Lost (Captive Heart #1)

by Carrie Aarons

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how to leave, and I couldn’t promise you I’d stay in touch. I was going away and so were you. Every spare minute I had was going to be taken up by football. I had no idea how to fit you into that. So I left and I didn’t look back. In the end I thought it would be easier for both of us. The best thing about what we had was that there was no pressure; it was so natural. And then college came around and I knew it was going to make us both answer questions, and put rules and labels on shit. I couldn’t handle it.”

  A sniffle comes from across the room and Char turns her head. Fuck, I made her cry. I move to her, swinging my leg over and straddling the bench so I can face her and take her knees in my hands.

  I can’t look at her when I say the next part.

  “I came back for you once, you know.”

  Her head snaps up, the tears making those big eyes glisten.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Freshman year, I went away to a training camp that summer. I wasn’t home. I never saw you. But the summer between sophomore and junior year I came back, and I had planned on trying to see you. To see how you were doing. To see if the feelings I still sometimes thought about were still there.”

  “Like you didn’t fuck everything that moved and then some at college.” It wasn’t a question. And she’s right.

  “I’m not going to lie. I did. But you have to understand the environment I was in—”

  “Spare me.” Char removes my hands from her legs.

  “You were standing on the driveway with him. Your mother and father had just gone around to the backyard, and you pushed up on your toes as he pulled you in. And you kissed him.”

  I remember that day so vividly, the way she smiled like he was the sun blessing her with his rays. I could have never made her that happy.

  “You’re talking about Clark? Honestly? You expect two years to go by and for me to just be in the same exact same spot, waiting for you?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that—”

  “You just expected poor little Charlotte Morsey to waste away the days by the phone or the window waiting for you to come home, to walk back in and profess your undying love for me? Jesus, Tucker, you have some nerve.”

  “Will you shut up for one second?!” I sound angrier than I’d intended to.

  She doesn’t speak up.

  “I didn’t expect you to wait for me, goddammit. I just knew, in that moment that I watched him hold you on the driveway, that I could never be like that with you. I wasn’t built for it. And you deserved someone who could give that to you.”

  Char spoke to her lap before standing and walking out. “Yeah well, I guess he couldn’t give me whatever that was either.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. I could never read her like she could me.

  I still couldn’t.

  20

  Charlotte

  One Year Ago

  Sweat and goosebumps pepper my flesh, my labored breathing not disturbing Clark in the slightest.

  I had the dream again. The one about Tucker and I all those years ago. And I woke up, feeling guilty and nauseated and turned on like I usually do.

  All while I slept beside my softly snoring fiancé.

  I wipe a hand down my face and between my naked breasts, trying to calm the organ in my chest that seems to be hammering so loudly its a miracle the next door neighbors don’t hear it.

  I’m not sure why I keep having this dream. The one where Tucker takes my virginity. The first time we had sex, where it was awkward and painful and I didn’t even come. At the time, I’d thought it was the most incredible thing on this earth. Looking back, after three more experienced partners and a loving, committed sexual relationship with my boyfriend of five years, who is now my fiancé, it was probably the least phenomenal act of sex in my life.

  But the excitement of it, the newness, the forbiddeness of the act … I think that’s why it will always be stuck in my head.

  And that’s a lie. I know why I’m having these dreams. It’s because I’m walking down the aisle to Clark in less than four months and I’m freaking out about it.

  That’s normal, though. Right?

  I just don’t know that every bride-to-be wakes up in the middle of the night, every night, sweating and thinking about another man. Thinking to themselves, “is this going to be it?”

  And then there is the fact that I haven’t done too many things for the wedding. I don’t even like to think about it. Is that normal?

  And the fact that I haven’t had sex with Clark for two months? We keep telling ourselves we’re busy. That we are stressed and will make up for it on our honeymoon.

  But if I’m being honest with myself, in the dead of the night in our neat little condo in our neat little life … I haven’t been necessarily happy with Clark for a long time.

  We met sophomore year in a local pizza place, he was the cute guy wearing a Villanova rowing sweatshirt, and I was the nerdy girl studying by myself on a Friday night. He was the first guy who’d actually spoken to me like he was interested in more than touching my boobs in more than a year. At an all-female college, the only times I interacted with men were at the odd party I’d attended. And like all red-blooded males in college, most of the guys around these parts were only interested in one thing.

  And it wasn’t polite conversation.

  But Clark, he’d bought me another slice. And sat down. And talked. And really listened. It was the first time I’d ever had a connection with a guy. Other than Tucker. But this was different. It was out in the open. It wasn’t dirty, or one-sided, or secretive.

  I’d held onto Clark with both hands and refused to let go.

  And that holding on had led me right to buying a condo together. To saying yes when he’d gotten down on one knee.

  But now …

  I look back at the past five years of my life and wonder where they’ve gone. Why it feels like I’ve been living a version of myself that just rolls through life unemotional and unengaged.

  And I have to wonder … is this all there is?

  21

  Charlotte

  Two weeks later I broke off our engagement. I called all of my relatives, and his, to tell them the wedding was never going to happen.

