Fuck. Should I take her to the ER? Maybe to Mary? Granted, that was not the introduction he’d had in mind for them. He glanced at Lena again, and she returned his gaze with a carefree smile. Owen reluctantly decided to focus on getting her back to her apartment safely first. He would look up the effects of ecstasy when mixed with alcohol when they got there, and if she ended up needing medical treatment, they would cross that bridge when they reached it.
Getting Lena out of the car was slightly more difficult than getting her into it had been. It had been a little over an hour since she’d taken the ecstasy, and the effects had begun to peak. Everything looked hazy and unrealistic, as though she were moving through a video game rather than her own tangible surroundings. Owen helped her slowly into the elevator and steadied her while he searched her purse for her keys.
“You’re so pretty,” she observed happily. “It’s kinda rididculush… ridid…”
“I get it.”
“Even when you frown, you’re pretty. ‘S not fair.”
Owen pursed his lips and focused on unlocking her door. She stumbled into her dark apartment, and he flipped the light switch quickly, hoping she wouldn’t fall over anything while he locked up and tossed their things onto an end table.
“Let’s get you changed into something more… appropriate,” he suggested, scowling again at her choice of wardrobe.
She’d taken her jacket off, and her breasts taunted him through her transparent shirt. Now that he could see her close up and in better light, her outfit was even worse than he’d thought. Nightclubs are always dark, right? he thought, unable to look away from her. Lena grinned salaciously and pressed her body against him.
“Why do I need to change?” she asked teasingly. “Don’t tell me you don’t think I look hot as fuck right now, ‘cause we both know that’s a lie…” Her hand drifted lower to cup him through his jeans, and it took all of his willpower to take hold of her wrist and pull it away.
“That doesn’t matter.” Owen said firmly.
“Oh, come on.”
“No, Eleanore. You’re not in your right mind.” As much as he might have enjoyed fucking her at that moment, he sure as hell wasn’t going to take advantage of her current state.
“D’you ever notice that you only call me Eleanore when you’re mad at me?”
“That’s not true.”
“Is too.”
Owen sighed, choosing to focus on getting her clothes changed rather than engaging in a childish argument. To his relief, Lena stopped trying to unbutton his pants and allowed him to guide her down the hallway to her bedroom. She stretched out on her bed and grinned stupidly at the ceiling while he located a t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. Changing her shirt was easy enough, though he had to fight the urge to rip the gauzy material into shreds. The corset design of her pants was daunting, however, and he rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to determine how best to get her out of them. At least I know she probably wasn’t planning to get laid.
“It’s a pair of pants, not a Rubik's cube,” Lena giggled, undoing the button and zipper herself. She lifted her legs into the air and said, “Pull.”
“Fuck,” Owen cursed under his breath as her lack of underwear became more apparent. He retrieved a pair from her top drawer and finished the task of dressing her, feeling much better when she was fully clothed. He decided to leave her hair up in case she ended up needing to vomit.
Lena watched him as he sat on the edge of her bed and took his shoes off. She felt very connected to him regardless of his irritable mood, and although she knew in the back of her mind that it was an effect of the ecstasy, she was happy that he was with her. Lena patted the mattress next to her and smiled at him, but Owen felt it was wiser to remain sitting up. He turned toward her and brushed a tendril of red hair away from her face.
“I need to know how much you took and when.”
“I took my usual amount,” she shrugged. “Less than two hours ago.”
“And what’s the ‘usual’ amount?” he persisted.
“Just one pill. Don’t look so worried. If you weren’t so uptight, you’d understand that it’s not that big of a deal.”
Her smile was bright and carefree, and Owen would have loved it if he hadn’t known what had put it there. He spent a few minutes Googling the effects of ecstasy and determined, after asking a few more questions, that she probably didn’t need to go to the hospital. He would ride out the high with her and watch over her when she finally slept.
“Wanna play a game?” Lena asked eagerly, bouncing a little on the mattress as she sat up.
“I guess that depends on what game.” If it’s strip poker, I’m nominating myself for sainthood.
“Ummm… How about Truth or Dare?”
“I think you’ve been daring enough tonight. Let’s stick with Truth,” Owen replied, noticing that she seemed to be experiencing the energy boost he’d read about online.
“Ugh, bo-ring, but whatever. I’ll go first!” Lena paused, tapping her chin theatrically. “Did you think Madalyn was pretty?”
“No.” For the first time that evening, his lips twitched into a half-smile. “My turn. Why are you friends with those people?”
“There’s nothing wrong with ‘those people.’ They just know how to have more fun than you do.”
“That’s not an answer,” he argued, frowning again. Lena rolled her eyes.
“They’re my friends because… Because they get me. They don’t expect anything from me,” she added in a quieter tone. “Now you. Where did you get your scars?”
“That’s a conversation for another day,” Owen sighed.
“Please?”
“No, Lena. Trust me, some stories are best heard sober.”
“But you’ll tell me?” she persisted. He nodded solemnly. “Okay, then… When did you lose your virginity?”
“High school,” he replied, moving on quickly. “What makes you want to act like you did tonight? With the clothes, and the drinking, and the ecstasy… Why do you do it?”
