Losing Me Finding You (22 page)

I smile and we all stand. I pull my brother in for a tight hug, telling him again how sorry I am about what happened.

Nick squeezes me once before he lets go and reaches over to shake Ben’s hand again. “It was nice to finally meet you,” he says. “Thank you for taking care of her, for making my sister so happy.”

Ben smiles, his eyes on me as he says, “It’s easy, I love her.”

My heart melts at his words as I stare back at the man who makes everything worthwhile.

“So, I’ll see you both tomorrow?” Nick asks, glancing at both of us.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “And Nick, I’m really sorry to hear about your parents.”

Nick nods once, before giving me another kiss on the cheek and then he’s gone.

“You okay?” Ben asks, pulling me back down onto the couch.

I exhale, trying to work out what I’m feeling. “I really don’t know,” I say truthfully. “That was kind of surreal.” Ben smiles and I know it was probably just as weird for him too. “I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to feel about all this, I mean I never really knew them.”

“I know, babe,” Ben says threading his fingers through mine. “It’s always going to be different for you and me. I might not live it, but I do see what you go through each time. But each of your families, they don’t understand what really goes on. It’s different for them.”

I exhale in a rush. “I know,” I whisper. “It’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like for everyone else. I mean, in every life, all I want to do is find you. Sometimes I forget that while I’m in this life, there are others who are a part of it too.”

“There are,” he says, his thumb stroking my cheek. “And it’s usually a family who loves you, parents who loved you, baby.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I murmur, my head falling onto Ben’s shoulder.

“Your brother seems really nice,” he says as he wraps an arm around me and I sink into him.

Even though we’ve been back together for a year now, this never gets old. Because even though I am constantly changing, or my families come and go, Ben is the one thing that never does. He is every cliché under the sun; my rock, my anchor, my soul mate, my everything.

I wouldn’t have anything if I didn’t have Ben, because every four years I’d wake up in a life I assumed was my own and I’d live it for four years until I disappeared again and woke up in another. But with Ben, I have everything that keeps me
who
I am.

“Yeah he is, I liked him from the start,” I say. “Trusted him.”

“You should keep him in your life, Evie,” he says. “Don’t shut him out because of me and don’t be afraid of introducing us just because some things are hard to explain.”

I lift my head, my eyes roaming over Ben’s face. “You’re what’s most important to me, Ben,” I tell him. “And Nick won’t be around forever, you know that.”

“I know, babe,” Ben says, smiling at me. “But he’s your brother, and to him, you’ve
always
been his sister. Spend time with him while you can, he seems like a great guy.”

I nod. “Okay,” I whisper, knowing Ben is right, Nick is a great guy.

“And, you should take what he offers you,” he says, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

“Isn’t it a bit weird,” I say. “Taking money from two people I barely knew, who aren’t really my parents.”

I’ve never really been sure who my real parents were, the two people who brought me into this world and somehow cursed me and condemned me to lead this life. When I get my memories back, those first four years are always still a distant memory. Nothing more than flashes of crying, or being hungry, or of nothing much at all.

I can’t remember them and I didn’t know them. I couldn’t tell you what they looked like, what their names were or what they did for a living. I guess in some ways, I’m lucky I survived everything that happened to me growing up. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.

“But they
are
your parents, Evie,” Ben says softly.

“Are they really?” I ask, a note of bitterness in my voice as I think back to the one or two occasions I actually spoke to them on the phone. It’s not that they were bad people; it’s just that they never really seemed that interested in me. It was the same for Nick too, which made it a little easier to take I guess, but I’m still not sure how I feel about accepting anything like this.

“Babe,” Ben says. “We’ve talked about this, you know how it works. These people, David and Joanne Jackson, they
are
your parents. In this life, they are the two people who loved you and raised you, who knew you…”

“Yeah, but…”

“No, hang on a sec,” Ben says, not letting me speak. “These two people loved you, and for all intents and purposes, knew you as their daughter. In their mind, they’ve known that since the day you were born, Evie,” he says, ignoring the fact I’m shaking my head in disagreement. “You know that’s how it works, baby,” he says, his voice soft.

“I just can’t, Ben,” I say, not really knowing how I’m supposed to deal with this. I’ve never had to face the death of a
parent
and I’ve certainly never had to deal with inheriting something from people who I’ve never actually known.

“Why?” he says quietly.

I shrug. “I don’t know, it just feels kind of wrong, as though I’m taking advantage of them.”