  I endured the hysterical phone calls from my mother begging me to reconsider, the ones telling me I ruined her life. I had to picture Clark’s devastated face every single time I closed or opened my eyes. I had to carry around the boulder of grief and guilt on my shoulders.

  I moved out, bought my first apartment. Decorated it how I wanted it. And I even took a three day trip to Cape Cod, where I sat on the beach in a preppy sweatshirt I got at a nearby boutique and bikini bottoms and read until the sun went down.

  And I could finally fucking breathe again.

  Three days later and I was still lying around my cabin, the awkward lines of tension and our contentious past filling the air between the two structures. I still didn’t know what to make of his outburst. It stung even thinking about that day when I’d texted him … twice, with no response. When I hadn’t heard from him for a full day—and we’d been seeing each other almost every night to hook up that summer—I finally went over to see if maybe something happened.

  That’s when his mother, meek and soft-spoken—the complete opposite of his brutish dad—opened the door and told me with a confused look on her face that Tucker had left for college, I swear I heard my heart crack open in my chest.

  He’d called himself a coward. Yeah, that was a good word for it.

  And the part about Clark. Jeez.

  I’d waited nearly eight years for answers about what had happened between us, what he really felt, why he left. And now here he was, giving them to me, shoving them in my face. He was all but confirming that the reasons he kept us a secret, the reason he’d left without a word, were all about him and not about me at all.

  But none of it made me feel any better. I’d still been shamed, locked awa
y for him to use when he wanted. I was the one who’d fallen so freaking hard that my freshman year of college I basically cried myself to sleep each night over him.

  “CHARLOTTE! COME HERE!”

  Tucker was screaming bloody murder, the thin wood that the cabins were made of was no match for his bellowing, deep voice.

  I rush over to cabin four, and find him huddled around the radio he found two days ago. I suspect he’s been hunched over it like that for the past forty-eight hours, just by looking at his crazed eyes.

  I also don’t miss the newly formed muscles rippling in his back, which has no shirt covering all of that delicious olive skin. Why did God grace this man with so much freaking hotness?

  “What is it?” We haven’t spoken in those three days, and I want it known how much I still resent him and everything that’s happened.

  “They’re talking about us on the radio.”

  I lean over him and listen.

  Two Lancaster residents still missing. Still unclear what transpired as local police are still investigating, but we do know security footage at the bank where Ms. Charlotte Morsey worked has been looked through by the authorities. We know that there is a suspect at large, and that this could be a potential kidnapping.

  “Well, we know they’re looking now.” I say this as if it wasn’t a matter of fact.

  We’ve been here for a month. Of course someone is looking. Two people are missing, not to mention a whole lot of bank cash.

  “Fuck … FUCK!” Tucker throws a pillow at the wall and stomps to the back of the cabin, thrusting his hands into those dark brown curls. They’ve grown since we’ve been here, his silky locks nearly reaching down to his eyes.

  “What did you think, Tucker? This was a vacation?”

  I couldn’t help taunt him. Not that I cared if they were looking for us. Or maybe I did. My feelings were so mixed on the subject that I shoved it in a little corner of my brain that I didn’t have to access.

  “You don’t understand! Jesus, you’ll never understand! All of this pressure …”

  He wrapped his arms around himself as if that would stop the shit-storm from crashing down onto his head.

  And something inside of me just snapped. Everyone always putting my feelings aside, discounting my emotions and putting me down. A lifetime of being silent, of taking it, and suddenly I burst like a dam.

  “I don't know about pressure? Really? Tucker, my entire life I’ve never been good enough. Yes, I am aware how rough the last six years have been for you, but at least you got to have an amount of time, no matter how small, where you were golden. Untouchable. You sat right up there next to the sun in everyone’s eyes.”

  I turn away from him, unable to face his gaze or my own as I forge on. "”Me? I wake up every single day with this crushing weight sitting on my chest, suffocating me. It chants in my ears, with each pump of my heart, that I will never be enough. Nothing I ever do will be rewarded with a single ounce of pride or praise. You didn’t grow up in my house, with my mother. Sure from the outside we looked normal, happy even. But in reality? What she did to me, the way she withheld love or acceptance. Tucker, I will never come back from that. There will forever be this black hole inside of me, sucking all happiness from any moment of accomplishment. Because I’ll be thinking about what she would say about it. What backhanded compliment or snide remark she’d spit at me. Do you know that when I came off that stage at high school graduation after delivering my valedictorian speech, she actually told me I could have looked nicer. That Stacy Hiser had worn a prettier dress, and didn’t she just look so happy? When I called to tell her about my internship at one of the biggest banks in the country, she warned me that I might fail and to not allow the other interns to get in my way. When I got engaged, instead of talking about helping me, she started to discuss the specifics of the dress she wanted to wear. When I moved out of Clark’s apartment and bought my own townhouse, she began remodeling her own. There is no moment of my life that she hasn’t tainted, that she hasn’t tried to make her own.”

