Left Behind (Lost & Found #1)

by C. L. Stacey

  My fingers curl into my hands, making tight fists at my sides. I raise one and shove a finger in his direction. “Five years…” I whisper, “You’ve been following me for five years? Why? What do you want?” He takes a step toward me, and I shuffle back. “STOP!” I scream.

  The obviousness of my fear pushes him over the edge. There’s so much he wants to say, he just doesn’t know where to start, and it’s killing him. I can see it all right there in his eyes.

  “Lexi, please—God, just listen to me!” he begs. “You have no reason to be afraid of—”

  “The hell I don’t!” I holler. “What do you want from me?” I ask again.

  “I just wanted to know that you were okay…” he begins then he detours, completing a different thought with, “We were never meant to meet. You have to believe me, I never meant for us to meet.”

  A small puff of air escapes my mouth as I take in that bit of information.

  The elevator. He couldn’t have meant for that to happen. It was fate, something beyond our control. We ended up at the same party, in the same steel box, at the same exact time, and then it shut down on us, dropping me right into the center of his fucking web of lies.

  “We were never meant to meet,” I repeat his words back to him. He nods. “Then why did you come back for me?” I ask. He pales. “You didn’t know about my job with Runway Styles. You didn’t know I’d be coming to your penthouse that morning. Yes, okay, that much I believe. But then why not have me fired from your services when you did find out? Why come back and insist that I be the one to keep your appointments? Why did you reel me back into your life?”

  For the first time since I’ve known Jackson, he appears to be feeling too much too fast, his face displaying about seven different emotions all at once. His mouth drops open numerous times, attempting to give me an answer, but he comes up short each time.

  Nothing.

  Jackson takes a step toward me again, and I take two steps back. “Don’t come near me!” I warn. He halts. “God, Jackson, I invited you into my home! Who the hell are you? I have no idea who you are!”

  “But I know everything there is to know about you,” he counters. “I made it my job to know. Your likes, your dislikes, the places you frequent, your friends, your family… all of it. You know nothing because that is the way I intended it. There was no need for you to find out who I was. You and I were never supposed to meet.”

  “You’re not making any sense!”

  He closes his eyes on a long exhale, opening them back up to me to reveal some of what has been torturing and tearing him up inside. “When I met you, I realized that I didn’t really know you, but I knew that I wanted to. Those other things I thought I knew, they were no good to me. All they were to me were facts on paper, useless. I wanted to get to know you, just you…”

  “Why?”

  “Do I really need to explain that to you?”

  “Why didn’t you come to me with the truth sooner?”

  “And risk you disappearing on me? Risk losing my access to you completely?” he asks, the sureness in his tone further angering me. “Lexi, I couldn’t risk that.”

  “So stalking me seemed like the better option?” I fix him with an incredulous stare.

  When he realizes his mistake, his hands shoot up in his frustration, fingers raking through his hair before coming to meet in a pleading motion in front of him. “I’ve handled all of this so poorly, I understand it now that it’s already too late, and I get why you’re so upset, I do. But, Lexi, please…” he begs. “Please believe me when I say that I physically felt like I had no other choice. From the moment I met you, I felt a connection I can’t explain, and I couldn’t stay away. I tried to, I did. My month’s absence goes to show for that.”

  “You mean when you decided to disappear?”

  “I was trying to do the right thing by you.”

  “None of this is right, Jackson!”

  His shoulders sag when he drops his hands to his sides again. “I get that now.”

  My head is spinning with all this new information, and I still haven’t even asked him about the actual accident.

  Dare I even ask? Do I even want to know?

  Why the hell am I still standing here?

  “I love you.”

  My eyes flash angrily back in his direction, and I clench down against my jaw when the urge to strike him hits me hard. Of all the times he could have chosen to tell me, he chooses this moment. “What?”

  “Before you go. Before you leave me, I need you to hear me, and I need you to believe it.” He takes a single step forward then stops when I shoot him a warning glare to take no more. “I’m in love with you, Lexi. It’s why I couldn’t say anything before tonight. It’s why I couldn’t be the one to leave. I’ve been so scared of losing you that I’ve behaved selfishly. I was… a complete coward, and I’m sorry for it, but I would…” He turns away from me, blowing out a sharp breath when choking up. “I would do this all over again. I have no regrets in the role I’ve played in your life. Call me a stalker or a psycho or whatever it is that will make you feel better about having met me, but I don’t care. I wanted—I needed to be there for you, for the sake of my sanity, I had to know that you were okay. So I was there. I was always there.”

  With all the crying I’ve done in the past thirty minutes, I’m surprised I even have any tears left, but I do, and I cry, because what the fuck else am I supposed to do.

  Up until this very moment, before the conversation that ruined it all, I thought there was a strong possibility that I could love him, too. Even when I believed there was another woman that I’d have to compete with. I wanted to fight for the person I honestly believed I was falling in love with. I was prepared to fight for what I wanted.

  Why the hell couldn’t it have been another woman?

  I bring my hands up to dry the tears from my cheeks, and I exit the room.

