Lost In Me (Here and Now)

by Ryan, Lexi

  If I need him? I would have thought that was obvious.

  ALMOST PERFECT.

  I’m surveying my life as if from the outside, and that’s how it looks to me. Almost perfect. Sure, I have these bruises and I’m banged up from my fall, but everything else? My apartment. My business. My body. Max…

  He looks at me like I’m the most precious thing in the world. And I’m wearing his ring. I might not remember how my life got like this, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it this way.

  I wander around my apartment, feeling a bit like a rude visitor peeping in on someone else’s life. The kitchen is clean, the refrigerator full of water bottles, apples, and carrot sticks. The freezer isn’t much better, with little more than frozen berries and chicken breasts, and the pantry is sparse. Mom brought me a half-gallon of milk and some fresh fruit, but I still need to go grocery shopping. I find a notepad on the counter and start a list:

  Grocery shopping: Bread, milk, cereal, pasta

  I stop writing and stare at the list I’ve made. These were foods I ate before. What do I eat now? I’ll have to be careful about what I buy. I’m sure I worked hard to lose this weight.

  My mind goes to the stairs again. The fall. Max’s words about low blood sugar and me forgetting to eat. Was that really all there was to it, or did I have to live on the meager basics in my kitchen to get this thin?

  I shake away the thought. If I’d developed unhealthy habits, my sisters would have put a stop to it. Anyway, however I got here, I don’t want to ruin my progress. Especially if we’re planning a wedding.

  A thrill runs through me at the thought. A wedding. I’m marrying Max.

  But as I go to return the notepad to the basket, a small slip of paper falls out.

  It’s a prescription for an antidepressant. And it’s dated one week ago. Why would I need that?

  My phone buzzes on the counter, and I tuck the script into the bottom of the basket for safekeeping before grabbing my cell. I don’t recognize the number on the display, and I’m not in the mood to chat anyway, so I send the call to voicemail.

  As I wander the living room area, I spot a laptop on the desk in the corner. I immediately open it, ready to peek into the last year of my life the way a stranger might—social media. A dialogue box pops up on the screen and asks for my password. I tap in my birthday, but it doesn’t take. I try my initials and my birthday. Still nothing. Those have always been my go-to passwords. I’ll have to ask Max if he knows what it is. Maybe I used our first date or his pet name for me.

  The bedroom is tidy, save for a basket of unfolded laundry in one corner. The closet isn’t overly full, but I have a nice collection of jeans and shirts in my new smaller size and a slew of black workout capris and tank tops.

  It’s a small apartment so it doesn’t take me long to see everything. I should take a shower and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow I want to learn all I can about my business and see what I need to do to catch up from my hospital stay. The idea of the water hitting my bruises with any pressure at all is more than I can bear, so I run a bath instead and sigh as I sink into the warm water. I release my hair from its clip and let it fall down my back.

  When it’s just me and the lulling beat of the water pouring into the tub, I let myself think about Max and what we might be doing if my mother hadn’t come over tonight.

  I skim my fingertips over my breasts and imagine him stripping off my shirt and releasing my heavy breasts from my bra. I squeeze my nipples with the thought of Max taking them into his mouth. Men have always liked my breasts, and I love having them played with, squeezed, sucked. Would he have kept me in his lap, his hand stroking me through my jeans as he sucked and played? Or would he have taken me to my bedroom so he could lay me down and explore my body?

  My mind latches on to that image—a bare-chested Max hovering over me in bed, unzipping my jeans and dragging them down my hips as he sucked my nipple into his mouth, laved it with his tongue.

  These aren’t new fantasies, but knowing Max is mine now heightens their intensity. This “what if” could just as well be our “next time.” Remembering how good it felt to have his hand between my legs and his breath in my hair, I’m already close when I slip my hand into the hot water and find my swollen flesh. I’m so wrapped in the fantasy that the hand isn’t mine anymore. It’s Max’s. His hot mouth is open against my neck, and all he has to do is slip a finger inside me—God, yes, like that. I imagine his hand, his hot breath at my ear, his groan. I cling to the thought and I come.

