Lost to You by - (book club books .TXT) 📕

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 had sought retreat as she’d 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’d 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a welcomed tempest when my phone had lit up with her number, until her tone seeped through the line, despondent and withdrawn.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’d opened my mouth to argue, to convince her that night was just a mistake, to promise I’d find some way to make it right.

Her voice had cracked, and she’d 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’d 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’d 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?

The alarm blared from my nightstand. I reached over and slammed my fist down to silence the shrill sound. Sleep had been scarce, an unfamiliar agitation rising up in my nerves, memories of Elizabeth bleeding together morning and night.

Rolling from bed, I stood and stretched my arms overhead. Everything was sore, inside and out.

Wrong.

Because Elizabeth was gone.

I plodded to the bathroom and switched on the light. The mirror reflected everything I felt.

Sighing, I ran my hand down my cheeks and under my chin. Dark hair shadowed my face because apathy had rid me of the energy to shave since Friday, and my hair was sticking up in every direction.

But it was my eyes that scared me.

They were so . . . lost.

Shit.

With both hands, I held myself up on the sink, dropped my head, and tried to pull it together. Still, I couldn’t find anything inside myself that mattered anymore.

I forced myself into the shower and went through the routine. In my dim room, I tossed my dampened towel to the bed and dressed in the quiet.

I just wanted to fix this. To take it back.

But I didn’t know how when the memory of how she’d fit so perfectly in my arms reigned supreme.

I’d been seared by her kiss.

Marked by her hands.

My best friend.

I shook my head and slung my backpack onto my shoulders, willing myself into the right frame of mind for my last day of classes before the short Thanksgiving break.

How the hell would I survive through dinner with my parents tomorrow?

Locking my apartment door behind me, I made my way downstairs. I sucked in a sharp breath when a shock of cold air blasted my face.

I headed toward campus, my face down as I forced myself to move. My hands sought warmth in my jeans pockets, my shoulders rigid as I joined the flock of students heading to morning classes.

Sounds filtered in all around me, but none were really heard. I trudged forward, the loss of Elizabeth a thousand pounds added to my feet.

All I wanted to do was turn around, crawl back in bed, and sleep the day away.

Outside my class, students filed inside. I stopped and stared in indecision at the dark hole they disappeared into. People jostled past me, grunted their annoyance as I stood stock still in the middle of the steps.

I couldn’t make myself go inside.

Blindly, I wandered the campus, not surprised I ended up in front of the building where Elizabeth’s math class was held.

How many times had I sat with her on those steps while she crammed for an extra couple seconds, hurried to ask me a few more questions, stressed that she was going to fail her exam while I promised her she would to do great?

Right now, she’d be inside, sitting at her desk. I could see her there, her head tilted to the side, doodling at the corner of her notebook the way she always did, lost in thought.

Was she thinking of me?

I raked a hand through my hair. Visible breaths filled the ice-cold air as I huffed and began to pace.

What the fuck was I doing?

She’d asked me to leave her alone, and now I was stalking her outside her class.

But I couldn’t leave.

I just wanted . . . something. I’d always wanted something. From the moment I saw her, I knew it was different, knew it was more.

Hovering in the distance of her building door, I willed myself to get it together and honor Elizabeth’s wishes.

Randomly, the double doors would open, a few people casually walking in or out, then every ten minutes or so, droves would come or go as a class began or was released.

An hour later, the doors opened again.

A loud flow of students came down the steps as they left for wherever they were going for the holiday.

And I just stood there. Waiting. Waiting for her.

Her head was down when she surfaced behind the crowd at the door. Her feet appeared as heavy as my heart as she made her way down the steps.

My eyes bore into the top of her head, willing her to look up.

I could see it when she felt me, the way she slowed and her hand reached for the railing to give her support.

Cautiously, she raised her face to mine. She was halfway down the flight of brick steps when she stopped. She stood twenty feet from me, this wistful expression on her face that knocked the air from my lungs.

She no longer appeared angry or hurt. In its place was the same loneliness I’d been swimming in for days, her playful eyes now somber and unsure. Her hair was still a mess, though now it blew free in the short gusts of wind.

My heart thudded. There was no one in the world that could compare to this girl.

She stood frozen, her knuckles white as she gripped the railing, staring at me as I slowly approached.

I stopped at the bottom of the steps. The difference in height brought us face to face.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, the sound almost lost in the wind.

Regret knotted inside me when she spoke