Finding It (Losing It, #3)(71)

He looked at me with such longing that my heart seemed to turn, like his eyes were a magnet, trying to pull it from my chest.

I believed him. There was too much pain in his voice and shame in his body to not believe that he hadn’t meant for this to happen. But that didn’t take my pain away or my shame at being fooled.

I waited to make sure he was done talking, and then I said, “Okay.”

I turned to walk away and he yelled at my back, “Okay? That’s it?”

“Yes, okay. I understand. Thank you for explaining. Goodbye Hunt.”

“Don’t go, Kelsey. Please. I’m sorry. I’ve never been more sorry. I was going to tell you everything as soon as I thought you were strong enough to handle it.”

I stopped, but didn’t turn around as I said, “Of course, I can handle it. It’s nothing, really. Just another thing that wasn’t real.” I could feel myself falling back into that familiar pit, that place where I’d wasted so many years. “It was just another thing that doesn’t count.”





29


A MONTH LATER, and I still couldn’t run fast enough to get away.

I tried Greece.

The ruins reminded me of Rome.

The islands reminded me of Capri.

It all reminded me of Hunt.

So, I moved on.

Germany had too many castles.

Austria, too.

Every river bisecting a city sent me running.

Every playground played my heart, and I lost.

You don’t realize how many bridges there are until the sight of one collapses something inside of you.

I came close to giving up hope, to believing that I would never find a place that could ever feel like home. I couldn’t return to the place I grew up. That house was a graveyard, a memorial to things lost and problems gained. And some part of me ached in every new place, like old wounds that protested at every shift in the weather.

But then I realized when no place felt like home, I had one other option. In Madrid, I found a quiet spot in my hostel, which translated to a maintenance closet full of cleaning supplies that itself probably hadn’t been cleaned in decades.

I settled my laptop on my knees, and Bliss answered my Skype call in seconds with a banshee scream.

“Oh my God. Never wait that long to call me again. My crazy has reached embarrassingly new heights in your absence.”

My voice choked over the words, “You? Crazier than you were? Impossible.”

“Kelsey? Are you there? It sounds like you’re breaking up.”

Breaking apart was more like it.

I pressed my fist against my lips, hard. Bones pushed against teeth, both as strong as I wanted to be.

“I’m here,” I said. “Can you hear me now?”

“Now I can. Loud and clear, love.”

“Oh, honey. Stop talking like your boyfriend. It’s just creepy without the accent.”

“Jetting around the world made you judgmental.”

“All that sex you’re having must have damaged your brain because I’ve always been judgmental.”

Bliss laughed and then sighed on the other line, and I wondered if I would have sounded like that if I’d ever gotten around to telling her about Jackson before all this.

“Oh my God, Kels. I can’t even. I think I might actually be addicted to him.”

I made a sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a groan because I knew what that felt like. And withdrawals were a bitch.

“Just enjoy it,” I said. While it lasts.

“What’s the matter?” Bliss asked.

“What do you mean?”

I thought I’d been hiding it well. God, was I such a mess that it just seeped out of me and across international phone connections?

“You’ve got that sound,” she said. “Your acting voice.”

“I don’t have an acting voice.”

“Oh, honey. You do. You know … it’s that thing where your voice gets deeper, and you suddenly have very good enunciation. You get louder too, projecting like having a deafening volume makes you more believable. It’s an actor tick. We all have one. Now fess up and tell me what’s wrong.”

I thumped my head back against the wall and sighed. “Everything. It’s all wrong.”

“Well … start at the beginning. Tell me what went wrong first.”

That much was easy. “Me.”

Telling Bliss about my childhood was both shockingly easy and incredibly difficult.

Over the years, I’d learned how to twist the truth about my past, so that I could participate when friends told childhood stories without giving up my secrets. Like any other role I played, I took liberties. I painted a picture of the cool, rebellious girl with an appetite for adventure. Now I had to break that illusion to reveal the real girl, not cool or rebellious … just lost.

And though it was a hard story to start, it was easy to keep going. I told her about Mr. Ames and my parents. And I told her about how I’d learned to cope and that that only ruined me more in the end.

I told her everything.

Except for Hunt.

I opened my mouth to say something, but the words just wouldn’t come. I didn’t know how to talk about him without disintegrating into despair. I couldn’t explain what he’d done to me without explaining how different he’d been, how different I’d been with him. I wasn’t a relationship kind of girl. And maybe Hunt and I hadn’t had a real relationship, but it was the realest thing I’d ever had. Which only served to make me realize even more how twisted I’d let myself get. If I tried to talk about him … I’m not sure what would happen, but the clenching in my stomach told me that I was scared. Scared of falling for him all over again in my mind, only to have to relive hitting bottom.