Left Behind (Lost & Found #1)

by C. L. Stacey

This has to be enough.

  If there is an end to us—God forbid there be one—it will destroy me.

  Let it be enough.

  Please, let it be enough…

  My eyes fly open, and I’m gasping for air, struggling.

  It hurts. God, it hurts.

  Everything hurts.

  I have no idea how long I’ve been out, the last thing I remember is someone crashing into us on Eli’s side of the car, and now I’m hanging upside down.

  Eli.

  I look to my left, and I want to scream, but I can’t.

  My eyes flood with tears, and I can’t seem to turn them off. I try to speak but get nothing intelligible.

  The only sound that fills the silence comes from me. Breathy whimpers, soft and weak.

  He’s covered in blood.

  Unmoving.

  Lifeless.

  I keep my eyes on him in hopes to see him blink, or maybe even flinch. I watch for any signs to show me that he’s still alive. But I get nothing.

  Look at me, Eli. Please.

  Open your eyes, Eli. Please.

  You don’t have to open them, at least move them under your lids so I know. PLEASE!

  Nothing.

  How long have we been out here?

  Why hasn’t anyone found us yet?

  I’m slowly losing consciousness. Does this mean I’m dying?

  In that moment, I’m not sure I believe that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

  If he’s dead, I want to go with him.

  Take me with you, Eli. Please.

  Don’t leave me. Take me with you…

  Or do what you can to hang on, at the very least, just do that. Just hang on.

  Hang on…

  Light spills into the car when someone rips my door open.

  And then suddenly…

  Black.

  I jolt awake, covered in sweat and gasping for air.

  “ELI!” I wail into the dark, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Someone’s hands come into my vision, reaching for my face, and I jerk away.

  “Lexi!” a voice comes from next to me, turning my head toward him, but I fight against it. “It’s me, look at me!” he pleads, grabbing hold of my face, and we finally lock eyes.

  I grab onto his wrists and weep. “Jackson…”

  “It was just a dream. You had a nightmare.” His lips make contact with my forehead as he hugs me closer to him. “What happened?”

  I shake my head and sob into his chest. His hold around me tightens when he notices how badly I’m trembling. “Nightmares of the accident. I get them a lot,” I whisper, still slightly short of breath. “This is why I choose to sleep alone. I’m sorry, you should go home.”

  Last thing I remember, we were up talking ‘til really late, and we must’ve just ended up falling asleep together.

  This is his second time staying over. I got lucky with a nightmare-free night the first time he stayed, since whatever drug I had ingested had me knocked out cold, but this is just humiliating.

  “No, I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “I’ll be fine. I don’t want you to see me like this, Jackson.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone,” he says again with more finality. “Do you want to talk about it?” I shake my head. “Do you want me to get you some water?”

  When I nod, Jackson climbs out of bed and disappears from my room.

  He returns with a chilled bottle of water and hands it down to me after unscrewing the cap.

  “Thank you.” I accept it from him and take a drink.

  Jackson sits at the edge on my side of the bed with his arm reaching over my legs, planting his hand flat against the mattress. I see that he isn’t willing to let this go that easily, so I brace myself for his lecture. “You have to talk to someone if these nightmares occur regularly.”

  I shake my head. “I’ve tried that already.”

  “Then talk to me.”

  “Later.” I set my water down against the nightstand and lie back down. “Come lay with me if you’re going to stay.”

  Judging by the look of dissatisfaction on his face, he isn’t done arguing with me about this, but considering how late it is, he lets it go for now.

  Having a conversation with Jackson about Eli is definitely on my list, I obviously know that it’s not something I can simply put off if I want any kind of relationship with him. And I do. I really do. So I will.

  I just need more time…

  Jackson gets under the covers, and I gasp softly when his strong arms pull me in to spoon. “Try to get some sleep,” he whispers. I shudder when his breath hits the back of my neck, making the little hairs stand on end. “I’m here, I got you. Don’t worry.”

