely empty. It's where I've kept all my extra cash from the last few years I've won from all my bets. Over ten thousand dollars fucking gone.

Every last bill.

I don't trust banks, so hadn't deposited my savings, believing my apartment would be a safer place. Fucking wrong on that one. Shit.

"Fuck!" I shout, throwing the box across the room and gripping my hair. "Fuck. Fuck!"

It's all gone. My freedom, my way out, the only opportunity I had of releasing myself from my uncle's iron-clad shackles. The room darkens around me, and all I see is a faint space of red. This is not fucking happening. There is no way Sasha just took everything I've ever worked for and left. Left me with nothing but a run-down apartment decorated in nothing but fractured furniture.

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I dial her number but it goes straight to voicemail, no surprise there, so I send her a text to call me immediately, knowing deep down in my gut I will never receive that phone call from her.

She did not just wipe me clean of everything.

There is no way she just stripped me of my freedom. Of the fucking freedom I've been working for years to achieve.

This can't be happening.

Please . . . don't let this be true.

Sitting on my bed, my head in my hands, a dull pulse flickers in my throat. Utterly defeated. There is no other way to describe it.

"Fuck . . ." The word slips off my tongue, hanging in the heavy air. The urge to punch the living shit out of my brick wall is coursing through me, burning up and down my arms. The deep-rooted anger I've harbored for years upon years, roaring up inside me with a sullen vengeance.

No. Fucking. Way.

Why? Why the hell would she do that? I thought what we had was good. And now she's just . . . gone?

As is my freedom-just like that-vanished within a blink of an eye.

Step One: Grieve

HOLLYN.

"Three . . . two . . . one . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR!" Blue and silver confetti bursts into the sky as Nivea-sponsored hats and noisemakers bounce around on the screen. Couples kiss, people celebrate, and everyone is having a jolly freaking time as Ryan Seacrest says some emotional bullshit about starting a new year.

"Talk all you want, Ryan, you're not going to get any taller," I mumble, a Cheez Doodle hanging out of my mouth, permanently marking the corner of my lips in an orange hue. Sighing, I nibble on the doodle and say, "Happy New Year, Prince William."

Glancing over, I take in Prince William, my goldfish. Or should I say, my dead goldfish. He went belly up two days ago but I've been too lazy to flush him.

"I would kiss you if you weren't stinking up this entire apartment. Your smell is rather offensive so I'm passing." Flopping over the arm of my sofa, my Cheez Doodle falling onto my chest, I reach for my can of air freshener, stick the doodle back in my mouth, point the freshener toward the ceiling, and press down on the button.

A mountainy mist sprays into the air filling my apartment with a rugged aerosol smell. Fake, yet refreshing, as if I'm snorting up an aspen tree.

This is the life. It's now the start of a new year, and I have a coated ring of processed cheese tarnishing my lips, my hair tied into a rather unattractive knot by the chip clip that once held my doodles shut, and my rainbow-striped toe socks from middle school dangling off my feet, giving no definition to my little piggies at all. Yup, living it large.

Spraying my air freshener again, just for the hell of it, I watch the mountain-scented aerosol fill the air as it slowly falls to the floor, coating the once-new carpet with its foresty splendor.

"You know, Prince William, this year's ball drop was slightly anti-climatic. Is it just me or do you feel the same way?" I ask the deathly floating common carp. Peering over at him, I oddly wait for a response, conjuring one up in my head.

"Blub, blub, blub, I agree, Hollyn," I say in a creepy bubbly fish voice.

I take in my surroundings: bags of chips scattered across my coffee table, pictures of celebrities torn out of magazines on the floor, a wet spot on the carpet from my air freshener binge, and Cheez-Doodle fingerprints scattered over my couch, almost like a leopard print.

This is what rock bottom must feel like.

Shaking my air freshener, realizing it's finished, I let it roll out of my hand and across the carpet. Tears start to fill my eyes over the depleted aerosol can. Yup, this is one-hundred-percent rock bottom.

I wipe under my eye as the front door to my apartment flies open and my best friend, Amanda, pops through the entrance, her boyfriend, Matt, tagging closely behind.

"Happy New . . ." she pauses and then starts whipping her hand feverously in front of her nose. Beside her, Matt starts to cough and quickly pulls his vest over his face as a mask. "Oh my God," Amanda complains. "Did a forest die in here?"

With a blase attitude, I respond, "I got carried away with the air freshener."

Sitting up, I take in their party garb. Amanda is in a tight-fitting sparkly dress that's peeking through her long, black pea coat, and Matt is in his classic dark-wash jeans, button-up shirt, and vest. He's shaking and blowing into his hands trying to calm the cold that is capturing the Colorado skies outside.

"I thought you two were going to a party," I say, lying back down and sticking my hand in a chip bag, rifling around for crumbs.

"We were but it got lame." Amanda walks into the living area and takes in the scene, her nose cringing from the disarray of my apartment. "You're a pig, Hollyn."

"Gee, thanks. Care to comment on the condition of my bush as well?"

"And I will be in the kitchen." Matt quickly disappears where I can hear him rummaging around in my fridge.

"Your goldfish is dead," Amanda points out.

I tear open the chip bag and start to lick the cheddar and ranch seasoning off the foil. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Do you have anything other than tabasco sauce and a lonely grapefruit in here?" Matt calls from the kitchen.