  “Lexi,” Jackson calls after me, his steps falling in behind me. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” I clip. “I thought you knew that already.” I snatch my purse up from the couch and sling it over my shoulder.

  Jackson runs ahead of me, blocking my way out. “Wait. Lexi, please…” He holds his hands out in front of him to stop me. “I know what I said, but I take it back. Don’t leave. Don’t walk away from me, please. I’ve been here, exactly here, once before, and I’m not going to let this happen again. I’m begging you not to go.”

  Tears still line those grey-blue eyes, the same ones that used to make me go weak in the knees. But I look into them now, and all I see are the lies he’s told, how he’s insinuated himself into my life without giving me a say in the matter.

  It’s hard to say now with how angry I am, but maybe I would have been forgiving.

  Maybe I might have wanted to get to know him better, too.

  Maybe I might have befriended this man based off the fact that we shared the same tragic experience. He obviously didn’t mean to kill Eli. It was an accident. Accidents happen. No matter how, they happen. Every day.

  We will never know any of that now, since he robbed me of that chance. He didn’t have the right to make that call on his own. He should have included me in this decision.

  “Answer me something, Jackson.”

  “Anything. Ask me anything.”

  I choke back the tears long enough to ask, “How were you able to walk away from the accident? Eli died. I could have died. I have the scars to prove it. Where are yours?”

  I’ve seen him in and out of his clothes. I know he doesn’t have any.

  At first, my question confuses him. Then realization reaches his eyes. “I said I was responsible, Lexi. I never said I was the one behind the wheel.”

  She thinks I was the one driving the car. Of course she does.

  All I wanted was to lift the burden of blame from her that I didn’t think about how my confession must have sounded to the one I was confessing to.

  I know what it’s like
to feel responsible for the loss of another life.

  I know what it’s like to hate yourself for being given that second chance you feel you don’t deserve.

  Those thoughts can kill you, if you let them get loud enough. They can eat away at your soul until there’s absolutely nothing left. That’s what I was warning her about at the wedding.

  The only thing on my mind when Lexi went on about how she’d let Eli down was to relieve her of that gut-wrenching pain, to claim responsibility for what I’d done, to bring her at least the tiniest semblance of peace.

  “What do you mean you weren’t the one behind the wheel?” Her question brings me back. “Who the hell was it then?”

  My mouth opens to provide her with the answer I promised, but nothing comes out. I’m too overcome with guilt to speak her name out loud. I used to think about the night I let her walk out of here, and how much I came to regret that decision almost every day.

  Then when I met Lexi, I learned to smile again, to laugh again, and those memories that lived to haunt and torture me came to me less and less.

  It’s not that I’ve forgotten her. No, that’s not it at all. I’ve just learned to find happiness after Ellie, after believing wholeheartedly that I’d never find it with anyone ever again.

  “Who was it, Jackson?” Lexi asks me again. “Look at me,” she commands firmly.

  Without a second’s hesitation, I obey that order.

  “Who was it that hit us?” she asks a third time.

  “My fiancée,” I whisper, feeling numb all over. “My pregnant fiancée.”

  Lexi’s hand lifts to cover her mouth, and I hear her gasp in shock behind it. “Your preg—Where were you? You weren’t in the car with her?”

  “I was here,” I nod toward the vast, open space behind her, “drinking… because I was angry with her for leaving. And I was also angry with my father for dying, for leaving me with an empire I wasn’t ready to run.” The resentment I’d kept buried all this time breaks the surface. “Her name was Ellie, I loved her, and she loved me, but I was young and stupid. My life had no balance after I was literally dropped into taking on the company. I had absolutely no clue what I was doing. I was only twenty-one, still in college… I knew nothing about it. All I did know was what and how much was expected of me. There was just all this pressure… then Ellie got pregnant. She needed and deserved my attention, but I didn’t know how to give it without bailing on my responsibilities to the company. Juggling work and family became this impossible struggle for me. We fought about it all the time, about how I spent most of my time at work and rarely any with her. She worried about how it would affect the baby. So she left.”

  Losing strength in my legs to support my own weight any more, I slide against the door until my bottom touches the floor, and Lexi steps back to post up against the wall.

  She doesn’t say anything, but I see her mind running at full speed, the way it always does. I see her trying to make sense of everything.

  “I don’t understand how you’re responsible for the accident if you weren’t even there,” she says more to herself than she does to me.

  I drop my head back and stare up at her as she tries to wrap her mind around why I would blame myself for any of this. And as much as I don’t want to, I explain, because I owe it to her. “You didn’t know me back then. You thought I was bad when you first met me, but I was so much worse before. I was arrogant, selfish, not to mention overly proud—when I’d done nothing to really be proud of. I was born into the name, but I’d never worked a day in my life to prove that I had any right to bear it.” I let out a small, humorless laugh under my breath. “It makes me sick that I had to destroy four innocent lives to learn what’s important.” I shake my head. “I drove her away. I put Ellie in the car that killed Eli, and I nearly killed you.”