  I’m not worried.

  For the first time in a long time, I feel… hopeful.

  We decide to make it a lazy Sunday at my beach house kind of day, hanging out under the sun all morning. Then we both agree to end the night with a nice, quiet dinner together, where we joke and laugh the entire time, just genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

  After finishing the dinner that Amanda prepared for us, Lexi declares that she cannot eat a single bite of anything more—until Amanda mentioned cheesecake. Now we’re splitting a huge slice of the white chocolate raspberry truffle dessert.

  Well, Lexi’s doing most of the enjoying as I sit here and watch her take bite after bite.

  With the fork still in her mouth, Lexi glances at me from the corner of her eye. “Jackson, what the crap are you staring at?” she asks me, finally calling me out.

  “You.”

  “Why? Am I grossing you out with my devouring of this cheesecake?” she laughs. “Because I don’t care!” she trills, taking another bite.

  I grin down at her. “I like that you don’t care. I like that you eat like a pig, most women don’t.”

  She laughs that infectious laugh and pretends to stab me with her fork. “I am a pig, but I don’t care. Everyone makes room for cheesecake. Cheesecake can fix anything. Cheesecake is happiness. You don’t say no to happiness, do you, Jackson?”

  My smile falters then fades before I force myself to pick it back up. “No,” I say. “I don’t.”

  Lexi turns her head to give me a closed-mouth smile then leans over on her stool, waiting for me to come the rest of the way to give her a kiss.

  I don’t keep her waiting long before I lean in to touch my lips to hers.

  The raspberry jam adds a literal sweetness to the kiss, a delectable mixture between it and the creamy filling making it impossible for me to break away too soon. I bring my hand up over the nape of her neck, holding her against my mouth so I can take my time to savor this moment.

  It feels so nice, so wonderfully normal.

  This whole experience of having her here with me, of us having dinner together, splitting dessert, and sharing a kiss just for the hell of it… this is exactly what I want.

  When her lips part just enough to grant me access, our tongues clash, massaging softly against the other, and then things escalate quickly. Her hands come up and pull at my shirt, wanting me closer.

  My hands leave her face, sliding down the length of her body before stopping over the backs of her thighs, and I pull her from her seat to sit her on my lap.

  The alarms soon go off in my head, reminding me to slow down.

  “Jackson,” she gasps when I lift her onto the table, shoving the dessert plate out of my way.

  And then just like that, I hear nothing else, because in that one utterance is absolutely everything.

  I grip the waist of her skirt and pull her roughly to the edge of the table, and her legs come up to wrap around me. My favorite thing on this perfect body of hers is now locked around my waist, pulling me in until I am pressed right up against her.

  Fuck me. I want her so badly that I can’t see or think straight. All I want is to fuck her on this table.

  “Hey,” her voice fills my ear. I turn, touching my forehead to hers. “Stay wi
th me.”

  My mind and body are at war, one begging me to do the right thing, while the other is urging me to do the exact opposite. I bite down, until the pressure builds in my head. My hands are back to cradling her face, my thumbs stroking the length of her jaw. Then I kiss her, deeply.

  She responds by pulling at the ends of my shirt, freeing them from my pants before getting to work on the buttons.

  No. I bring my hand over her hands to still them when she gets about halfway down. I am thisclose to picking her up and taking her to my bed, but I find the strength to stop.

  “Wait…” I take a step back, breaking the kiss immediately.

  It’s a miracle I choose to stop here, and I’m glad I do, but now she’s staring at me like she doesn’t understand. I don’t blame her.

  “We need to do this the right way.” I walk back up to her and plant my hands flat against the table, one on either side of her. “The only way to do that is if we have this talk, Lexi. We need to talk.”

  Now she appears to be frustrated with me, her hands correcting what I’ve messed up, starting first with her skirt.

