“Oh, God,” I whimpered, holding my palm over my mouth. But I couldn’t stop the sob from breaking free. It came as an offensive echo around the room.
I wanted to stop it, but it was too late. The damage was already done.
I’d stumbled. Fallen.
Considering how I felt, I should have known better than to let Christian through my door. At the party, I’d been hit with the magnitude of how deep my affections ran. Wrapped up in how bad that realization stung, it’d left me vulnerable. The knock on my door had jarred my hopes, flamed the fear, and stoked my need.
I’d hesitated, quieted my breaths, self-preservation kicking in. I silently willed him to walk away while my heart begged him to stay.
My rational side had little chance. The second knock beckoned me forward, and I peered through the peephole at the man who held me in the palm of his hand. Fingers shaking, I unlocked the door. Insecurity slowed my movements as I cracked the door to stare out at Christian.
Lines of anger twisted his face, and I’d stopped short, confused and sad and relieved. It left me unable to comprehend the conflict he incited in me.
He pushed through, and the room filled with his presence, the air so heavy that I should have seen it as a warning and not as the comfort that came plundering through my senses.
When his warm lips had caressed my neck, it’d almost been too much, and I’d been seconds from surrendering. A panicked voice inside me cried out to stop, to defend my heart, because I was already in far too deep, and I managed to rip myself from the grip I was falling victim to.
I spun around with an accusation perched on my lips and stopped dead. And I knew there was no surfacing from the flood that was Christian, because he was looking at me as if he felt the same.
Now my body shook and tingled with his residual. Desire coursed and mingled with misery.
And I would have given myself to him, offered what I guarded and protected, because to me, it was never a game. It was devotion—an act of adoration—something I’d been so foolish to waste before.
It wouldn’t have been wasted on Christian. Yet it still would have destroyed me.
I shook my head as I made my way back to the stove, my movements jerky as I flipped off the burner. I shoved the burning pot back to an empty burner, feeling so angry. So angry.
His words slashed me straight to the core, crushed and cut. They were all the confirmation I needed to know how easily he could devastate me.
Low, mocking laughter tumbled from my mouth.
He already had...because I’d let him.
And I had no idea what I was supposed to do now.
~
Sleep came in sporadic bouts. I tossed through the daze that tormented the night. Never had I felt so alone. New York had once been my fairy tale. Now it felt like a place to escape. Lazy light seeped through the small window, and I rolled to my stomach, trying to press the memories of the night before from my mind.
I didn’t want to remember.
I didn’t want to feel.
I’d been ignoring my phone all morning. It’d rung at least five times. When it rang again, I gave up and stretched out to retrieve it from the floor. It wasn’t the number I was expecting, not another apology I knew was sincere, but could do nothing to make up for the fact that Christian didn’t feel what I wanted him to.
No. Instead, it was my older sister.
Still lying in bed, I accepted the call. I tried to clear the roughness from my voice. “Hey, Sarah.”
“Are you okay?” she immediately asked.
Apparently, I hadn’t done a very good job.
“Yeah, I just woke up.”
“Oh...sorry for waking you...but...” Excitement bled through her concern for me. I pictured her bouncing as she stood next to the phone in the small kitchen of the home she’d purchased with her new husband just the year before. “I have some really good news.”
I sat up a bit and drew my knees to my chest. I rested one elbow on a knee and propped my head up in my hand. I forced what I was feeling aside. Sarah was always so direct, a good listener filled with even better advice, but her mood rarely fluctuated from her mild manner.
“What is it?”
“You’re going to be an aunt.”
Her news shifted through me, wound with the sadness, affixed as a plaintive smile on my lips. A dense weight welled up inside, filled with both light and heavy, distinct happiness laced with what Christian had left me with. “Oh my gosh, Sarah, I can’t believe you’re going to be a mom. Are you excited?”
She laughed. “Can’t you tell?”
“Yeah...I think I can. So...” I hesitated to ask. They’d planned on waiting, establishing their lives and their home before they had children.
I think she expected my unvoiced question. “It was totally an accident, but after the shock wore off, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.” Her sigh was tangible in the distance. Again, I pictured her in her kitchen, but this time with a tender hand resting on her belly.
“I’m so happy for you.” I was doing my best at hiding my own turmoil. I didn’t want to taint this moment. Compared to this news, my issues were so trivial. Still, I couldn’t let them go.
“What’s going on, Liz?”
“Nothing.” I rushed out the obvious lie.
“Don’t give me that. You think I can’t tell when you’re upset?”
My entire family was close, Sarah and I especially so. Five years older than me, she’d always been my confidant, my defender. She was the one to softly assert she was concerned I might be making a mistake, encouraging me to slow down and think it through, and my biggest supporter whenever I hesitated to try, afraid I would fail.
A strangled groan rose up from my mouth. I flopped with my back to the bed, rubbing my eye with the heel of my hand.
“This has to be about a boy... Only a man can make that sound come from a woman.” I knew this was Sarah’s attempt at lightening the mood while broaching the subject, but it felt too heavy, too much.