  Lexi bites into her top lip and looks away from me. She doesn’t say or ask anything more, just stands there in silence.

  I’m not entirely sure how much time passes when Lexi combs her fingers through her hair before pushing off the wall. “Move away from the door, please.”

  It’s an hour drive from here back to the city. Lexi’s in no state to drive, but I doubt she’ll get in a car with me right now.

  This is exactly what happened last time…

  “Lexi—”

  “Do you want me to have another one of my attacks?” she cuts me off.

  “No!”

  “Then move, please.” Lexi waves a hand to hush me when I open my mouth to object again. “I’m not going to do anything that’ll put me or others at risk, I’m not an idiot, Jackson.”

  Slowly, I rise to my feet, feeling absolutely sick about having to watch the second woman I’ve ever loved walk out this very door. Meanwhile, Lexi stops a safe distance away while waiting for me to open it.

  So much is going through my mind when my hand wraps around the handle. With a deep breath in, I open the door.

  When Lexi takes her first step forward, I close my eyes to spare myself from having to watch her leave, and I bite down as hard as I can to keep myself from shamelessly begging her to stay.

  “Well, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to join me?”

  My eyes fly back open at the sound of her question. I search for Lexi but don’t find her anywhere on the driveway. I step out the door to find her heading toward the beach. “Where are you going?”

  “Getting some air. I can’t think in your house right now,” she answers over her shoulder, feet still moving.

  When I turn back around to close the door I see that Lexi’s left her bag and shoes on the floor, a detail I missed when I had my eyes closed.

  I don’t know what this means for me, for us, but I swing the door shut behind me and go after her.

  Scars exist in many different forms. They aren’t always simple marks left on the skin after a wound heals.

  The fact that Jackson’s body doesn’t bear any physical markings means nothing. His wounds run deeper, and he still suffers from them every single day.

  I’m still so mad at him for lying to me, but I understand why he felt the need to. I only know our story from where I’m standing, from what I’ve personally been through. He’s been through something completely different; I can’t stand here and pretend to know what losing a pregnant fiancée feels like.

  There’s still so much I don’t understand, so many holes in our story left to fill. It’s why I’m still here.

  We’ve both been carrying our past mistakes and regrets around with us for years, and the only way to keep them from crushing us is to find the closure we need before finally letting it all go.

  I’ve tried talking to a therapist about my problems, but it’s hard to connect with someone who doesn’t get at all what you’re going through. Jackson does. I’m hoping that talking to him about everything that happened will help bring us some peace.

  I hear him approaching, but I don’t turn. I pin my gaze forward, out toward the open water, and I let the waves wash over my bare feet.

  I hate the beach. The thought of entering the water scares the shit out of me. Maybe it’s the fact that there’s so much out there that we don’t know about. The ocean’s full of creatures that can hurt us, eat us, kill us, but the fearless jump in every day.

  It’s the story of my life, really. I hated my life. The thought of moving on scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know what the hell was out there, and I was in no rush to find out. The world is full of people who can hurt me.

  Jackson and I have been living in fear all this time. Losing someone will do that to you, I guess.

  We’ve stood by and watched the fearless move on with their lives.

  “I don’t blame you for what happened to him,” I finally speak up, breathing in the salty air when another wave of emotion hits me.

  Jackson comes around to stand in front of me, and it takes me a while, but I eventually meet his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I never meant for any of this to h
appen. You have to believe me.”

  “I believe you, of course I do.” My voice breaks when I well up again. “It was an accident, Jackson. Accidents happen. But I’m still so mad at you.” I shake my head.

  “You have every reason to be.”

  “I’m not mad at you for the reasons you think.”

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  “For taking on all the blame.”

  “You blamed yourself for what happened, why can’t I?”

  “I didn’t know you existed then!” I snap. “You and Ellie had a bad fight, and then she chose to leave. Eli and I were having a bad fight, so we missed the fact that Ellie had run her light. We each share fault in this accident. You don’t get to blame yourself.” I pause to breathe in again. “People make mistakes, Jackson,” I recite the words of my therapist to him, the only set of words I found helpful.

  Jackson remains quiet, his eyes searching mine. “Ellie was running away from me that night, Lexi. She got sick of all of this and left. If I knew how to properly love and care for my fiancée, she wouldn’t have—”

  “You honestly think that would’ve helped?” I interject. “Ellie left because her heart had already made up its mind to leave you. There’s no turning back from that. Even if you had successfully gotten her to stay, it would have bought you a few days, weeks, maybe even months, but in the end, she still would’ve left you all the same.”

  “And you? What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Will you leave me, too?”

  I answer with a sigh. I had a feeling he’d ask me that too soon…

  “Don’t,” he pleads.

  “I haven’t decided that yet, Jackson. There’s still so much I don’t know.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Everything,” I say. “And don’t lie.”

  “Lexi, I will never lie to you again,” he vows. “Ask me anything.”

  “When exactly did I come into the picture?”

  Jackson shoves his hands into his pockets and fixes me with an odd look. “You really don’t remember me?”