  “Okay, fine, Jackson.” Her hands are pulling at the front of her shirt so that her bra is no longer visible to me. “What the hell is it that you’re dying to tell me?” She brings her leg up to cross over the other, and her arms come to fold over her chest as she patiently waits me out.

  Lifting my hands from the table, I take a step back and drop them into my pockets. This has become a habit of mine since we became closer, my way of restraining them. Standing this close to her and not being able to touch her is torture.

  We stand there in silence as I try to think of the best way to start this long overdue conversation. But there is no best way. It’s going to hurt like hell either way.

  “It’s another woman,” Her voice shakes, “isn’t it?” Lexi asks, and my eyes immediately cut to hers.

  “What?”

  “There’s someone that came before me, right? You have another girlfriend somewhere? I can’t say that I’m surprised with all the secrets you seem to have—”

  “Lexi, hold on…”

  “We never officially decided anything since the kiss happened last night, so I can’t exactly be mad…”

  This is ridiculous.

  “Stop,” I practically shout to get her attention, and her eyes shoot back to mine. “No.” I shake my head. “That’s not what this is. There is no one else.”

  “Then what is it?” she snaps impatiently.

  “Tell me about your dream.”

  Just a slight mention of the topic and Lexi shuts down. We haven’t even gotten to the heavy part yet.

  It’s a sensitive subject, and I don’t expect her to be thrilled about having this conversation, but we need to have it.

  “What’s this about, Jackson? Why do you want me to talk about that night?” She won’t look at me anymore. Her eyes bounce from one area of the dining room to the other, avoiding my gaze completely.

  I reach for her face, and she tries to fight me, but I fight back, forcing her to look me in the eyes. “Because I’d like for you to remember.”

  “Remember?”

  “Tell me about your dream,” I say again.

  Tears sparkle in her blue eyes at the mention of Eli’s name, and I loosen my grip on her face, my thumb lazily grazing her cheeks as I bring my forehead down to hers. “Don’t cry, baby, just try to remember. Tell me what happened that night.”

  Lexi’s gaze lifts, pinpointing a random spot on the wall just before her mind takes her away from me. “We were coming home from a party. Some teammate of Eli’s threw one, so we went. We drank a little, but Eli knew he had to drive us home, so he didn’t have too much.” Her eyes continue to hold their focus over the same spot with such deep concentration, almost like she’s hypnotized. “It was really late, barely any traffic, and we were arguing.”

  “About what?”

  My question doesn’t disrupt her trance, and she fully cooperates by answering right away. “We were going off to separate schools after the summer was over. I was going to New York, and he was going to Ohio State on a football scholarship. We’d been fighting a lot since the moment we both made our separate decisions. He wanted me to follow him to Ohio, but I…” Having hit a sensitive part in her story, she sobers up, pausing to breathe. “I told him we could make it work. Plane tickets were cheap enough, and it was only an eight and a half hour drive. I got accepted to Parsons, and I just couldn’t give that up… if only Eli kept his attention solely on the road ahead, we could’ve avoided the person who’d run their light. I distracted him.”

  She blames herself.

  “You blame yourself for what happened?”

  Lexi stares at her hands to keep me from her teary gaze. “Of course I do.”

  All these years, I assumed she was strictly mourning the loss of her love… I couldn’t feel any worse than I do right now. I let this happen. I let her blame herself for something she isn’t responsible for.

  I’d like to ask her to stop, that she’s shared more than enough, but I started this conversation with means to help her remember.

  “Tell me the rest of the story, please.”

  A soft, miserable cry leaves her mouth before she asks, “Why? What’s the freaking point in talking about this now? It’s been five years, Jackson…”

  “You still blame yourself for what happened.”

  “Yea, so?”

  “So get to the end, Lexi. Please.”

