Lost in Us (19 page)

Silence. I don't know how many minutes pass before he asks quietly, "Do you want to know how Lara died?"

Wham.

A punch square in my chest wouldn't cut my breath short the way his words do. I can't form any kind of answer but he goes on anyway.

"We'd been dating for most of high school. I wasn't the best of boyfriends. I was… let's say extremely jealous is a mild way to put it. We fought constantly. Especially our senior year—things turned really, really ugly. She wanted to go to Harvard, even though she'd been accepted to Stanford as well, and I was trying to change her mind by any means. The fight on graduation day was the worst of all. She said I made her life a living hell and took off in the car her parents gave her as a graduation present. She never showed up at the graduation ceremony."

He takes a deep breath and I clasp my palms to fists, my nails cutting into the flesh, because I think I know what will follow.

"The police found her a few hours later. She had crashed into a tree with the car."

I jerk up straight, covering my mouth with both hands. "That wasn't your fault, James," I whisper through my fingers.

"Wasn't it? The police didn't rule out the possibility that she might have crashed… willingly."

Torment and despair, in depths the likes of which I plunged myself during my darkest days, plague his voice. And his gaze. A painful knot forms in my throat when he finally looks up at me.

"She could've just lost control of her car. It happens to so many teens."

"Maybe. But even if she did, it's still my fault. She was so upset when she left."

So that's why he can't let go. It's the same reason I can't.

Guilt.

It consumes him still … for all the things he did.

As it consumes me for all the things I didn't do for Kate.

I'd say something to him, something encouraging or at least comforting, but I know better than anyone that no words can wipe the guilt away. I'd kiss him, the way he kissed me when I broke down in his arms that night in his penthouse, and at the hospital, but it would break my heart to do it. I'm not sure he'd want that anyway.

I'm not sure about anything anymore.

"She always reprimanded me for not getting professional help for my jealousy issues. Maybe she would still be alive had I done so. I started going to counseling after her funeral."

Parker knew about this. That explains why he didn't react like a normal person would when James yelled at him. The way he froze when we first met, at the party, and James told him I was there with him. Other images come to mind. Of James under that tree, recoiling when I accused him of being jealous. Of James in the bar. How close was Jason to having his nose broken that night?

I realize Parker isn’t the only one who knows about this. The lark also does. That’s why she said she
knows
James with such entitlement. Because she knew James during all those years he wants to forget about. Only she’s too stupid to let him forget about it, as her indiscretion at the airport proves—all in the name of making me feel small.

"Did counseling help?"

He gives a humorless laugh. "I never had any real relationship after Lara to test myself. I kept myself out of relationships on purpose. I think deep down I always knew that monstrous part of me was still there. Until you. I wanted so much for you and I to work." 

He moves slightly, almost imperceptibly in his position, and I think that maybe he'll come to me. Maybe he'll close this awful distance. Then I realize I must have imagined it, because his stance behind the chair is as firm as ever.

"But you saw for yourself at the hospital how much all the years of counseling helped."

"So what, you had your first Othello relapse and decided to just bolt?" I say in a surprisingly strong voice.

"What else was there?"

"
I
was there, James. And you just took off."

I don't imagine it this time. In a split second, he's inches away from me, lifting my chin with his thumb. It's just a slight, innocent touch, but it's enough to set every nerve in my body on edge.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I promised not to hurt you again and I thought I was doing more harm than good if I stayed there."

"You not wanting me, that's what is hurting," I whisper.

"I do want you. God, Serena, you don't know how much."

That is a blessing to my ears, balm for my soul. The words I so needed to hear. 

"Then don't do this."

"You deserve someone better. You deserve someone perfect."

"I want you."

You are perfect for me
, is what I can't say out loud. Because nothing but another broken soul could be perfect for me.

"You do?" he asks under his breath. "After everything I just told you?"

"Yes," I whisper and without giving him any notice, I press my lips to his. For one frozen second I just stand like that, terrified that he will step back. Or push me away. But he doesn't. He pegs one hand at the back of my head, the other one around my waist, taking over the kiss. My mind, my heart. Taking all of me over. Our bodies are pressed against each other in a tender passion, searching for gratification in every touch, every breath.

Until we run out of breath. Literally.

I don't open my eyes right away when we break off. I want to savor the lingering flavor of his lips on mine for a few moments longer, but then his cell starts vibrating.

I run my hand to the inner chest pocket of his jacket, but he murmurs, seeking my lips again, "Leave it."

I do, but whoever is calling doesn't seem to want to leave him, because one second after the vibration stops, another short one follows. A message. 

"You know, it's not healthy to keep this thing so close to your heart," I say and he smiles, holding his jacket open.

I clasp my fingers around the phone, retrieving it from the pocket. I was planning to drop it on the table and return to our kiss, but the strike of horror on James's face when he glances at the screen changes my mind. I turn the screen toward me.

I wish I hadn't.

Because the words on the screen reduce my whole world to a bottomless pit.

You forgot your wallet. I can come by tonight and bring it.

The sender: Natalie.

For a moment I think that the earth beneath might indeed have opened in an abyss and swallowed me, because everything before me goes black. But then suddenly James is standing in front of me, talking, and I think I preferred the darkness.

"You went to her?" I whisper, taking a step back, because his proximity is too much to bear.

"Yes, but—"

"Did you sleep with her?"