Ben pulls me into his lap now, even though he shouldn’t really be lifting this much weight yet. His hand smoothes the hair from my face as he wraps his other arm around my waist. “You’re not taking advantage of anything, Eva, you know that. I know it feels strange and I can’t pretend to understand it. But from everything we know about how this all works, you are to them, what I am to my parents. What our kids will be to us one day.”

His words make my heart pound.
He’d want to have kids with me?

“You are their daughter and they loved you, Evie. They would have wanted this for you,” he says, his hand rubbing my back.

I bury my face in his neck and inhale the scent that is Ben. A combination of warmth and smoke and wood, even now, that is both comforting and addictive. “You really think it’s that easy?” I ask.

Ben pushes me back a little so I’m forced to look into his eyes. He leans in and presses a quick kiss to my lips before pulling back. “I really do. I think David and Joanne loved you as the daughter they always knew they had. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you accepting that.”

I’m nodding before he’s even finished speaking. “Okay,” I say quietly.

Ben smiles at me and I know he’s right. This is the right thing to do and really, I’d be stupid to say no to it. We sit in silence for a few minutes, as I try to process how I’m supposed to feel about all of this.

This is probably the weirdest part about my curse, or whatever it is. Waking up in a life, having a family who has known me forever, but me only knowing them for as long as I’m around. It still doesn’t feel quite right, taking whatever it is that Nick gives me, but at the same time, Ben is right, it’s what Evie Jackson would be expected to do.

And it would help solve one problem.

I reach across Ben and grab the newspaper that sits on the table beside the couch. “Maybe we could use whatever I get from this to buy a flat?” I suggest, wondering how bad a daughter it makes me that I’m immediately thinking of this.

“It’s your money, Evie, you can do whatever you like with it.” I lift my head and meet Ben’s eyes as I whack him across the shoulder before he’s even finished talking. “Hey!” he says. “What did I do?”

“Suggesting it’s my money,” I say, poking him in the stomach now.

“What?” Ben says, smiling as he pins my arms to my sides to stop me from tickling him. “It will be your money, Evie.”

“Ben,” I say, suddenly serious. “It’s our money, okay?
Our
money and this is what I want to do with it. I want a home, for you and me,” I tell him. “Somewhere I’ll always have to come back to.”

Ben smiles and pulls me in for kiss. “Well in that case, I think it’s a fantastic idea,” he breathes against my lips.

I smile against his mouth, knowing that a home, a permanent home with Ben, is the only thing I’ve ever wanted.

30th June 2002

Twenty-six years old

We ended up spending most of last year just getting Ben back on his feet and ready to go back to work. They were really good about giving him all the time he needs to get back to full health and covering the cost of his treatment and rehab. There was a small payout too, a workers compensation payment to cover Ben for his injuries. It wasn’t much, but we added it to the money I ended up inheriting and started looking for somewhere to live.

Ben took a position at a new station in the end, the same place as Paul actually. I was glad that they would be working together and it meant we would be staying in London. I thought we might have moved back to Fleet, but Ben says it’s more exciting working in London and that he isn’t interested in rescuing cats in small towns. He wants to really help people, wants to do what he’s been trained to do, what he’s wanted to do since he watched his dad put on the uniform and go do it too.

In my mind, that all means more danger and more risk, but I don’t say that to Ben. I know this is the job he’s always wanted to have and despite what happened to him two years ago, I can never ask him to give it up. Not for me, not for anything.

Plus staying in London also meant I got to keep my job at the London Library, which I love, and aside from the fact that Paul is here, there’s also my brother, Nick.

After our parents died, I took Ben’s advice and made more of an effort to include Nick in our life. He’s a lot of fun and Ben gets on really well with him. It makes me sad to know that Nick won’t be around for much longer, but it’s been nice having him while I can. I really want to make the most of it.

So in the end we settled on a flat in Vauxhall. It was a refurbished block and we managed to grab a place with three bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and a huge bathroom. In comparison to the tiny place we were in previously, it feels enormous, but more importantly, it feels like home. It’s near the station Ben works at, the area is safe enough that I can walk to see him whenever I want and best of all, Paul and his new wife, Julia, live nearby.

The day we moved in, it was sunny and warm, unusual for that time of the year, but I took it as a good sign, that it was a good move for us. We moved what little furniture we had into the flat and created a home of our own. Ben and I also made the most of his return to full fitness, wasting no time breaking in as many rooms as we could while we were busy rediscovering each other and making up for lost time.

We’ve been here for about eight months now and it’s been nothing short of perfect.

“Still glad we did this?” Ben asks, his fingers gently stroking a path from my collarbone to my stomach. It’s late and we are lying in bed, after my brother and his new girlfriend, Tracy, have left.