“Is it that Christian guy who always seems to be invading your space every time I talk to you?”
I bit my lip as unwelcomed tears filled my eyes.
“Liz?”
I tried to hold it back, but the choked sob that rumbled up and tore from my throat was uncontainable. It hurt as it scraped through.
Silence stretched across the line before Sarah finally spoke. “Oh, God, Liz...you’re in love with him.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. She had this intuition about her. She’d been the one who’d seen through my feelings for Ryan, that as much as I illusioned myself with being in love with him, I never had been. I wasn’t surprised she could easily tell when I really was.
Hearing those words voiced aloud ripped and tugged, taunted me for being such a fool. I couldn’t blame Christian. This was all on me. From the start, I’d known what he was like, yet I’d pushed it, invited him into my life. As if that smile wouldn’t worm its way into my heart. That the kindness I saw in the depths of those blue eyes wasn’t going to turn me inside out. Change everything—who I was and what I wanted.
And what I wanted was him.
She remained silent for a few minutes and just let me cry.
“Liz.” Sympathy rolled from my sister’s tongue, quiet understanding. “I hate that you’re all the way over there and I can’t hug you right now.”
A small jolt of laughter made its way through my tears. “I wish you were here, too. I miss you so much.”
Sniffling, I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I rolled to my side and hugged my knees to my chest, held the phone closer to my ear.
“So you want to tell me about it?”
“I don’t even know, Sarah. We were just supposed to be friends, and then it was like one day passed, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t live without him. Everything was fine until he asked me to go to this party with him last night. I should have known better than to go.” I sucked in a breath. �
�I hated it there, Sarah. I mean, I can’t tell you how it felt to stand in that room and know he’s been with half the girls there. I went to the restroom, and when I came out, some girl was rubbing all over him. I couldn’t stand it, so I took off without telling him.”
“Liz.” Disapproval clouded her voice.
“I know, I know. It wasn’t cool, but I just couldn’t, Sarah. Then he showed up here at my place. The next thing I knew we were kissing, and then everything escalated out of control so fast.” My head spun as I remembered the fear on Christian’s face when I asked him what it was he wanted, the way he’d stepped back to put distance between us because he no longer wanted to be in my space. Because he didn’t know. Who would have thought that word could be sharper than a knife. “I don’t know how I was strong enough to stop, but I was. Those words came so close to leaving my mouth.” The pain amplified, squeezing my chest. “I think he knew it...somehow saw it in me.”
“And what does he feel?”
“I don’t think he knows beyond the fact that he wants to have sex with me. He made that much clear.” Anger slipped into my voice. I couldn’t tell if it was directed at Christian or myself. Like I didn’t already know that the first time I met him.
“Elizabeth, he’s eighteen. Of course he wants to have sex with you. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you.”
“But that’s the thing, Sarah, I tried to force it out of him, to make him tell me what he feels. He said he didn’t know... Then he said he was sorry and left. And that was it. He keeps calling and saying he’s sorry about what happened last night, and asking if we can just go back to the way we were before. He has to know that’s not going to happen.”
“I’m sorry, Liz. But you are both so young.”
I grunted. This was coming from my sister who’d been with the guy she ended up marrying since she was seventeen. I knew she was just being rational, that we were young. It was true. But she knew me better than that. Age had nothing to do with it, although I could only assume it did for Christian. Selfishness like that wasn’t easily shed, maturity hard to come by when everything had always been placed at his feet.
“Do you think I wanted to fall in love with him?”
Sarah’s voice was soft. “No, and I wasn’t minimizing what you feel, Liz. You just worked so hard to make it to New York, and I hate to see you waste it being hung up on a guy like that. He’s obviously kind of a jerk.”
I sighed and rolled to my back, staring at the ceiling. I’d calmed, the fog in my mind cleared. Talking with my sister, getting it out, had worked as some kind of soothing balm. “I’m not even mad at him. I’m just mad at myself. It’s my fault for trying to make him into something he’s not.”
The hardest part was, I saw the kind of man who could love me buried inside him, waiting to be discovered, and for a fleeting moment, I’d seen it staring back at me.
I sensed her shaking her head. “You’re kind of amazing, Liz.” Her words were filled with sincerity and comfort. “Most girls would be putting all the blame on the guy.”
“Thanks for listening, Sarah. I’m sorry I made this about me. I really am happy for you and Greg. I can’t wait to be an aunt.”
“Hey, I’m here for you whenever you need me. I know it has to be hard for you over there by yourself. And it’s Thanksgiving next week. It sucks you’re going to miss it. You’re still coming home for Christmas, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t afford to make the trip back twice, and there was no way I’d miss Christmas. “Yeah, I’m coming home.”
“Okay, good. Hang in there, Liz. It’ll all work out the way it’s supposed to.”