  After I wash my hair, dry off, and put on my pajamas, I lock the door and pad to bed with my phone in my hand. When I climb in, I pull up the text messages on my phone and enter Max’s name.

  Hanna: I hate that you had to leave when you did.

  Max: You and me both. Are you okay?

  Hanna: I am now. Took a bath and imagined how things could have gone if my mom hadn’t shown up.

  Max: Want to tell me about it?

  Hanna: The bath? It was what you’d expect. Hot. Wet.

  Max: You’re killing me.

  Hanna: That’ll teach you to choose walking my mom to her car over finishing things with me.

  Max: Lesson learned.

  I wake up to someone climbing into bed next to me, hot, hard muscle cozying up behind me.

  I blink away sleep. Max is in my bed and I want to enjoy it, enjoy him, but sleep has such a tight hold on me I can hardly keep my eyes open. I snuggle as close to him as I can get, but sleep is already tugging me back down.

  “Couldn’t stay away?” I murmur in the darkness.

  “You know I can’t,” he whispers against my ear. His voice is different somehow. Deeper? Maybe sleepy? I don’t have time to think about it because I’m wrapped up in his heat, his bare chest against my back, one of his hands right between my breasts, and I can’t fight it when my dreams suck me back in. But somehow, with his heat against me and his arms around me, my fitful dreams fade away and I don’t just sleep. I rest.

  When I wake again, the room is still dark, but Max’s mouth is doing delicious things to the side of my neck. I arch against him and am greeted by the hard length of his erection against my ass. I have to bite my lip at the thrill that rushes through me. Not only can I do that to him, but he wanted me enough that he had to come back tonight.

  Under my shirt, his fingertips skim the underside of my breasts, and a soft moan slips from my lips. He cups my breast in his hot hand and grazes his callused palm against my nipple, toys and teases until it’s hard and tight under his hand and I am rocking back into him instinctively.

  “Jesus, I missed you so much.” His voice sounds funny, but I hardly have time for the thought to register before he’s squeezing my nipples, sending electric jolts of pleasure from my breasts and right up through my center. His touch is harder than it was earlier. Rougher. But I like it. He’s so good at this. He knows exactly how to touch me, exactly how much pressure I like. I wouldn’t want him to ever stop touching my breasts if it weren’t for this nearly painful ache that’s been pulsing between my legs since we were interrupted in my living room—the ache my own touch couldn’t quite ease.

  I circle my hips and rub my backside against his erection. Thick and wild arousal buzzes through me, electric and sharp with its intensity. He wants me as much as I want him.

  “Touch me,” I whisper into the darkness. “I need you to touch me.”

  He groans against my neck and then his fingers are dipping into the waistband of my sleep pants.

  I turn in his arms just as his hand meets the hot and needy place between my thighs. Our mouths touch in the darkness, and something niggles at the back of my mind. Something’s changed between last night and now. Does he smell different or—

  The thought disintegrates as he slides a finger inside me. I can’t believe how slick and wet I am. Except that this is Max and I need his touch.

  I rock against him, letting him touch me the way I touched myself in the bath. Only this is hott
er. Sweeter. More intense. Not just because it’s him. It’s almost as if he knows what I like better than I do. His finger moves inside me and his teeth nip at my neck almost painfully. But I like it. I want more of this unbridled lust, more of his expert touch.

  He withdraws his finger and replaces it with two, stretching me in a way that has my body pulsing around him in response.

  “Yes,” I whisper. I want this. Need it.

  His thumb finds my clit and his fingers curl.

  “Oh God…” Am I a screamer? I bite my lip, but holy shit, I can’t—

  “Let me hear you scream,” he growls in my ear, his stubble scraping at the tender skin of my neck. “Let me feel you pulse around my fingers as you come.”

