Lost (30 page)

Nate. God, I’d almost let him slip away. “Maybe he’s used to it.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” he said. He worked his feet under my blanket and enclosed mine between his at the exact moment I needed him to, when I thought they’d freeze and snap from the bone. I knew I had no hope of hiding how the foot rub made me feel, so I didn’t. I curled my toes against his
skin,
shuddering and feeling him do the same behind me. “He’s lucky to have you. Is he a drug addict too?”

“Shut up! He’s not. I’m not either.”

We laughed. The motion somehow brought us closer in bed, and he slipped one of his legs under the blanket with me.

To keep the real Christine from slipping away, melting into him, I told him about my plan to fix things and Sophia’s instructions involving the necklace and knife he couldn’t see.

For what felt like hours, we talked about his world and mine. It became increasingly difficult to decipher which was real or not. He felt so real next to me.

To help with my memory, I told him about every date, which led to every kiss, then to exactly how far down the slippery slope we’d gotten. With every plummet, he inched closer until he was completely under the blanket with me, pressed against my back. His arm slowly wrapped around my waist, and I had no choice but to turn to him.

My lips brushed his and he pulled away. “I’m not him. I’m not the guy you love.”

“You are.” He rolled over, and I followed him. “Turn around.”

“I can’t. I can’t look at you." I scooted closer and pressed my face against his back. “Christine, please move. I’m really confused right now, and I need to be alone.”

 
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked, unable to keep my hands still on his sides.

“No. Yes. No.” I tightened my arms around him. “Just go to that side of the bed. I can’t do this. You’re not mine. You’re crazy and high, and when you sober up, I’m going to go back to being with a girl who only wants to be with me sometimes. Please. Stop touching me. I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” I said, giving up, dizzy from his mixed signals. “For the record, Nate, I
am
yours.”

I kissed his scars softly before rolling away, just to torture him. He rolled to the other side of the bed with me, and I laughed. I wanted to see what our dance looked like, pulling closer,
then
repelling, only to find each other again.

“You don’t think the scars make me look crazy and damaged?” he asked. I shook my head. “Shannon thinks so.”

“I hate her!”

He moaned. “I think Nate might fight with you on purpose. You smell even better angry.”

I turned around in his arms, and he didn’t try to get away. “If I really didn’t know you … why would I be in your bed with you like this?” I whispered, close enough that the words brushed against his lips. “You have to believe me.”

For a moment, it looked like he was going to say something smart, but his eyes lingered too long on my lips, and we both forgot that we were talking at all.

The kiss started slowly – so slowly that we could’ve pulled away, continued the dance, and pretended nothing had happened. But then he rolled on top of me and kissed me harder.

 
The world, both of them, paused as both versions of me got exactly what they needed. His lips on mine, a joy I’d both never felt and thought I’d lost forever. Nothing compared to it. No memory of us. No lonely desire for this. Nate and Nathan, my soul mate and the kind stranger, all melded into one as he clutched me in bed.

As I both memorized and remembered the taste of his lips, I rubbed my fingers up and down his back.

He chuckled. “I
do
like that.” I was having a hard time understanding what that meant. Whatever it was tugged at me, begged me to hold on. But I didn’t want to be nagged, so I let every thought blow out of my mind and crushed myself closer to him.

“The rock you fell from,” he said, breaking our kiss and panting. “I sit there all the time. I’ve been sitting there for years. Sometimes I sleep there. I stay there all night, waiting for something. For you.”

I twisted my fingers in his hair, and pulled his lips back to mine. “I’m glad you were there tonight. You saved me.”

My heart warmed, thinking of this perfect guy waiting outside of my prison. Waiting to rescue me.

“Stay with me,” he said. “It feels like I’ve wanted to be with you, exactly you, for my entire life. Please don’t leave.” We kissed for a while as I tried to formulate a response. I was trying to remember why I couldn’t stay. “I know I’m asking a lot, but you’re my mate. That’s why you smell like this to me. I’m begging you to give up everything, the drugs, your boyfriend, everything, and stay.”

“I’m not on drugs,” I said. “And you’re my boyfriend, Nathan. Isn't this what couples do?”