I had to believe that. “Thanks, Sarah.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I felt a little better when I ended the call with my sister. Settled. Resolved. It was easy to admit it now, what I’d been feeling the last couple of months. The way my stomach would twist when I looked at Christian, the way it hurt when he was away, and how much I couldn’t wait until I saw him again. It was patent in the devastation I’d felt seeing him with another girl last night at the party. Palpable in the way I’d succumbed to his touch when he kissed me.
I was in love with Christian. Completely.
There was nothing I could do about it, no way to take it back. It was there, strong, interwoven and beating with my heart.
I had to end this. The only thing I could do was guard the last part of myself I had, because it would be so easy for me to give it to him now. Last night, I’d come so close. I would have laid everything else aside while I let him consume me, let him take it all.
He’d use me. Destroy me. Not because he wanted to, but just because that’s who he was.
Flopping onto my stomach, I buried my face in my pillow as if it could block out the depression this realization caused. Last night had cost me my best friend. But I had to be wise enough to know he wasn’t just my friend. He never had been. This had always been there, lying in wait, an ambush set to take us over. Being around him was no longer an option.
My heart broke for myself because I’d fallen for someone like him, broke for Christian because I knew there was a huge part of him who was truly kind.
The part of him who really needed a friend.
But I couldn’t be her anymore.
Chapter Eight
Christian
I lay alone in my bed while morning threatened at my window. Four days had passed since I talked to her. Each one seemed to add a new element to the sadness that had taken me over. I was miserable. There was no other way to describe it. Empty, vacant, that void I’d tried to fill with Elizabeth’s body now a hollow pang. It was as if Elizabeth had punched me deep in the recesses of my chest, her hands as frantic as mine had been as she searched and struggled. Ultimately, when she found nothing that I could give except disappointment, she ripped her life from me and left this gaping hole. And I was the one who’d challenged her to do it.
I tugged my pillow over my face as if it could block out everything I didn’t want to see.
“Fuck,” I groaned. I tore it from my face and tossed it to the floor. There was nothing that could cover it up or blot it out.
In the cloudy dimness of the room, I sat up and rubbed the pain pressing at my bare chest.
I knew this would happen. I’d take the one pure thing in my life and crush it.
The expression Elizabeth had bore Friday night flooded my mind.
In a futile defense, I squeezed my eyes closed against the memory, but there was nothing I could do to elude it. The image was like a parasite that had glommed on, dug in, feasting on the ignorance of its host.
It was slowly killing me.
It didn’t take long for me to realize something inside me had shattered when I shattered her.
Fear wasn’t an emotion I knew well, but I’d never felt it stronger than in that moment when Elizabeth had backed me into a corner with that expression on her face. Floundering, my body sought retreat as she silently begged, and I was hit with a fear that had nailed me to her door—fear that she had the capacity to look at me that way, fear that I wanted to touch her so badly, fear that she’d never let me again, fear screaming at me to run.
I’d given into the last.
I opened the door and shut her out because I didn’t have the strength to handle what was happening between us. I was eighteen. I didn’t want this. Wasn’t ready for it.
But now... I raised my face and released a remorseful breath into the stuffy apartment air.
I missed her.
Nothing else seemed to matter but that single truth.
She held so much control over me, and I never even realized it. I mean, yeah, she was my best friend, but losing her shouldn’t have hurt this much.
Saturday morning I left a bunch of messages, trying to make amends, hoping to convince her we could somehow go back to the way we’d been, but each time I was forced to listen to the sweetness of her voice through her recorded
message.
That afternoon, she’d finally called me back. Relief tore through me like a welcomed tempest when my phone had lit up with her number, until her tone seeped through the line, despondent and withdrawn.
“I can’t see you anymore, Christian,” she’d said through a barely audible whisper. I opened my mouth to argue, to convince her that night was just a mistake, and to find some way to take it back.
Her voice had cracked, and she cut me off with a quiet, “Please. I need you to do this for me.”
Yeah, I was a fool, but I wasn’t stupid. Even if I tried to convince her otherwise, we both knew that night wasn’t a simple misstep. We weren’t just two friends messing around, hands and tongue and skin that never should have been. Because I’d never felt anything close to what I felt when I kissed her.
She’d hung up the phone without a parting word.
Out of respect, I left her alone. Because I did care about her, even if I was too much a coward to tell her.
The last thing I wanted was to harm her more than I already had, and Elizabeth wanted more from me than I knew how to give.
The night I left, I shut the door between us with a deafening click, but I hadn’t gone far. From the other side of her door, I stopped to listen to her weep, felt the magnitude of what I’d done to her.
After that, how could I argue with her when she asked me to leave her alone?
The only hint of her over the last four days had been the back of her head from where she sat far down and across from me in the lecture hall in our American Government class. The entire class had been spent with me staring down at her, desperate for her to acknowledge me, though she never did. Her hair was piled in a sloppy bun on top of her head, the blonde in complete disarray. In the few fleeting glimpses I’d managed to catch of the side of her face, she appeared to be as much of a mess as I was.
That’s what this was, a fucking unbearable mess.
When did she become everything without me knowing it?
And was it real or some skewed perception induced by the loss of her presence?
Lost to You Page 9