  I curl my nails into his forearm, not to stop him, but because this pleasure inside me is so intense I have to do something, put this energy somewhere.

  His other hand slides up my side and squeezes right at the bruise on my ribs. Pain vibrates through me, and I cry out.

  “Hanna?” He pulls away and clicks on the light.

  I’m still wincing at the pain from my manhandled bruise when I look at him through squinted eyes.

  And then I scream.

  I shove the man off me as hard as I can. My mind gropes for the lessons I learned in the personal defense class I took in college. I bring up my knee, aiming for his balls.

  He lets out an airy oomph, and I flail, backing as far away from him as I can get. I fall off the bed, and the impact of my already-battered body slamming into the floor has me crying out.

  “Jesus, Hanna!” the man—who is definitely not Max—says from the bed. “What the fuck was that for?”

  Oh God. He knows my name.

  I’m trembling.

  My phone is on the bedside table, and I scramble to get to it before he can take it away.

  “I’ll call the police!” I warn, holding the phone up like it’s a weapon.

  The man on the bed is white-faced and stricken and looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “You can’t just come into a woman’s house and get into her bed.” Shit. Now I’m trying to reason with a sex offender. Jesus. But he’s just sitting there. Is that normal?

  His expression goes from confused to desolate as he skims his eyes over my bruised face. “Damn. What happened to you, angel?”

  I fumble with my phone, pressing the button on the side and trying to get it to light up. Nothing. It’s dead. Why didn’t I charge it before I fell asleep last night?

  He pushes off the bed, and I back into a corner, arms wrapped around myself. “Leave. Please.”

  He holds up his hands and takes a step toward me. “Hanna, baby. Tell me what happened. Tell me—”

  I press my body as close to the wall as I can. I should have locked myself in the bathroom or something. I am one of those too-dumb-to-live heroines you see in horror movies. Especially since the thing keeping me here—keeping me from running to safety—is the hurt on his face. I’ve always been the kind of person who tries to make people happy, but this is ridiculous.

  Think, Hanna. Okay, I’ll need a description for the cops. Tall—taller than Max, maybe—messy dark hair, an Incredible Hulk tattoo on his right shoulder, some numbers tattooed above his left pec. God, is he an ex-con? Don’t convicts get numbers tattooed on themselves?

  He steps closer, and a shudder runs through me.

  “Please don’t hurt me.” I sink to the floor and cross my arms in front of my face.

  His gaze catches on my left hand, and his jaw goes hard. “I see.” He backs off and grabs something off the floor. Then he’s tugging a shirt over his head. It falls into place and covers that amazing body.

  Amazing body? What the eff is wrong with me?

  As stupid as it is, I don’t believe this man is here to hurt me. There’s nothing intimidating about his body language, and even though his face has gone hard and angry, there’s no violence in his eyes.

  He grabs his jeans. “You could have told me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice cracks.

  Jeans unbuttoned and half up his hips, he’s heading toward the door. Stupidly, I follow him. My hands are shaking, my head spinning.

  He grabs the doorknob and goes still, but he doesn’t look at me. “When I was touching you just now”—he swallows—“you thought I was…”

  “I thought you were my fiancé.” The whisper seems to swell in the small space and vibrate off the walls.

  He punches the wall beside the door. “You and Max have a nice life.” Then he’s leaving, slamming the door behind him and making the whole room rattle. And me right along with it.

  “SO DID Max stay over last night?” Lizzy sets a steaming mug of black coffee in front of me and stirs cream into her own, all the while avoiding my gaze.

  “Can I have some of that?”

  “Cream? As in, empty calories? For healthier-than-thou Hanna?”

  I’ve been drinking coffee since I was sixteen, and I’ve been taking cream in it for just as long. I try a sip without and shake my head. My memory loss apparently includes how to enjoy black coffee. “Yes, please.” I snag the cream before she can make any more comments.

  We’re at a table in the front of my bakery, the OPEN sign glowing into the darkness of Main Street.