He kissed me again and smiled against my lips. “I am? This me? The real me?” I nodded. “So you’re staying?”

I couldn’t think of one reason to leave him. Where else would I go? Who else could I ever want to be with?

“Forever,” I said, breathless and falling into another kiss.

“Just give me a minute,” Nathan said.

He kneeled in the corner of his kitchen, digging under a loose board. I dodged the water streaming into the room with us. It was a stormy morning.
Stormy, but beautiful.
Apparently, Nathan kept his eggs in the soil. He’d been digging for a few minutes, the longest we’d been apart since last night.

“I thought you said you had to go to work,” I said.

“I did, but that was before a certain someone completed my life.” He turned around and made a silly face, reaching his tongue out of his mouth and crossing his eyes. I laughed. He reminded me of a cartoon character, zany and wonderful and capable of getting hit with an anvil or worse without being seriously injured.
Hilarious and indestructible.
Maybe that was why he wasn’t afraid to harbor a human.
Forever, as he’d promised last night.
“Found them!”

He unearthed two tiny eggs, way smaller than the ones Mom and Dad used for breakfast.

“I bet they’ll be wonderful,” I said.

He picked me up and spun me around the kitchen, kissing again like we’d done all night. That somehow led us to the floor. We forgot about the eggs for a while as our kiss went from soft to rough to soft again.

We stopped when we heard shells cracking.

“Oh no!” he said. I laughed. “It was all I had, babe. I’ll have to go into town to trade something. I need to get my things from Shannon’s place anyway.”

“Can I come?”

He winced and bit his lip. “That’s probably not a good idea.” My heart sank, and he sniffed. He frowned and kissed my cheek. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t hide me,” I whispered. “Please. My parents hid me. Last night was my first time out of the house. Please … don’t do the same thing.”

He narrowed his eyes. He looked like he was about to ask for more information, but he sniffed the air around my face and kissed me yet again. “Don’t be sad. I can’t take what you smell like when you’re sad. What would make you happy?”

I had two options – going back to bed or going to explore the new, outside world with him. We must’ve kissed for longer than I’d thought because it wasn’t raining anymore. Since we’d thoroughly explored the bed last night, only stopping when he’d said he didn’t want our first time to be on the night we met, I pointed to the door.

“I want to play outside.”

I felt five-years old. I was sure I had said that very sentence when I was younger, and my parents had scared me with gruesome stories about monsters. If only they’d let me go a few feet out of our home, I would’ve found my love way sooner.

“Then play outside, we shall.” He led me through the door. He tapped my shoulder and ran. “Tag!” he yelled, darting through the trees.

I knew I couldn’t catch him. He moved so fast that his body blurred. I took my time to find
him,
touching every living thing in my path and watching the birds fly over my head.

They were so beautiful. I had to stop. I was crying too hard to keep playing. Spending your entire life locked in a house with your parents will do that to you, I
guessed,
make mundane things the most beautiful sight in the world.

I almost didn’t feel the arms wrapping around me, too entranced by the sky and the black dots fluttering in it.

“Honey!” Dad screamed. His voice jerked me out of the sky. I screamed and scratched at his hands, trying to free myself. “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

“Nathan! Nathan!”

“Come on, sweetie,” Dad said. “Don’t fight me. There are guards in the forest. I saw them. You’re not safe here.”

I didn’t care about guards or anything other than getting away from him so I didn’t have to go back to that house. Nathan ran to me and yanked me away from Dad. His human strength was no match for my new boyfriend.

“I can explain,” Nate said. “Are you a guard?”

“No, I’m her father. Let her go!”

I clung to Nathan and Dad wrapped an arm around my stomach and tried to pry me away from my knight in shining armor. “Run, Nathan. He’s going to bring me home and lock me inside the rock again. Please. I’ll never see you again. He’s crazy. My mom is too.”

I looked around for her. I knew she couldn’t be too far behind, waiting to scream at me and act like a maniac.

“Please, Dad. I don’t want to go back. Tell Mom where I am and that I found someone. Please.”