  I notice the tears splashing to the floor but can’t feel them. I am numb. “So don't talk to me about pressure. I know exactly how it breaks a person. It has made me the way I am, made me live this robotic life thinking that I need to be perfect, to go through all of the steps in exactly the right order at the right time. Never taking joy in anything. You don’t know a thing about the crippling pressure on my back every waking minute, even when I know my mother no longer cares. Be thankful that you get to break down, to escape. Because it’s fucking exhausting trying to hold it together all the time.”

  I feel Tucker’s hand on my shoulder while my back is turned to him. “Char, I—”

  His voice sounds broken, helpless.

  “She even tarnished me when it came to men. Case in point: you. I accepted the affection you were willing to give me because I believed I was only worth that much. I believed that I should be grateful for any kind of validation you sent my way. I allowed you to keep me a secret, to torment me in front of your friends. I allowed you to come back into my bed after that, to come back into my body. And that’s on me. Only after I distanced myself and got some kind of help could I see that what you did on your end was so fucking wrong. And still I can’t dig out the roots you planted in my heart. You are always going to be that person. The one I can never get out of my head, even when I fall in love with someone else. Even when I know I shouldn’t think about you. Even when I shouldn’t be with you. I will always want to be. Because you changed the way I love. You shaped my heart into what it knows now, and it won’t ever forget that. And I also fucking hate you for it.”

  Slowly, so slowly that I can feel each of his large fingers wrap around my waist, Tucker turns me.

  “You are always enough to me. More than enough. So much that it overwhelmed me, made me scared to death to feel how much you actually meant.”

  Tears clog in my throat as he stares so deeply into my eyes that I swear, he can see my soul right now. It’s the first time in my entire twenty-five years on this planet that I feel like someone is really looking at me. Really seeing me. All of my senses are hyperaware; I feel the way his big hands circle my hips, how he smells like soap and the woods, the rustling of the leaves outside and the quiet lap of the waves on the shore of the lake.

  I don’t move a muscle as his head descends, his gaze transfixed on my lips, my heart beating so hard in my throat it’s a wonder it doesn’t pop right out of my mouth.

  For a fraction of a second he pauses, the electrical current sparking between our lips making me shake with anticipation. And then he closes the gap, pressing his lips into my own.

  Warm. Exciting. Familiar. Strange. Desire.

  All of the emotions and feelings inside of my body begin to crash into each other, sending my confused head and heart into even more of a tailspin.

  Tucker’s hands are in my hair and on my cheeks, his tongue is sweeping and caressing mine, lighting a fire so extreme within me that there has to be smoke coming off of my flesh. I feel everything in me melting, his fingers are the matches and they’re sparking their path through me.

  But he keeps the kiss slow, draws out each nibble, each open and close of our mouths. The rhythm is tantric, taking me higher and higher and then cooling down right before I think I’ll faint from the enormousness of it all.

  I’ve never been kissed like this is in my life. Not even by Tucker.

  This isn’t the kiss of a cocky teenager, awkward and groping in his advances. This is the kiss of a man. A confident, sexy, self-assured, strong … man.

  Tucker walks me backward, slowly, so slowly. His hands touch any piece of skin he’s able to find. My cheeks, my neck, my arms, the small sliver of exposed skin above my sweatpants. And he’s bewitching me; the sounds I’m mewling into his mouth aren’t even of my own control.

  “I forgot …” He breathes against my lips with his forehead resting against mine, the lids lowered over those coffee-colored eyes. />
  “Hmm?” I don’t even know what universe I’m in.

  “I forgot what it feels like to be with you. The way you overwhelm me, the epicness of it …”

  His words float back to me, and even though I’d love for them to pass through the space between my ears and keep moving, they lodge there.

  What it feels like to be with you.

  We’ve already been together. And I remember every gory detail. I’ve replayed those moments on a loop in my head for eight years.

  And he hasn’t.

  Tucker’s lips are on my neck, that brilliant, talented mouth about to send me into a lust coma.

  “I can’t.” I push at his chest and he stops laying kisses on my skin, but keeps his hands around my waist.

  We wait. Me for him to move, and him for me to tell him to continue.

  “Let go of me, Tucker.” I speak softly, wanting to move. To run back to my cabin and pretend I didn’t allow him to kiss me. That I didn’t feel the world tip on its axis.

  He breathes; it’s a soft growl or a sigh. I’m not sure.

  He’s still standing toe-to-toe with me, even though no part of our bodies are touching.

  “Char, please.”

  It might be a question, but I don’t want to ask.

  “Don’t. We’re not doing this. Especially here. Like this.”

  I walk with shaky feet back to my cabin, that invisible power line of tension and built-up lust and unsaid words roping even thicker between our two wooded sheds.

  22

  Charlotte

  When you’re a man, you can up and go at the drop of a hat. No need for products or more underwear or bras or medicine.

  It’s why boys always did so much better when I was at camp. They didn’t have to worry about wrinkling their favorite tank top for the Annual Thursday Night Dance, or set their alarm an extra thirty minutes early in the morning to pop any pimples, apply minimal makeup and make sure they’d look fresh and cute for the rest of the day. It was all so easy for them.