Chapter 2
One good thing about Fallon is that he knows when not to ask questions. He takes one look at me standing on his front doorstep and grabs my arm, pulling me inside. Another guy I’ve never seen before silently watches as Fallon leads me upstairs and into what I assume is his room.
“You look like crap,” he tells me as he shuts his bedroom door. He grabs a rolled-up towel from a shelf and throws it at me. “Bathroom is through there.” He points to a door.
I hold the towel close to me, hugging its softness, wanting to feel something good to help replace some of the bad.
I nod at Fallon and walk on bare feet across the wood floor and into the tiled bathroom.
I turn the shower on to the hottest setting it will go and step under the spray without taking off the ill-fitting clothes I arrived in.
I pray the hot water will scald my skin until it peels off.
If it doesn’t, I will rub every inch of my body raw until it does because I’m desperate to get the scent of my worst mistake off of my skin.
How could I have done that to Ryder? What’s wrong with me?
I don’t realize I’m cowering on the floor of the shower and sobbing until I hear Fallon knocking on the bathroom door.
“Elizabeth? You okay?”
I’m not used to him calling me by my given name. I’ve always been “kitten” to him.
“Give me a minute,” I call back, my voice hoarse and raspy.
I carefully stand up and feel the heaviness of Jayson’s water-logged clothes weighing me down.
They make a good metaphor for how I’m feeling.
It’s like the entire world is sitting on my shoulders, squeezing me, suffocating me.
I remove the soaked cloth and replace the sodden mass with the sting of the scorching hot water on my bare skin.
I stand under the spray until the water goes cold. Stepping out of the shower, I wrap the towel Fallon gave me around my body. Making sure the towel is secured tightly under my armpits, I unlock the bathroom door. Fallon is standing right in front me.
“I don’t have any dry clothes,” I inform him, feeling stupid.
“Jesus,” he hisses when he looks at me. Parts of my exposed shoulders, neck, and face are bright red with first degree burns from the scalding water. Fallon quickly turns around and comes back with some fresh clothes, holding them out to me.
“Thanks,” I numbly say.
“Kitten, you need to put some aloe or something on your skin.”
He gently pushes me out of the way and comes into the bathroom. After a few seconds of rummaging around inside a vanity drawer, he hands me a tube of Arnica cream.
“Rub this in everywhere your skin is red.”
I take the tube from him and look up at him with desolate, beggar’s eyes.
“Going to tell me why you landed on my doorstep?” he asks.
No, I’m not, so I don’t answer him. He’s not supposed to ask questions.
He’s not supposed to care. Fallon sighs, then takes the Arnica from me, and squirts some of its contents into his hand.
Letting him take care of me because I can’t seem to do it for myself at the moment, I clutch at the towel to make sure it stays put while he rubs the cream on my face, arms, and neck.
After he finishes putting some on my cheeks, I close my eyes and step towards him, resting my forehead to his T-shirt-clad chest.
After a quiet pause, Fallon tells me to get dressed and walks back out of the bathroom, leaving me with privacy.
Wringing out the wet clothes and trying hard not to think about who they belong to, I drape each item over the shower door to dry.
I put on the new set of clothes Fallon gave me.
Great, another T-shirt and pair of sweatpants.
Is this some obligatory guy wardrobe thing?
I don’t know how long I stand there, head hanging down and lost in thought, when I feel Fallon’s arms go around me. He lifts me up and carries me the ten feet to his bed. Setting me down on the plush, dark-blue comforter, he raises my feet and carefully slips a sock on each one.
“Get some rest,” he tells me.
I follow his directions like a child does a parent.
The shirt and sweatpants Fallon gave me to wear soothe my scalded skin with their cottony softness.
I wrap my arms around one of his pillows and rest my head on another.
The scent that lingers on Fallon’s pillowcases smells like lemon, ginger, and bergamot.
How the heck do I know what a bergamot is?
I do. It’s a type of orange. Mom used to make an awesome citrus salad with them.
My heart breaks with the fact that I can remember that now. My parents are dead.
Lost in a myriad of rediscovered memories, I don’t hear the bedroom door click open. The bed dips beside me and Fallon lies down at my back. He pulls me to his chest and rests his head against mine. “It’s going to be okay, Elizabeth.”
“You always call me kitten,” I mumble into his pillow.
“That’s because I’m an asshole.”
If I didn’t feel so utterly destroyed, I may have chuckled. “You’re not an asshole, Fallon.”
“A lot of people would disagree.”