  I convinced myself not to call her last night. I’d wanted to. I’d been confused and scared, and the most natural instinct had been to call Liz. After the man left my apartment, I ran to find my phone charger and plug in my phone. I stared at the screen as it came to life, but I kept thinking of the way the man’s face had changed when his gaze landed on my ring. My mind kept repeating the deep rumble of his voice as he’d said, “You and Max have a nice life.”

  It wasn’t confusion or fear that made me decide not to call her. As I sank to the edge of my bed and settled my head in my hands, adrenaline still hummed through my veins, but the frantic, clawing fear was gone. In its place boiled red-hot shame.

  “So, Max?” Lizzy asks. She holds up her hands. “Not that it’s my business.”

  There’s something different in our relationship. We could always say anything to each other, though we often didn’t have to. An exchanged glance was usually enough to let her know how I was feeling. But there’s a rift between us now. I can sense it even if I can’t explain it. I noticed first at the hospital—not so much by the way she acted when she was around, but more because of how often she wasn’t around. I kept expecting her to be the one coming into my room to keep me company, but nine times out of ten, it was someone else.

  All my life, people have asked me what it’s like to be a twin. They want me to explain our connection. Trying to explain to someone what it’s like to have a twin sister is like trying to explain what it’s like to have a pulse. I don’t know any other way. All I know is that her smile is attached to my heart. I float when she’s happy, and when she’s sad, my world is a puzzle with a missing piece.

  But right now that connection is gone. I want to blame the amnesia, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the optimism thinking.

  “Max didn’t stay,” I say cautiously.

  She rolls her eyes and mutters something I can’t quite make out. “Goody two-shoes,” maybe? She wouldn’t call me that if she knew I woke up to another man in my bed. “Any progress with your memory?”

  I shake my head. “Not yet. Patience, right?” Patience. I’m engaged to marry the man of my dreams, who I might or might not have been cheating on. Waiting for my memories to return should be a piece of cake.

  “Well, patience isn’t going to run this bakery,” Liz mutters. “In the meantime, I’d better bring you up to speed.”

  She gives me a tour of my bakery. The front area is small but serviceable. It has four tables and a bar along the wall with outlets. “So people who are working on their laptops don’t hog the tables,” Lizzy explains. The glass cases in the front feature everything from freshly baked Italian bread and croissants to cupc
akes and fresh pastries.

  “My mouth is watering just looking at all of it.”

  Lizzy snorts. “You don’t touch it. Not a grain of sugar has passed those lips in at least three months.”

  “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, I guess?”

  “Clearly the amnesia has wiped away all memory of your cheese Danish. Maggie declared it foodgasmic, and she’s not wrong. And your chocolate croissants?” She closes her eyes and bites her lower lip.

  “You’re making me hungry,” I complain.

  Her lips quirk into a lopsided smile. “Good. I didn’t think you were capable of hunger anymore. Maybe the amnesia fixed you.” She leads the way past the glass cases and through the doors to the gleaming stainless-steel kitchen at the back. Ovens line one wall, and another has a row of walk-in coolers.

  “Holy crap,” I breathe. “How did I afford this place?”

  “You didn’t. You had some silent partner backing you, so money wasn’t an issue.”

  “Silent partner? Who?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. You were all mysterious about it. We thought it might have been Asher, but when Maggie asked him, he said he didn’t have anything to do with it. Mom thinks maybe it was Max, but that doesn’t explain why you’d be secretive about it. But somebody came in here and renovated the building and got you your little start-up.”

  “It’s probably in my paperwork, huh?”

  She shrugs. “I guess.”

  “I’m just surprised Mom didn’t try to talk me out of it. You know how she’s felt most of her life about my baking.”

  “She wasn’t thrilled about your choice, but you could pretty much do no wrong in her eyes since you started dating Max.” There’s something snide about the way she says it, as if I dated Max and improved my relationship with my mom all to irritate her.

  “I can’t believe I took the plunge. That doesn’t seem like me.”