“God, you’re a buzzkill, you know that?”
“Answer the question.”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Lena laughed sarcastically.
“Not at all. You’re brilliant and usually a very responsible person. How can you be so careless?”
“Because it’s fun. Because being me is exhausting, Owen. My whole life I’ve worked my ass off to live up to everyone’s expectations of me, and sometimes I just need a fucking break. Why is that so hard to understand?”
Owen sighed in disgust, turning his face away from her to hide his anger. Does she really not understand how good she’s had it? he wondered, frustrated. Regardless of whatever had happened to her mother, it was obvious that Nate was a good father. He had her best interests at heart, even if he did steamroll her a bit. Lena had at least gotten to grow up with one loving parent, whereas he’d had no one until he was fifteen. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been beaten or raped or terrorized. It seemed the height of selfishness that she couldn’t even appreciate what she’d had enough to take better care of herself.
Lena watched him for a moment, now consciously fighting against the euphoria caused by the ecstasy, and she wondered how long he was going to pretend she wasn’t in the room. Being high made seconds feel like hours and minutes feel like days. She realized distractedly that she was thirsty, but she didn’t want to ask him to get her a bottle of water. Instead, she began to climb off the bed to retrieve one herself, but the movement made her stomach lurch dangerously.
“Shit,” she muttered, running into the bathroom quickly.
Owen echoed the curse and followed, taking hold of her ponytail to keep it out of her way as she emptied her stomach into the toilet. He cringed as she continued to heave, but after a moment his gaze caught on the back of her neck. There was a scar, roughly four inches long, that ran the length of her neck and disappeared into her hair. He couldn’t remember ever having seen it before, but this was really t
he first time he’d ever seen her with her hair completely up.
Something about the thin, pale line made the hair on the back of his own neck stand at attention, and his eyes remained fixed on the scar as Lena flushed the toilet, brushed her teeth, and washed her face. It took several minutes to remove the heavy makeup, but Owen didn’t budge. His eyes were wide, and his scalp was tingling. When at last she stood upright and dried her face, she glanced briefly at him in the mirror.
“It’s not polite to stare,” she sassed, sounding more like herself than she had all evening. “You didn’t have to watch me puke my guts out.” Owen didn’t respond other than to still her hands when they moved to release her long scarlet hair from the confines of the braids and elastic bands. When he did locate his voice, it sounded strange to his own ears.
“How… How did you get that scar?”
Lena turned to face him, frowning at his odd expression.
“I was in a car accident when I was little.” Only the lingering effects of the pill she’d taken allowed her to be so open with him. She hated that scar; it was why she never let it show.
There was a rushing sound in Owen’s ears as certain things began to fall into place in his mind.
Ellie had been in an accident too.
He remembered the stitched gash on the back of her neck as plainly as if he’d seen it only yesterday. It had been exactly like Lena’s scar.
Ellie would be nineteen now too.
She’d had beautiful red hair and haunting blue eyes. The same eyes. Had ‘Ellie’ been short for Eleanore?
Is it possible?
Lena was gazing at him in confusion and more than a little concern. Now that her stomach had been emptied, she was just sober enough to be alarmed by the stunned look on his face. Owen was staring at her as though he’d never seen her before.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“How old were you? When you were in the accident…”
“Four.”
“Where?” he gasped.
“Illinois.”
“Chicago?”
Lena’s eyes widened, and she nodded mutely. How could he possibly have guessed that? In the next instant, Owen had pulled her toward him, clutching her in his arms so tightly that she couldn’t take a breath. He whispered a word that tickled her ear and made her heart stutter.
“Ellie.”
Chapter 18
Lena stiffened in his arms. Did he just say…?
“Wh… What?”
“It’s you. Oh my God,” Owen breathed, his hold growing impossibly tighter.
Lena was struggling to process the change in him. Was something wrong with the pill Mateo gave me? Her high was dissipating even more rapidly now, but she still felt dazed, as though her mind couldn’t quite distinguish reality from hallucination.
“You called me Ellie,” she murmured. When Owen finally drew back enough that she could see his face, he was wearing a smile so brilliant that she could only stare in wonder. His green eyes were bright with discovery, and she felt things click slowly into place. “How did you know it was Chicago?”
“Because I was there too.”
He still hadn’t let her go, and she swayed dangerously in his arms as the impact of his words hit her full force.
“But that would mean… You’re… that Owen. From the…”
“Foster home,” he nodded, still smiling in spite of the tears that had gathered in his eyes. Owen leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers and closed his eyes briefly. “Ellie.”
Lena’s pulse skyrocketed, and she began to breathe heavily. She leaned back and brought her hands up to rest on either side of his face, staring into the emerald depths she’d been looking at for months. How did I miss this? It’s impossible… Lena had been certain that if she ever encountered Owen again, she would know him immediately, but she might as well have been blind.
She gazed at him with new eyes, searching his familiar countenance for the underlying features of the little boy he’d been. His once-blond hair was now mostly brown with only the occasional glimpse of gold when he stood in direct sunlight. Lena had never forgotten his sad, green eyes, but her imagination hadn’t accounted for the passage of time and his advancing age. They were different now, darker and deeper than anything she could have imagined, and nothing in her sketchbooks could do them justice. What had happened to him?