His answer comes a fraction of a second too late and too tense. "No."

"You're lying."

"I'm not," he says and makes a motion toward me, raising his hands as if to take me in his arms.

"Don't you dare touch me."

"Serena—"

"Why did you go to her?"

He lowers his hands, answering in a defeated voice. "I wanted to distract myself. I wanted to forget you and everything that happened between us. I wanted to get the idea that I could ever be in a normal relationship out of my mind."

"I can't believe you had the nerve to give me your teary self-pity talk after you had sex with another woman."

"I did not have sex with Natalie. We didn’t even kiss."

"Don't say her name."

"Nothing happened, I swear."

I snort and fold my arms over my chest. "Nothing, really? You said you went there to distract yourself."

"Serena, please. Listen to me. I admit I wanted to sleep with her, but I didn't. I couldn't. I thought of you and I just couldn't."

Every single word burns me. Not only my skin. My flesh, my bones. My very core. I need to get out. Before I turn to ashes. Before I reach that place from where there is no coming back. It can't take me more than ten steps to get out of this damned room. I can make ten steps.

"Believe me, please, I—"

"Don't say one more word, James," I utter in a broken whisper, stepping further and further away from him. "I can't believe I actually thought this could work."

He freezes in the act of walking toward me, shock apparent on every pore of his face. "Serena, I swear nothing—"

"I believe you, James. But you wanted it to happen. That was your first impulse. That's how it will always be. We have a misunderstanding, or a fight, or God knows what will happen, and you will rush into someone else's bed."

"No, I won't. It's only you for me. It'll always be only you."

"I want to believe that too, but I can't," I murmur.

By the time I realize what's going on, he's inches away from me, his sweet breath paralyzing me, his arms forming an inescapable chain around my waist.

"Don't leave. We belong together. You know this."

"Please let go of me, James."

"I can make you happy. Let me show you how happy I can make you," he pleads.

Oh, he can make me happy. He can make me happy like no one else. But he can also make me miserable like no one else. That I know. That's why I need to run. To leave now. Where his words can't reach me, where his eyes can't pierce me. But he's holding me as firm as ever and I know he won't let go unless I hurt him. Really hurt him. So I tell him exactly what Lara told him.

"No you can't." It rips me apart to say the next words, because there's nothing crueler I could say to him. "You'll make me miserable. You'll make my life a living hell. In fact, you have outdone yourself. In the short time you've known me, you already managed to make my life a living hell."

His arms release me. His eyes widen. Not with shock, but with pain. And I can't stand looking into them knowing that I caused it. I walk past him, out of the room. I risk a little glance over my shoulder when I'm by the elevator. He hasn't followed. Of course he hasn't.

I don't look in Daniel's direction at all as I walk to the front door, but I feel his gaze on me and I automatically raise my hand to my cheeks, thinking of wiping away the tears that are surely pouring in streams. I don't find any tears. Not one.

How can it be? How can there be no tears when my heart is shattering, bit by bit, memory after memory? Doesn't the pain want to come out? A terrifying thought strikes me. What if it will never come out? What if it will stay inside me forever, until it dismantles my heart and wrecks my soul?

I leave the building and get to the car without one tear. But as I slide inside, a tiny drop finds its way down my cheek. And then another one. I close my eyes, and lean back on the headrest, welcoming them. The liquid proof of my pain.

I was wrong. So, so wrong. Two broken souls do not make a whole one. Two broken souls cannot heal one another. They will devour, shatter each other until there's nothing left of either of them.

I felt whole for a while though. When he held me in his arms and murmured in my ear. When he guided me through the clouds and the rivers of chocolate. I press my palms on my eyes, trying to shake them off. The memories. The bad ones and the good ones—especially the good ones. They're the most shattering ones. They cling to my heart with iron hooks, making every breath, every sob an agony.

I open my eyes after some time, after the tears have dried up and my breath has evened. I need to leave this place, because the burning sensation in my chest and behind my eyelids tells me it's not long before a new wave of tears will come. And I don't want to be here when it does. Just as I start the engine, I catch something in the distance in the rearview mirror, far up in the blue sky, and for a moment I'm sure my mind is playing tricks on me, because I was just thinking of that day. A parachute. My heart skips a beat when I realize there is only one person under the parachute.

I don't know why, but the sight of that one skydiver makes me feel lighter, as if I'm up there, among the clouds as well.

I can learn to fly on my own.

I can learn to laugh on my own.

Some other day. Some other time. Because as I leave his place behind, all I manage to do is fall apart again. The place where he touched and kissed me. The place where I cried and I laughed with him. Where we traveled in fantasy worlds and created our own, sweeter and richer than all the others. The place where I tasted the heavens and forgot my nightmares.

Where I fell in love with him.

O
nly one thing keeps me from completely shattering after my encounter with James.

My old strategy: exhausting myself.

I exhaust myself to the point where I am so drained, I can't even think about him—or rather, his absence. During the day. The nights are an entirely different matter. Dreams invade my mind when it's most defenseless, leaving me drenched in sweat. Tears swell up in my eyes seconds after I wake up as I realize that none of the things in my dreams will ever be more than dreams again. I won't feel the touch of his lips on mine again, or hear him say my name in my ear in a low, urgent whisper.

But I never give myself time to wallow in my tears. I couldn't even if I wanted to. Three developments took care of that.