  With a heavy sigh, Lexi brings a hand up to her necklace and clutches the butterfly pendant. “The other driver struck us on Eli’s side of the car. We spun out, and in Eli’s attempt to regain control of the car, we flipped.” She closes her eyes briefly, a fresh set of tears sparkling in them when she opens them to look at me again. “It felt like forever before anyone got to us,” she whispers. “It’s why I’m prone to panic attacks when stuck in small spaces for too long. It takes me back to that moment, and I just… can’t handle it.”

  That explains so much. I figured her attack had something to do with the accident, I just didn’t know exactly what. I remember how badly I wanted to understand it, for her to talk to me about it. Now I know.

  “I don’t know how long I was trapped in that car with him, forced to stare at his bloodied face as I prayed and prayed for him to wake up, to just hold on, but I ended up passing out before the first responders arrived.” She drops her head and sobs into my chest.

  “What else do you remember? Did you see the driver who hit you at all?”

  She shakes her head. “Whoever it was requested to see me… I remember the doctors asking, but I refused. All I could think of when waking up after my surgery was Eli, I looked for him, asked about him.”

  She doesn’t remember.

  “When they told me he’d been pronounced dead on arrival, that he didn’t even have a fighting chance, I was so… angry. I blamed everyone, accusing them of not having tried absolutely everything they could to bring him back. I was hysterical, inconsolable. He was eighteen, barely given the chance to live at all. It just wasn’t fair.” Her tears flow endlessly, a steady stream of them cascading down her face. “All he wanted was to play football, to marry me, to share his life with me… and I let him down.”

  I’ve heard enough.

  This is it, the moment I’ve been dreading. It’s my turn to talk now. I can’t bear the thought of her blaming herself anymore, to go another day where she feels even a fraction responsible for what happened to Eli.

  My hands drop to her shoulders and I give a gentle push to hold her back. Her eyes, forever curious, gaze expectantly up at me as I stare down at her beautiful face, taking in each feature as if I’m committing it all to memory. Then I finally break my silence, delivering her the first part of my truth. “It wasn’t your fault, Lexi. It was mine,” I confess. “If you’re going to blame anyone anymore, blame me. I’m responsible, not you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Lexi. I
t was mine. If you’re going to blame anyone anymore, blame me. I’m responsible, not you.”

  My brain scrambles to process this information. What the hell is he talking about? What does that mean?

  My initial reaction is to break contact with him immediately, so I do. I rip my hands from the comforting warmth of his chest. The abrupt reaction appears to wound him, but his eyes maintain their contact with mine, carefully watching and waiting for my next move.

  He says he’s responsible. How? Was he the driver?

  I’ve never seen him look so scared. He’s expecting me to leave, and in my head, I’m already out the door. But the last thing I want is to leave here with regrets. I need to know what the hell he’s talking about. I need all the facts.

  “We’re connected,” I say, because only that much is clear.

  Jackson nods. “Yes,” he whispers so softly I almost miss it.

  The pain of his truth is excruciating. He just shattered my hopes completely with a single word. Three letters is all it took to break me all over again.

  “You…” The rest of my question dies in my throat, my jaw clenching when the pain fades and the rage takes over. “You knew who I was all this time? Before I came to work for you? The elevator?” I ask, praying for an answer I can accept.

  A stray tear spills from his eyes and down his cheek, but he says nothing. Not that I need him to. His silence tells me everything.

  The shock officially hits, and my hand drops over my heart as soon as I feel the air being sucked from my lungs. “Oh, my God…”

  I need to get out of here right now.

  Tears continue to reload each time they empty from my eyes. Questions, so many of them fill my head, overlapping over the last, barely giving a chance for one to settle before another one comes to fill its place.

  Why has he been following me all this time?

  What does he want?

  Was all of this just his way of assuaging his guilt?

  I slide off the table, nearly losing my footing when my heels meet the floor. Jackson reaches out to catch me, but I hold my hands out as I back away. “No! No, don’t touch me!” I wail.

  “Lexi…” His own emotions grip him at the throat, making his voice come out a wobbly mess. “Please. Please, I’m so sorry.”