"No, but bring the tabasco sauce in here, I'm thirsty."

"Yes, bring the tabasco sauce in here," Amanda deadpans, her eyes judging me. "You can join Hollyn in licking her trash."

Never wanting to be a terrible hostess, I hold out the pretzel bag to her and ask, "Want to down the salt at the bottom?"

"Do you really want tabasco sauce?" Matt asks, holding it out to me. I reach for it but Amanda quickly swats it away, the bottle rolling across the ground, joining the air freshener.

"She is not drinking tabasco sauce. For God's sake. Hollyn, look at you."

No need for a cursory glance, I know the appalling reflection I will see in the mirror. I've already established rock bottom once I started speaking for my fish. To take in my appearance all over again will be detrimental to my already shattered and bruised self-esteem.

"I'm good." I wave Amanda off. I don't want to be reminded.

Compassion and sympathy quickly take over Amanda's once sarcastic attitude, warning me that what she's going to say next is something I'm not going to like. Leaning forward, she clasps my knee and shakes her head. "No, Hollyn, you're not good."

"Let's not do this," I say, sitting up and dusting off my shirt that's accumulated enough crumbs for a small colony of mice to have a Thanksgiving feast. "I'm not in the mood."

"You're never in the mood," Amanda tosses back, her sympathy quickly evaporating into annoyance.

"You don't catch me on good days."

"Can you stop being sarcastic and actually talk about this?" I've seen Amanda frustrated with me before, but not like this.

"Uh, this is getting a little awkward for me," Matt says, rocking on his heels. "I think I might grab the tabasco sauce and test my limits in the kitchen." He goes to reach for it when Amanda snaps at him.

"Do not touch the sauce. This conversation involves you, too."

"How does this conversation you relentlessly try to have with me involve Matt? It's the same old thing, Amanda. You're going to tell me that it's been over a year and a half since my husband died, that I need to stop sulking, and move on with my life, that I need to go back to nursing school and finish my degree so I can stop waiting tables down at Chuck's Italian Eatery. I've heard it before and I'm not interested."

Every few weeks, Amanda tries to have a heart to heart with me about my life and how I can't keep putting it on hold, how I need to learn to live again. Well, the three bags of chips, Cheez Doodles, and pretzels beg to differ. I'm living quite well, thank you.

Standing, Amanda adjusts her coat, looking more fidgety and angry than ever. And . . . are those tears forming in her eyes? I lean a little closer to get a better look just as she yanks a petite box out of her pocket.

Shielding my body for a second, thinking some freaky, demented clown is going to pop out, I look up to see her tapping her foot and motioning me to open it.

"What is that?" I ask, very unsure what is happening right now.

"Open it."

"Is this where you poison me with some airborne virus to finally end my misery?"

Rolling her eyes, she motions the box toward me again. "Open it."

With trepidation, I snag the little box from her grip and marvel in the quality. Fine craftsmanship right there, and the hinges, they don't squeak as I open- What the hell?

I look up at Amanda who is smiling brightly and then back down at the box that holds a very large, very expensive-looking, and very crystal-clear diamond ring.

"Err, are you proposing to me?" An odd moment in my life but, the size of the ring has me itching just to say yes.

"No, that's my ring."

"What-" I look up at Matt who is beaming with pride and then back to Amanda who is the picture-perfect example for giddiness. "You're engaged?" This is freaking news to me.

She nods and claps her hands together. "We are."

Scanning the ring once again, thinking about stealing it and fleeing to Mexico, I say, "Why aren't you wearing it? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Wear the ring when you're engaged?"

Sighing, her giddiness level drops, and she replies, "Because, I don't wear it around you."

"Wait." I stand up now, one of my pant legs hiked up to my knee, one of Eric's firefighter shirts pooling around my waist, and the tube of my socks hanging on the ends of my feet. "You're telling me you've been engaged longer than just tonight?"

Cringing slightly but then masking her face with another smile, she slowly nods. "For four months."

"Four months?" I shout. "You've been engaged for four months and you haven't told me? Why the hell wouldn't you tell me?"

"Because look at you, Hollyn." Amanda motions to my appearance. "You barely make it to work and when you're not working, you're buried in Eric's shirts watching videos of your wedding, or listening to the messages you used to send each other on your Voxer app. I didn't think it was right to spring this news on you."

Nodding psychotically, anger starting to boil deep within, I hold the ring out as I speak. "So you chose to wait four months to tell your best friend that you're engaged and are now springing it on me on New Year's Eve, the couples' holiday?"

"Couples' holiday would be Valentine's Day actually," Matt points out with his finger held in the sky.

"Shut it, Matt," I snap. Getting the picture, he picks up the tabasco sauce and goes into the kitchen. I hope he burns the hell out of his tongue.

"Hollyn, I don't want to fight." Coming up to me, she takes the ring box out of my hand and places the ring on her finger. The damn thing sparkles up at me, winking in the dull light of my living area. "I came over here to give you this." Reaching into her pocket again, I wonder if she's going to pop out a positive pregnancy test as well, but instead she hands me a pamphlet.

"What's this?"

The first sentence I see on the front of the softly toned tri-fold paper says, "Need a change in your life?" I inwardly roll my eyes. Self-help, not the first time she's gone this route. The church group she tried to get me to go to a few months ago was a real treat with their horrible selection of tea and median age of sixty.

"It's a program run here in Denver called Dear Life."