The Regret Series Complete Collection Box Set: Lost to You, Take This Regret, and if Forever Comes (16 page)

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 backwards, 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 no hesitation from her, just the softness of her hands as they ran up and over my shoulders and anchored at the back of my neck.

I leaned in and swept my nose along the sweetness of her jaw, and I whispered at her ear, “Be with me.”

Elizabeth swayed and rocked, let herself go in the security of my arms. Her face was hidden in the crook of my neck, buried in my need and the absolute devotion I felt for her, her mouth pressed to my skin. I danced with her, lifting her from her feet and slowly spinning her around.

We stayed that way for what seemed like forever, the snow flitting down around us as Elizabeth and I said nothing, just allowed our hearts to dance together in an eternal promise.

Because I was never going to let her go.

She pulled her head away to find my face, and I placed her back on her feet. One hand remained firm around her waist, and I brushed aside the hair stuck to the side of her face with the other. Contentment thrummed in my chest, while my need for Elizabeth only grew.

Her eyes were all alight, tender, that honeyed-amber swimming with what I felt beating steadily within my heart.

From the moment I saw her, I knew something about her was different. I just never imagined it would change my life.

It was Elizabeth who pushed the moment. She lifted to her toes and pressed her lips to mine. Her mouth came so cautious and slow, testing, though I felt nothing there that told me she was still unsure. The questions between us no longer remained. Both my hands slid to her hips, and I pulled her as close as I possibly could then wound one hand back up her spine to the base of her neck.

I kissed her slowly, savored her unhurriedly. There was nothing carnal to this kiss. But still, it was enough to reignite the ache she’d left me with for so many months.

Hell, this girl had managed it with one look.

I smiled against her lips, still unable to grasp that she’d brought me this far.

I could feel her grinning, too, before she pulled back. She pressed her lips together as if savoring the remnant of our kiss. “What?”

I shook my head, gripping her tight. “Nothing. I just didn’t realize anything could make me this happy.”

She hid her face in my chest and mumbled, “Neither did I.”

I dropped a kiss to her head and hugged her a little more. She shivered again. Who knew how much time had passed since we’d been standing out in the snow without our jackets.

I stepped back and grabbed two of her fingers because I found I really didn’t want to let her go. “You should get inside. It’s freezing out here.”

She cast a quick glance behind her at her building. The single window to her apartment remained a darkened square against the gray wall.

She turned back to me. “You want to come inside?”

Did I? My body answered with a resounding
Hell, yeah
. No doubt, the second we crossed her threshold it would be all over. There’d be hands and flesh and need that would no longer be denied. No longer could anything or anyone stop this attraction that had grown, transformed, and solidified as this bond that could not be broken.

My eyes skimmed over her face. Even though she looked up at me with the same desires that spun a path through my veins and coiled in my muscles, I didn’t miss the weariness that lay as purple smudges beneath her eyes.

I shook my head. “No, not tonight.”

Disappointment creased her forehead, and I drew her to me and kissed her again before I pushed my mouth near her ear. “Of course I
want
to, Elizabeth.” I flattened myself to her. “But I’m not going to. Let’s do dinner tomorrow, instead. I want that time with you, just knowing it’s you and me. Can we do that?”

She sighed and nodded against my chest before she smiled lightly up at me. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

I dropped a small kiss to her mouth plus one against her nose. “Do me a favor and go climb underneath a blanket. You’re frozen.”

She laughed. “Okay.”

She stepped back and hooked her index finger with mine. She swayed our hands between us. “I’ll miss you.”

I’d been missing her for months and I didn’t even know it. “Me, too. I’ll see you tomorrow, though, okay?”

Finally, she dropped her hand, turned, and walked away. At the door, she paused to look at me once, before she pulled the door open and slipped inside.

I wrapped my arms over my chest in an attempt to shield myself from the cold, my attention trained upstairs. Her light flicked on. Five seconds later, Elizabeth pressed her face to the
window. She smiled this wistful smile and placed both hands against the glass.

I stood there with my hands shoved in my pockets, rocking back on my heels as I stared up at her. That spot inside expanded and I loved her a little more.

No one could ever come close to this girl, the way she made me feel, what she made me see. We belonged together.

I lifted a hand in a small wave. Her fingers curled on the window, and her expression filled with that same tenderness she had looked at me with for so long. I hoped she could see the same in mine.

Chapter Eleven

Elizabeth

The knock at my door jerked me to my feet. My thoughts raced everywhere, and my nerves only skyrocketed knowing who awaited me on the other side of the door.

I hurried across the room, sidestepping my purse. I’d dropped it in the middle of the floor when I came in last night and rushed to the window to catch another glimpse of Christian before he walked away. I guess I’d needed an affirmation. Something to prove what had just transpired between us had been real. And it was, there in his expression, the same thing I felt reflected back at me.

Of course I’d known I was in love with him before, though the realization had gutted me. Rather than joy, I’d felt only pain, my feelings for him nothing more than a millstone around my neck.

But last night had changed everything, and peering down at him had revealed something greater to me. Joy had firmly taken root in my heart as a future unfolded before my eyes,
snapped into place like the jagged pieces of a puzzle, ones that didn’t seem to fit but always belonged together.

We’d been raised so differently. Maybe it was those differences that made us so perfect for each other.

I opened the door to Christian standing there with his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. That mass of hair on his head was mussed, framing his face. A clean shave had erased any trace of the shadow that usually had set by this time of day. It accentuated every sharp line and contour of his jaw. The curve of a gentle smile lifted one side of his mouth.

“Hey,” he said, his head tilting to the side. He drew his shoulders up as his face bled into a timid grin.

“Hey.” I could feel the flush make its way up my neck to tint my cheeks. Being around Christian had never been easy. It’d always been a feat of wills, brute strength and iron-clad resolve. I’d become almost accustomed to it until I stood before him now.

With all of our reservations out of way, I felt like a different girl.