Old Elizabeth would likely have agreed with that. She would never have come to Fallon for help. She would never have allowed him to touch her or comfort her. Old Elizabeth was both trepidatious of, and cautiously fascinated by, Fallon.
I roll over and look at him. We are almost nose to nose. I take in his crystalline blue eyes. They are a unique color of blue, almost like the blue of arctic ice. His sandy-blond hair is disheveled and sticking up at the top, and his lower jaw is covered in a day’s growth of dark blond stubble.
He smirks at me. “I never thought I’d see the day when I got Elizabeth Fairchild in my bed.”
“I take it back. You are an asshole.”
We lie quietly and stare at each other for a long time.
“Secret for a secret?” he asks me.
I silently nod yes.
“What happened?”
“My worst fear.”
“Inflatable tube guys?”
This time I do chuckle at his reference to our back-and-forth banter at his last party. “No. The other one.”
Fallon’s eyebrows wrinkle as he thinks. I lift my finger to the creases and smooth them away. “I remembered.”
His body goes rigid next to me. I would never have been able to tell if I wasn’t lying so close to him. “What did you say?”
“My memories came back. I remember everything.”
“What do you remember?
“Everything.”
“Elizabeth, what happened?”
I barrel over onto my back, unable to look him in the eye when I say it. “I slept with Jayson.”
“Why the fu— Why would you do that?”
I burst into tears.
“Elizabeth, stop crying.”
I cry harder. He curses some more.
“It’s her fault!” I finally say
“Who?”
“Old Elizabeth. I hate her. I didn’t want her to come back, but she did. She’s ruined everything!”
“You know that you sound absolutely crazy right now, right?”
Perhaps I have lost my mind. I suck in a deep breath and rub my face dry on the pillowcase
“I swear on my life, I love Ryder. I never wanted to hurt him, Fallon.” When Ryder finds out I slept with Jayson, he will never forgive me. But you love Jayson, too, Old Elizabeth whispers in my mind. I shut my eyes tight and will her away
Fallon removes my arm from over my face. “Then explain it to me. Tell me what happened.”
I heave out a huge huff of air and nod my acquiescence.
Gathering my thoughts, I tell him, “When my memories came back, it was like I became another person. I had no control anymore. It was as if someone else had taken over my body. Fallon, I remember everything. I remember what happened that night: My fight with Jayson. Going to Ryder. Driving home. The car accident. My parents. Hailey.” The words spew out of me in an incoherent series of racking sobs
I cling to Fallon as he holds me. His touch shouldn’t be the one that comforts me, but I can’t face Ryder or Jayson after what I’ve done
“What am I going to do, Fallon? Please tell me what to do. I feel like I’m dying, and I can’t breathe. All I see when I close my eyes are my parents and Hailey. It hurts so much. Why, Fallon? Why them? Where is Hailey? Why isn’t she here? I want my mom,” I hysterically cry out.
Fallon holds me with a calm strength as I break down and grief consumes me. He whispers words in my ear that I don’t want to hear. I don’t deserve his solace.
After I am drained and weary from the tumult of emotions that thrash me, he wipes under my eyes with his thumbs and tucks the loose strands of my wet hair behind my ear. “What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know,” I eventually reply, heartbroken and lost.
It’s the truth. I need to allow myself to grieve. I need to find out what happened to my sister. And then, there’s Old Elizabeth. My brain is waging an internal battle between what once was and what is now.
Even in my current state of confusion, I already know I’m about to do the one thing I promised Ryder and Julien I would never do.
It’s going to break my heart and hurt the boys deeply, but until I can get a grip on what happened to my family and which Elizabeth will prevail, I need to stay away from all of them.
Not just for their sake, but for mine as well.
And knowing what I have to do, just makes everything seem so much worse.
I swore to Ryder that if my memories returned, things between the two of us wouldn’t change.
I promised Julien that I would never leave again.
I thought I couldn’t break more than I already have, but I was so very wrong.
Every part of me feels utterly unrepairable.
Fallon scrutinizes me for a long minute, then appears to make a decision. “Stay here. Do not leave this room.”
I want to tell him that I have nowhere else to go.
I refuse to go home, with the knowledge that I would have to face Daniel and relive the nightmare of losing my family.
I can’t go to Ryder, Jayson, or Julien. I can’t just show up at Meredith and Trevor’s in the middle of the night.
Fallon is the only person who can help me right now.
After he leaves the room and closes the door behind him, my body and mind finally agree on one thing—total exhaustion. Within minutes, I’m fast asleep.