An open bottle of Jack Daniel's finest sat beside one Dakota Joseph Steele.

Strangely enough, not one single drop had left the bottle.

He was sitting on the floor of his living room, directly in front of the tiny fireplace, which he had lit a little while earlier. There was a nice little fire going, and Dakota was sitting there, gazing at the fire with a half smile spread across his face.

Laying beside the bottle of whiskey was a leather bound book which had an engraving on the front cover.

"The Journal of Dakota Steele"

This had been a hell of a weekend for Dakota. Absolutely one hell of a weekend. Without going into too many details about the events of the weekend, Dakota had thought back to some things in his journal, and he realized that he simply wasn't happy with certain things that he had written.

Slowly picking up the book, he opened it up to his very first entry, and began reading out loud.

"October 9th. What do I have to do to get Cassie to notice I'm still around? Me n' her used to be such good friends, but she barely acknowledges me anymore. I don't know, maybe I'm comin' across as hopin' that she can someday be more than one of my best friends. It's not like I'm tryin' to make that public or anything."

A long pause followed, and then Dakota placed his fingertips along the top of the page, slowly ripping along the edge. The page was torn from the book, immediately crunched into a ball, and thrown into the fireplace.

Dakota then turned to the next page, and proceeded to read a passage from that entry.

"I couldn't expect her to really leave the life that she's built up for herself for a worthless nobody like me. I guess I'm laying here this morning, hoping against hope.....hoping for a miracle. I don't know if I have any miracles left to be given, seeing that I'm still alive today, but I'll take whatever little miracle that I can get. Thinking about you, Cassie. Just wish I knew if you thought about me sometimes."

And he proceeded to give that page the same exact treatment as the first. He tore it out of the book, crunched it into a ball, and fed it to the fire. He then turned to the third entry, and just like the other two times, read part of it out loud.

"I never admitted to anybody how much I still missed Charlotte. What the hell would have been the point in that? Yeah, her being gone was killing me, but what could anybody do about it? In fact, I had a woman ask me just the other day if I still had feelings for Charlotte. This was after she had brought Meg into the inn to come see me for a few minutes. I looked at the lady and actually got a little rude, letting her know that that ship had long since sailed."

For the third time, a page was ripped out of the book, crinkled up, and tossed into the fire.

Dakota went through every single entry that he wrote, tore out every page, and threw every one of them into the fire in front of him.

But that wasn't good enough.

He then slowly picked up the book itself, and gave it a long, hard, cold stare. Then, it joined the pages that had been ripped out of it, as it was thrown into the fireplace.

Oh, he still wanted to write about things. He still wanted to keep a journal. He'd be buying a new one tomorrow, in fact. But he was tired of being reminded of his past mistakes and his past obsessions every time he opened it up to write a new entry.

There was someone new that he'd taken an interest in. She was someone with whom he'd had a great first date with. He didn't know where it was going to go. He sure as hell wasn't looking for a soulmate. But he did seem to share an awfully lot in common with this certain someone who had been right there all this time. Maybe they could find comfort in each other.

And then, there was the other unexpected surprise from the weekend. Someone from his distant past had returned to his life. She was someone who was dead, as far as he was concerned. For the last several years, he'd had no way of tracking her down. But tonight, she walked back into his life. His twin sister, Aiyana Steele, who he had not seen in over sixteen years, found her way into Rhy'Din. There were many years' worth of memories to catch up on with her, and there was plenty of time to do it. He'd offered for her to stay with him until she could find a place of her own, but Jade, the certain someone who Dakota had recently begun to date, invited Aiyana to stay with her and her sorority sisters. Hopefully, that would work out good for everyone involved. One thing he knew he was going to have to get straight with her was the fact that he didn't go by Shikoba anymore.

Watching his journal burn away, Dakota slowly pulled himself up to his feet, grabbing the open bottle of whiskey. He seemingly went against all the progress that he'd made in his fight for sobriety when he turned that bottle upside down and drank a rather large swallow of JD. But he stood there for a few seconds, then headed to the bathroom. Standing over the sink, he spit out what he had just drank. And in perhaps the most shocking move of all, Dakota then poured the contents of the entire bottle down the bathroom sink. Luke was sitting there in the doorway of the bathroom, watching his master curiously. Dakota looked down at him and shook his head with a sigh.

"Don't want this s*** no more, boy. I found someone who thinks I'm a pretty good guy. I ain't gonna let her down. An' you gotta meet your Aunt Aiyana soon. You're gonna love her."

Just wait till his sister found out that she was an aunt to a Rottweiler.

Tomorrow was gonna be a new day for Dakota.