“Mom is gone.” His voice broke and he stumbled back. “Last night we were watching a movie and all of a sudden …” He shook his head to suffice for the rest of his sentence. “That’s how I knew something had happened to you. And I ran out, left her there, because I knew she’d want me to find you.” Dad covered his face, crying fiercely, unraveling quickly. “She told me she took it back. After your tub incident, she promised. She lied to me.”

I climbed out of Nathan’s arms and met my father on the ground. I wiped his cheeks with my thumbs.

I remembered the tub incident he spoke of. Mom had locked the doors to the pool because I’d been too upset that day. So I’d locked my bedroom door and tried to drown myself in the tub. That was why I didn’t have running water in my bathroom. I’d held myself under for minutes and minutes, breathing normally, not dying like I wanted to. Then Dad had kicked my door in and yanked me out. It had taken Mom almost an hour to stop coughing.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Your mother …
my wife
… is dead. It happened last night when you … escaped.”

Neither of my parents had explained why I didn’t die in that tub. I vaguely remembered a connection between my mother’s life and my own. The fall should’ve killed me, but it had killed her instead.
But how?

It felt like I’d forgotten something, something important.

“We need to go home,” Dad whispered, without moving from the ground. His eyes were detached like he was no longer himself, like he’d only said that because it was what he thought he should say.

“What’s going on?” Nathan asked.

I turned around slowly. “I think I killed my mother.”

Dad stretched out on the leaves, clutching his chest like it was about to explode. He screamed her name to the top of his lungs, louder and louder, as if calling her would bring her back. I wanted to shatter on the ground with him, I loved her and I was responsible for her death, but the sound of footsteps racing our way stopped me.

“Shannon,” Nathan said, his nose in the air like he’d caught her scent. “And guards. She must’ve called them. Maybe she saw us together.”

“Dad, get up. We have to run.”

He didn’t move. I wondered if he’d heard me at all. He was still screaming his wife’s name as he bawled.

“You promised me,” he cried. “
Lyd
, you promised me you would take your soul back.”

Her soul.

I had my mother’s soul.

The sun peeked through the trees above us. I vaguely remembered wanting it to come. The footsteps grew louder and Nathan picked me up. “We can’t leave my dad,” I said.

“Let
whoever
it is take me,” he cried. “Run, baby. Go.”

“No! Dad!”

He stood with his head hanging low and walked towards the sound of racing feet, resigning. Giving up on life. I tried to run after him, but Nathan braced me against his chest and ran. Dad howled in the distance, and I screamed for my father.

I didn’t stop screaming until Nathan put me down in his kitchen. He hooked the flimsy lock on the door and raced to his room.

“We’ll pack. We’ll go on the run. It’ll be fine, baby.” I couldn’t do this to him, the same thing I’d done to my parents – disrupt his life and make him live in hiding. “It’s nearly noon. If we get past these guards, it’ll be hours until we see another. We could get really far.”

Nearly noon.

Something beat against my chest, begging me to see, begging me to notice it. I brought my hand to my heart and felt the cold necklace there.

“What is this?” I asked. Nathan didn’t answer. He was busy stuffing clothes in a plastic bag.

I blinked and the necklace disappeared. For some reason, that made me panic. I patted my chest until I found it again. I held on tight this time. I didn’t want to lose it.

I … I needed it.

I needed it to fix things.

To get my old life back.

“It’s noon!” I screamed. I scrambled to find the boots I’d taken off and nearly forgotten. I found the knife and raced to the door.

Dreco’s
guards were dressed in purple cloaks. One of them had blood on his hands, likely my father’s.

The redhead stood in the middle of them and pointed to me.

“There,” she said. “That’s the human Nathan Reece is harboring. I watched them through his window.”

The cloaked figures pressed in and Nate barged through the doors.

The sun gleaned over our heads, and I slid the knife over my palm. Nate tried to grab it, but it was too late. My blood pooled in the center of my hand and I let it drip over the pendant.

There was something else. Something I needed to remember.

My heart crashed in my chest as the guards grabbed us. One of them snapped, and Nate growled.

Snapped.

Magic.

Sophia Ewing.

The yellow jewel glowed, and the necklace shook in my hand.

“I wish I hadn’t used the portal,” I screamed.

I closed my eyes, begging the magic to work.

The hands around my neck squeezed and squeezed until I could no longer stand.