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

Motherfucker.

I wanted to scream.

Instead, I just stood there staring in shock as Elizabeth’s cab drove away.

The day I finally got it—accepted it—had to be the same day I laid her at my parents’ feet.

Slowly, I turned around to face my father.

He stood near the restaurant door. Smugness clung to his posture, his jaw tight and shoulders squared as he stared me down.

Embarrassment and anger seethed in my veins, curling my hands into fists. So many years I’d strived to be just like him, and now I was ashamed to even know him.

A taunting snort slipped through his nose and he just barely shook his head. It was full of condescension, as if daring me to contend with him. “Come back inside and finish your dinner.”

He spun on his heel, like what had just happened mattered none.

“What is wrong with you?” I called out just before he disappeared through the door. “I invited her here and you insult her? She’s my friend.”

Pausing, he craned his neck around to look at me. Then he laughed, this incredulous sound that punched me in the gut. “She’s trash, Christian.”

The words knocked around in my head.

Elizabeth . . . this girl . . . the one.

The strongest surge of protectiveness welled up inside me, and I took two steps toward him.

“I love her.” I felt pride saying it aloud, the kind of pride I’d put money down that my father had never experienced.

His face slowly twisted and he shook his head as if he didn’t know me at all. “Then you’re more of fool than I pegged you for. Now get inside. Your mother and I flew all the way here to spend Thanksgiving with you. You’re ruining our evening.”

He shook his arms out and looked down to adjust the cuffs of his sleeves.

For so long, he’d controlled every aspect of my life. My goals, my beliefs, what I wanted, and where I was going. Was I really going to allow him to dictate who I cared about?

“Fuck this,” I muttered under my breath.

His head jerked up. “What did you just say?”

“I said, fuck this. I’m out of here.”

He clenched his jaw. I could almost hear him grinding his teeth. “Don’t you even think about it, Christian.”

I scoffed. “What are you going to do, Dad,” I spat out his name. “Cut me out of your life? Keep me out of the firm?”

I laughed. There was no way. That would be a direct reflection on him, his own failure at conforming me into what he wanted me to be.

Walking backward, I lifted both hands in the air as I retreated. Not in surrender, but in opposition. This was one area of my life I wouldn’t allow him to control.

Then I turned around and leapt into the backseat of a waiting cab. Elizabeth’s address was already passing through my urgent lips as I slammed the door shut. “Hurry, please.”

The driver kind of smiled. He had probably been there to witness what had gone down with Elizabeth a couple minutes earlier. “Sure.”

The ride felt like the longest ten minutes of my life.

When he stopped outside her building, Elizabeth was pulling open the door to her building. I threw some money on the front seat. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

I jumped from the car and back into the winter cold, yelling her name. “Elizabeth!”

Slowly, she spun around, her hand still on the door handle, as if she had every intention of leaving me standing there.

“Christian.” Frustration spun through her tone, though I could hear the tears in her words, could see them marking her face. I’d hurt her again. And I hated it.

“Just leave me alone,” she said.

But this time, I knew walking out wasn’t an option. “I can’t.”

It was snowing again, harder this time, a steady grazing of white that dusted the city. My heavy breaths turned to vapor as I stood in front of her, panting, trying to gather my thoughts, to rein everything in.

I couldn’t.

One side of Elizabeth’s mouth trembled, and she looked at me in both wariness and exhaustion. She dropped her hold on the door to completely face me.

“I don’t understand what you want from me, Christian. You drag me to this dinner with your parents, and then when your father attacks me, you can’t even stand up for me?”

“You didn’t give me a chance to.”

Wisps of blonde kissed along her jaw, pieces sticking to the contours of her perfect face.

God, she was beautiful.

Love and fear vacillated across her features, uncertainty and want.

Something throbbed inside me, so deep it swallowed me whole.

When Elizabeth had changed me, I didn’t know. But she did. She’d unhinged something that had been locked inside, something I’d never believed I wanted or even knew existed. But with her standing there, it was all I could see.

Approaching her slowly, I stopped close and lifted her chin with my finger so she’d look at me.

I searched her face.

Her eyes dropped away, even though I held her firm.

“I’m here now. You think I wouldn’t stand up to my father for you? That I’d just stand there and let him talk about you like that? This week has been the worst of my life, Elizabeth, every single minute that you weren’t a part of it. And then yesterday when you agreed to go with me tonight, I can’t describe the relief I felt.”

Her warm brown gaze finally fluttered up to meet with mine. I slid my fingers from her chin and cupped one side of her face. Touching her was perfection.

Exhaling heavily, I inclined my face closer and caressed my thumb over her cheek. “And tonight . . . I can’t even begin to apologize for what happened tonight. I can only tell you I don’t care what my dad thinks about us.”

I brought my other hand to her face and squeezed in emphasis. “Elizabeth, I can’t lose you.”

She wet her lips and shivered. She hugged herself, her crossed arms a barrier between us. “I don’t even know what that means, Christian. One minute, you’re telling me you want to get past what happened last Friday so we can be friends again, and the next minute, you’re holding my hand and telling me I mean everything to you.”

Frantic brown eyes begged as they flitted across my face, as if she were desperate to find an answer there. “I don’t understand what you want from me.”

Increasing my hold, I edged closer. “I want you. I want you to take a chance on me. I know I haven’t given you a reason to, and everything between us is a mess right now, but it’s only because we aren’t what we’re supposed to be. I’ve been fighting this so hard for so long because I thought I was protecting our friendship when all I was doing was setting us up to fail.”

Hot tears fell into my hands, and Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open. I resisted the desire to crush her to me, to kiss her, to finally take what I’d always known was supposed to be mine, although in a completely different way than the initial urge that had me squirming in my seat four months prior.

Instead, it galloped ahead of me, a future I’d never believed I wanted. One I knew without a single doubt I wanted to share with Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth, I haven’t touched another girl since that first time I walked out of your apartment. I mean, I tried . . . but all I could think about was you. All this time, it was you.”

“What?” Shock dropped Elizabeth’s arms from between us. In the few inches separating us, the air vibrated with need.

I erased it. My entire body sighed in relief.

Her face was a breath from mine.

“This has been a long time coming. I’ve just been too dense to see it for what it is. You are the kind of girl I’m looking for, Elizabeth. The only girl I’m looking for.”

Tentative fingers fluttered up to brush over my bottom lip. “I’m scared of this.”

I smiled beneath them before I brought my hand up to hold hers, pressed her fingers to my mouth in a gentle kiss. “All I’m scared of is losing you.”

Elizabeth softened, body and soul.

I could feel it, the way the tension scattered like a gust of wind through a mound of fallen leaves. I took a chance and carefully wound her in my arms.

There was