I grab his hand, smiling as he tickles me. “Yes, I am. Are you?”

“Definitely,” Ben breathes against my neck, pressing kisses to my skin as he rolls on top of me. “We have a home, Evie. A home and a life together, that you can always come back to. Where I will
always
be waiting for you.”

I open my eyes and find Ben staring down at me. “I know, and I love that,” I say quietly, my fingers pushing his crazy hair back from his face, only to watch it fall back immediately. “I just wish I never had to leave it in the first place.”

“I know you do, baby,” Ben says, leaning down to kiss me. “I wish you didn’t either.”

I get lost in Ben’s kisses, before a thought occurs to me. “What do you do when I’m gone?” I ask, my fingers digging into his back.

“What?” he asks, his lips lifting off mine, as he rolls off me.

“What do you do when I’m gone?” I repeat. “Last time, while you were waiting for me to remember you?”

“I waited,” Ben says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“That’s it?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says shrugging. “I mean, I’ve tried to work out ways to find you, but I just never know where to start. It all seems so random.”

“You’ve looked for me?” I ask, genuinely surprised. I never knew he’d done this before.

“I have, especially last time when you were gone for so long,” Ben says. “But it never really worked out. It was like trying to find a specific needle, in a haystack of needles. And of course, Sarah failed to mention when you came to stay with her,” he adds on. I bite my lip, reaching for him as I start to apologise. Ben shakes his head at me and continues. “I’ve written down all of the places you’ve ever been though, everything I could about each of your lives, but none of it makes any real sense.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, confused.

“Patterns, Evie,” he says, his fingers tucking my hair behind my ear. “I was trying to look for patterns once, hoping I could work out where you were going to wake up next. But it never worked out like that. Or at least, it was never obvious to me anyway.”

“Wow,” I say quietly, amazed at the lengths he went to, the things he actually thought of. “I never knew you did that.”

Ben smiles at me now, and his face is so full of love, I can’t resist leaning up to kiss him. “I know. I never told you, because I never found you, no matter how hard I looked.”

My heart skips a beat, knowing I didn’t help with that at all. “How come you never ask me what I do?” I ask, half wondering if he doesn’t because he thinks the worst.

“I don’t know,” Ben says, his voice quieter now. “A part of me wants to know, but then a part of me doesn’t. You don’t know who I am, so I figure it’s not my business to know what it is you’re doing during that time…” He trails off and I can hear the sadness and resignation in his voice and I understand what he’s not saying.

“You think the worst, don’t you?” I say, voicing both of our fears because it seems like now is the time to do it.

“I try not to think about it at all, Evie,” Ben says, rolling all the way off me now so we are no longer touching.

I lie here staring up at the ceiling, trying to imagine what it must be like to be in Ben’s shoes. Fucking awful is the first thing that springs to mind. Remembering everything but never knowing where the woman you love is, what she’s doing, or worse still,
who
she’s doing.

But I need him to know the truth, no matter how much he might think he doesn’t need to know or want to hear it. I don’t want there to be any secrets or misunderstandings between us, not after what happened last time. I don’t think either of us can go through that again.

I roll over onto my side, prop my head on my hand and look down at Ben. He’s lying on his back, hands tucked behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. I can only imagine the scenarios that are running through his head right now. With my hand, I reach out and gently brush the hair away from his face again and watch as he turns to look at me.

“I’ve never been with anyone else, Ben,” I tell him, my eyes never leaving his. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, it’s never happened, I promise.”

“Really?” he asks, and I can tell he’s surprised.

“Yeah, really,” I say. “And I’m not going to let it happen either.”

“No, I mean, you’ve really never been with anyone else?” he asks and I shake my head, my eyes still on his. Ben untucks one of his hands from behind his head and gently brushes his fingers across my cheek. “Not even the last time, when we went four years without seeing each other?”

“No,” I whisper, even though I know I do need to confess some things from that time.

Ben exhales with what sounds like relief and as I look down at his face, I see for the first time, all of the hurt he’s carried because of that period. All of the hurt he’s still carrying, but trying to hide from me. He was helpless and I wasn’t. I was the one who made the decision to stay away, knowing he didn’t stand a chance in hell of ever finding me.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” I breathe out, knowing I will never be able to atone for this mistake. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting all that time. So sorry I always keep you waiting.”

“I know you are, Evie,” he says, forgiving me like he always does. “I understand why it happened, sort of anyway. I mean don’t get me wrong, I hated it, but I kinda understand. That night was a mess, a fucking disaster and I know if I’d been in your shoes, I would’ve been just as pissed off about what you walked in on.”