“I just… I can’t believe it’s actually you. You look so different, but… even so, I can’t believe I didn’t know somehow.”
“That makes two of us. I feel like an idiot.” Owen shook his head at his own shortsightedness. He’d never forgotten that broken little girl in the foster home. They were kindred spirits, then as well as now. “I never imagined I’d find you again. I thought of you so many times.”
Lena gave a strange sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob and wrapped her arms around his neck. Neither could have guessed how long they clung to one another, squeezing each other so tightly that their arms began to ache, but eventually, Owen lifted her off her feet a little and walked her back into her bedroom. Her hold didn’t loosen until he eased her onto the bed and sat beside her.
She was still reeling in shock. The intense and very real connection she’d felt with him since that first day in class now made much more sense. While their minds might not have recognized each other, their souls had. Lena knew that he’d felt it too… that he still felt it. He said he was falling in love with me. He said he would wait as long as it took, she recalled in amazement. Owen had said those things without even realizing that he’d held her heart in his hands from the time they’d been four years old. Her eyes glistened as she stared at him.
Owen couldn’t look away. He was adrift in the sea of her blue eyes, but he felt no fear. That sea was his safe place. His home. There’s no way in hell I’m letting her go now… not that there ever was.
“There’s so much I want to ask you,” Lena whispered. Her hands were clenched tightly within his, and he nodded.
“Me too. But first… how do you feel? You just got sick, and I really don’t think this is a conversation we should have while you’re high.” For the first time since he’d said her childhood name, his smile shifted into a now-familiar look of disapproval.
Lena had to stifle the urge to defend her choices, regardless of the fact that she knew he was right. No matter how that particular argument might play out, she knew that now wasn’t the time to have it. There were so many more important things to discuss, and the buzz she’d been feeling before her sprint to the bathroom was now fading fast. She still felt a lingering sensation of light-heartedness, but she didn’t know if it was the ecstasy or the fact that they’d found each other. Lena looked down at their joined hands and shook her head in awe. Owen had been her anchor through so many storms. His memory alone had helped her in ways he didn’t even realize, and now he was actually here.
“I’m not really high anymore,” she shook her head. “Throwing up will do that.”
“The drug was already in your bloodstream,” Owen argued.
“Which probably has a lot to do with why I still feel happy and relaxed, but the alcohol is wearing off. I need some answers. I promise I’ll remember in the morning.”
He looked at her for a long moment, silently evaluating her ability to focus and speak clearly. Her slur was gone, and her gaze seemed steadier. Now that she’d removed her makeup entirely, she looked more like his Ellie, and the thought brought the smile back to his face. Lena grinned back, still captivated by his green eyes.
“What happened to you after my dad came to get me? I always assumed the family who adopted you lived in Illinois.”
“They did. We moved to Seattle about a year later,” Owen explained. “When did you move here?”
“I was born here. I was only in Illinois because my mom was in the process of leaving my dad. We were driving to Toronto when the accident happened, and we just happened to be passing through the Chicago area.”
&n
bsp; “So, we’ve been living in the same city almost the whole time…” he mused aloud. Lena had never been far from his thoughts when he’d been growing up, but in reality, she’d been closer than he’d ever realized.
“So… the Langfords?”
“No, they didn’t adopt me. Not legally, anyway, and not until much later.” Owen paused, considering his words carefully. “Look, my childhood is full of a lot of stories I’d just as soon not think about ever again, let alone say out loud. I’ll tell you sometime, but… I don’t want to ruin the mood tonight. Okay?”
Lena nodded, now even more curious. A dozen questions lingered in her mind, but she accepted his desire to delay that discussion for another time. Probably not the kind of talk we should have while one of us isn’t sober anyway. She felt a sudden urge to lay down and gestured for him to stretch out next to her on the bed. Owen gathered her in his arms, and they gazed at one another as their heads rested on the same pillow.
“God, Ellie…” he sighed. The expression of incredulity and elation was back on his face, and he reached out to stroke her cheek as though testing the facets of this new reality. “I can’t believe it’s really you. There was always something familiar about your eyes… I can’t believe I never saw it.”
“I thought that about you too,” Lena admitted. “Your hair is darker now, and I told myself that the name and the green eyes were a coincidence. I mean really… what are the odds? I figured it was just wishful thinking.”
“Wishful thinking?” he echoed. She nodded in mild embarrassment.
“I thought about you a lot over the years. I wondered what had happened to you, where your life had taken you after we were separated.” Her eyes drifted slightly, and the memory of the little blond boy in the Colemans’ doorway danced through her mind. “One thing though… Please don’t call me Ellie. I haven’t been that little girl in a long time. I prefer Lena.”
Owen frowned but nodded in agreement, wondering if he’d ever be able to think of her as anything else now. They lay in silence for a few minutes, and he smiled as her eyes began to droop. He reached over to turn off the lamp on the bedside table, plunging the room into darkness.
Ember (Constant Flame Duet Book 1) Page 21