Lost to You (Take This Regret 0.5)(32)
Author: A.L. Jackson

A tortured cry erupted from my throat.

“Just go inside, where you belong,” I rasped, mimicking his father’s words, tripping over the heartbreak that had lodged in my throat.

“Elizabeth…” Christian wavered, looking back to where his father stood confronting us.

The gap.

Christian held no true conviction. He didn’t know whether to stand up for me or give in to his father. He still didn’t know.

I ripped myself from his hold and jumped into the cab. Christian just stood there, staring at me.

My spirit splintered a little more.

I slammed the door shut behind me to shut Christian out. The cab driver looked up in the mirror, and I cried out, “Go…please…just go.”

I slumped back in the seat as the cab jerked into traffic. My head sagged back on the headrest and I lifted my face to the ceiling. Tears streaked down the sides of my face and ran into my hair. Reaching up to scrub them away, I released a bitter bark into the air.

I already knew this. When did I forget?

Christian Davison was so off limits.

Chapter Ten

Christian

Motherfucker.

I wanted to scream.

Instead, I just stood there staring in shock as Elizabeth’s cab drove away.

The day I finally got it—accepted it—had to be the same day I laid her at my parents’ feet.

Slowly, I turned around to face my father. He stood near the restaurant door. Smugness clung to his posture, his jaw tight and shoulders squared as he stared me down. Embarrassment and anger seethed in my veins, curling my hands into fists. So many years I’d strived to be just like him, and now I was ashamed to even know him.

A taunting snort slipped through his nose and he just barely shook his head. It was full of condescension, as if daring me to contend with him. “Come back inside and finish your dinner.”

He spun on his heel, like what had just happened mattered none.

“What is wrong with you?” I called out just before he disappeared through the door. “I invited her here and you insult her? She’s my friend.”

Pausing, he craned his neck around to look at me. Then he laughed, this incredulous sound that punched me in the gut. “She’s trash, Christian.”

The words knocked around in my head.

Elizabeth…this girl…the one.

The strongest surge of protectiveness welled up inside me, and I took two steps toward him.

“I love her.” I felt pride saying it aloud, the kind of pride I’d put money down that my father had never experienced.

His face slowly twisted and he shook his head as if he didn’t know me at all. “Then you’re more of fool than I pegged you for. Now get inside. Your mother and I flew all the way here to spend Thanksgiving with you. You’re ruining our evening.”

He shook his arms out and looked down to adjust the cuffs of his sleeves.

For so long, he’d controlled every aspect of my life. My goals, my beliefs, what I wanted, and where I was going. Was I really going to allow him to dictate who I cared about?

“Fuck this,” I muttered under my breath.

His head jerked up. “What did you just say?”

“I said, f**k this. I’m out of here.”

He clenched his jaw. I could almost hear him grinding his teeth. “Don’t you even think about it, Christian.”

I scoffed. “What are you going to do, Dad,” I spat out his name, “cut me out of your life? Keep me out of the firm?” I laughed. There was no way. That would be a direct reflection on him, his own failure at conforming me into what he wanted me to be.

Walking backwards, I lifted both hands in the air as I retreated, not in surrender, but in opposition. This was one area of my life I wouldn’t allow him to control.

Then I turned around and leapt into the backseat of a waiting cab. Elizabeth’s address was already passing through my urgent lips as I slammed the door shut. “Hurry, please.”

The driver kind of smiled. He had probably been there to witness what had gone down with Elizabeth a couple minutes earlier. “Sure.”

The ride felt like the longest ten minutes of my life.

When he stopped outside her building, Elizabeth was pulling open the door to her building. I threw some money on the front seat. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

I jumped from the car and back into the winter cold, yelling her name. “Elizabeth!”

Slowly, she spun around, her hand still on the door handle, as if she had every intention of leaving me standing there.

“Christian.” Frustration spun through her tone, though I could hear the tears in her words, could see them marking her face. I’d hurt her again. And I hated it.

“Just leave me alone,” she said.

But this time, I knew walking out wasn’t an option. “I can’t.”

It was snowing again, harder this time, a steady grazing of white that dusted the city. My heavy breaths turned to vapor as I stood in front of her, panting, trying to gather my thoughts, to rein everything in.

I couldn’t.

One side of Elizabeth’s mouth trembled, and she looked at me in both wariness and exhaustion. She dropped her hold on the door to completely face me.

“I don’t understand what you want from me, Christian. You drag me to this dinner with your parents, and then when your father attacks me, you can’t even stand up for me?”

“You didn’t give me a chance to.”

Wisps of blonde kissed along her jaw, pieces sticking to the contours of her perfect face.

God, she was beautiful.

Love and fear vacillated across her features, uncertainty and want.

Something throbbed inside me, so deep it swallowed me whole. When Elizabeth had changed me, I didn’t know. But she did. She’d unhinged something that had been locked inside, something I’d never believed I wanted or even knew existed. But with her standing there, it was all I could see.

Approaching her slowly, I stopped close and lifted her chin with my finger so she’d look at me.

I searched her face. Her eyes dropped away, even though I held her firm. “I’m here now. You think I wouldn’t stand up to my father for you? That I’d just stand there and let him talk about you like that? This week has been the worst of my life, Elizabeth, every single minute that you weren’t a part of it. And then yesterday when you agreed to go with me tonight, I can’t describe the relief I felt.”

Her warm brown gaze finally fluttered up to meet with mine. I slid my fingers from her chin and cupped one side of her face. Touching her was perfection. Exhaling heavily, I inclined my face closer and caressed my thumb over her cheek.