“Really?” I ask, surprised.

“Yeah, really,” Ben says quietly. “I had a lot of time to think about it, Evie. Think about how you must have felt seeing that. How it would have looked from your perspective.”

I smile down at him, trying to get him to smile back at me. “Yeah, but it doesn’t make it right, me staying away for so long,” I admit. “You deserved more than that, Ben. I was wrong to not let you know where I was or that I was okay. It was wrong to not let you explain things to me.”

“I just felt so helpless, Evie. I couldn’t do anything to find you; it was all up to you and whether you
wanted
to find me,” he whispers sadly. “And I knew that as long as you were hurting, you were never going to come back to me. But until I could explain it to you, you would always keep hurting,” he says. “It was such a fucked up mess.” He still hasn’t smiled at me and I can see the pain reflected back at me in his deep blue eyes.

“It’s never going to happen again, Ben,” I say, wanting him to know that I mean it. “I promise, I will never jump to conclusions like I did that night, okay? I will always talk to you first instead of running off like that.”

I watch as Ben finally smiles up at me, but it’s sad and doesn’t reach his eyes. “We always used to talk, Evie. I think that’s what hurt the most about that night, about the four years after it,” Ben says, the pain in his voice so obvious now. “I didn’t understand why you so easily pushed me away, why you refused to listen to me. We’d always talked about everything, baby, everything.”

I exhale loudly, knowing I will carry this regret with me forever. I wish if there were ever one thing I could forget, it would be this, the hurt in Ben’s eyes back when I wouldn’t listen to him and the hurt in his eyes now as he finally tells me how he felt that night.

“I know,” I whisper. “You have no idea how much I wish I could go back and change that night.”

“Me too,” Ben says quietly. “I wish I could change so much more than just what happened at the end. I wish I could go back to the start of the night and do everything differently.”

My fingers slowly push Ben’s hair from his face again, before tracing the line of his eyebrow and cheek as he looks back at me. I can see how much he means it, the regret and hurt is written all over his face.

“She was baiting me, you know,” I tell him, knowing there are still things to talk about from that night. “Every chance she got. She was always talking about you, how much she wanted you, hinting at having already had you.”

Ben catches my fingers as they trace down his cheek, over his jaw. Threading our fingers together, he brings our hands to his lips, where he presses a kiss to my knuckles; his eyes never leaving mine. “You know that’s not true, baby,” he whispers. “Nothing happened.”

“Not that night,” I whisper, afraid of what came after, afraid of what I might have let happen by staying away.

Four years is a long time and I kept him waiting for all of it. Almost half of it I knew about him too and I still didn’t contact him. I was stubborn and now I might pay the ultimate price.

And the thing is, despite what Sarah said to me, I have every right to. After what I did to Ben, I have to fully expect he would forget about me, move on and find someone else. I can’t expect him to have waited for me; he’s not a monk, not even close. And even though I don’t really want to know what happened in those four years we were apart, I can imagine enough to realise that things must have happened with other women.

It makes me feel sick to know that someone else has had Ben in the ways that I have. For so long, he was mine, only mine, and even though I know it’s inevitable, I hate the fact that I have had to share him.

Ben smiles sadly back at me, and I know it’s going to take a while for him to let go of the hurt that I caused him. And I know I deserve that.

“Evie,” he whispers, lowering our hands so they rest over his heart now. “Nothing happened, baby,” he says, his fingers gently stroking my wrist. “I’ve never been with anyone else,” he says in a way that causes me to stop breathing. “I wasn’t with her that night and I haven’t been with anyone else either.”

Now Ben’s words make my heart stop. “What, the whole four years we were apart?” I ask, shocked.

“The whole four years, baby,” Ben says quietly.

Now it’s me who’s the surprised one. “Really?” I ask, my heart in my throat at just the possibility.

“Really,” he says. “I mean I got asked out on dates and stuff, and sometimes I went along, but it never went any further. I couldn’t be with them, Evie. I couldn’t touch them and not think of you, couldn’t kiss them and not wish it were you. It was always
you
that I wanted, baby, that never changed. Has
never
changed. I just always hoped you’d realise, believe how I felt about you and find your way back to me.”

“You waited all that time?” I ask, sitting up now, as I stare down at him, completely amazed. Our hands are still joined, resting on his chest and my other hand reaches out, grips his arm as I wait for his answer.

“I did,” he says nodding. “I told you, baby, I will wait forever for you.”