The Regret Series Complete Collection Box Set: Lost to You, Take This Regret, and if Forever Comes (12 page)

“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 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?

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 stuck up in every direction. But it was my eyes that scared me. They were 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 as I stepped outside. I should have thought to put on a heavier jacket.

I’d spent the last mindless nights on the couch with the television droning, obscured voices that barely registered telling me New York City would get an early winter, while I wallowed in the absence of Elizabeth.

All I could think about was her. What was she doing? What was she feeling? Did she miss me as much as I missed her?

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 like she always did, lost in thought. Would she think 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 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
.

I hovered in the distance of her building door, willing 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 bringing us face to face.