Found (Lost and Found #2, New Adult Romance) (Lost & Found) (4 page)

I remember her laughing at that poor woman on the news, the woman whose boyfriend raped her, and my chest tightens painfully. The one thing I desperately need to talk to her about just has to be something she’ll never accept or understand, doesn’t it? I can never tell her about what happened.

I start unpacking the groceries. Milk in the fridge door, eggs on the little shelf in the back...

“Hi sweetie,” she calls to me, and I panic as she starts down the stairs. She comes around the corner just as I slip the pharmacy bag into my inside coat pocket. She stares at me for a moment, and just as I’m certain she saw me, she grabs the peanut butter and jelly and heads to the cupboard.

“Thanks for running out to the store for me,” she tells me. “I’ve been working all afternoon and didn’t have time to get anything ready for dinner.”

“No problem,” I answer cheerfully. “They were out of Dad’s coffee, but I got everything else.”

“You remembered the Italian sausages, right?”

“In the freezer,” I answer with a nod as I put the raisin bran away.

“No, let’s put the sausages in the fridge,” she tells me. “I’m making sauce tomorrow and need them thawed anyway.”

We dig through the rest of the bags in peaceful silence, and I let out a quiet sigh of relief and head for the stairs as Mom puts away the final can of tuna.

“Oh, Maria?” she calls after me as I turn the corner to the stairs. “You didn’t get anything else while you were out today, did you?”

Shit.

I thought I’d escaped, but she saw it after all. She knew about my secret bag the entire time we were unpacking groceries.

A horrible feeling of dread rises inside me. I don’t want to tell her, but she knows I’m hiding something. If she sees what’s in that bag, she’s going to learn everything. She’ll hate me if she learns what Darren did to me!

I don’t need a mirror to know how guilty I look. I can’t keep secrets because my face always flushes under pressure. All I can do is take a deep breath and nod slowly.

She smiles knowingly as my silent nod confirms her suspicions.

“Maria, you’re old enough to know better than that,” she scolds me. “You’re going to ruin your teeth and spoil dinner if you keep eating all that chocolate.”

Chocolate? I’m not hiding chocolate. A wave of relief washes over me as I realize that somehow, against all odds, I made it out of this alive. She completely misread my guilty expression and thinks I’m hiding candy.

“...and with all that junk food you eat, you’re going to end up getting fat like your father if you aren’t careful.”

She finishes her lecture and stares expectantly at me, waiting for a response.

“Yes, Mom. I’ll try to control myself better,” I answer, hanging my head guiltily. I do feel a little guilty, but it’s because I’m lying to her, in a way. I’ve never told such a backward lie before, confessing guilt for something I didn’t do, but it’s still a lie.

She casts me a motherly smile and then starts flipping through her recipe book and trying to decide on dinner. I take the opportunity to race upstairs before she decides to confiscate my non-existent chocolate bars, run straight into the bathroom and lock the door behind me.

I pull the pregnancy test out of my pharmacy bag. My period should have started over a week ago and I’m terrified. I’m scared that Darren might have gotten me pregnant.

The instructions for the test are printed on a long, narrow sheet of paper in such a tiny font that it’s nearly illegible, and my shaking hands aren’t helping any as I try to read. I know that plenty of women miss periods for all sorts of reasons, but those women aren’t rape victims.

It must be stress. I missed my period because I’m really stressed out, right? What’s more stressful than being raped and having to keep it secret? Please let it be just stress! An enormous lump forms in my throat as I run through the instructions one last time and then it’s time to find out the truth.

Three minutes...

The longest three minutes of my life.

My legs are shaking so much that I can’t even stand up as I wait for the results. I can’t tell if I’m more likely to throw up or pass out from tension.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please don’t let this happen to me.”

The second line never appears. I’m not pregnant.

I cover my mouth with both hands to muffle my crying as tears of relief stream down my face. I have nothing to be happy about, but somehow this tiny silver lining makes all the difference.

I wake up in the dark and it takes me a minute to figure out where I am. I’m still on the couch, holding Owen close. He’s still sleeping peacefully, and for the first time, I notice that he snores. I don’t know why, but it somehow feels as if being with him makes my nightmares fade quicker. The memory of the pregnancy test—of holding my breath for three of the scariest minutes of my life—is already dissipating and vanishing into the night.

I hope his dreams tonight are happier than mine were.

“I love you, Owen,” I whisper softly in his ear, and then I snuggle up against him and close my eyes.

Owen

I
was five years old again last night. I hadn't gone that far back in a long time and I’d rather die than go back there again. The nightmare's edge was as sharp as ever.

I’m sitting with my mother in the living room of our old house in Alabama as she reads to me. Our peaceful moment together shatters as I hear the patio door burst open and slam into the kitchen wall.

“Sharon, where the fuck are you?” screams my father from the kitchen. Sharon is Mom’s first name but I’ve never heard Dad sound so mean while talking to her before.

Mom closes the book and quietly gets up from the couch. Her face looks scared and serious as she helps me down, and her being scared frightens me even more than Dad yelling.

“Owen, sweetie,” she whispers, “I need you to go to your room, close the door, and don’t make a sound, okay? Just stay in there and I’ll come get you soon. I promise.”

“Are you mad at me?” I ask. I didn’t do anything wrong, but Dad is angry and Mom is sending me to my room. I must have done something.

“No, honey, you didn’t do anything. You were a good boy today,” says Mom. She kneels down and hugs me, and then she points toward the hallway to my bedroom.

“It’ll only be for little bit while I talk to your father. Don’t come out until I get you. Now go.”

I run for my room on the other side of the house and fearfully close the door behind me. I scamper up the stepladder to my bed, across the rocket ship comforter, and then off the other side into the pile of blankets nestled in the gap between my bed and the wall. The blanket pile is where all my teddy bears live, and as I duck beneath the top blanket and hide with them in their bedroom, I know I’ll be safe.

My father yells at the top of his lungs out in the kitchen, but I can’t tell what he’s saying from in here. He shouldn’t stomp in the house like that, either... Mom makes me take off my shoes so I don’t make noise like that.

He’s very angry at someone, but if it isn’t me...

...why would he be angry at Mom?

I climb out from beneath the blankets and his voice grows louder, angrier and more terrifying with each tiny step I take toward the door. It’s all I can do not to hide back under the blankets at the sound of Dad’s voice. Whenever they yell at me, it’s for breaking things or making a mess, but Mom doesn’t do things like that. Maybe I broke something and Dad is angry because he thinks Mom did it.

I know Mom said to stay in my room, but I should tell Dad that she didn’t do anything so he stops yelling at her. I open the door and tiptoe out into the hallway.

Suddenly I’m back in my room again, huddling in terror underneath the blankets and clutching a bear whose name I’ve long since forgotten. I don’t know what happened, but I’m crying and I don’t even know why. What I saw makes no sense to me and all I know is that everything is broken.

The nightmare falls apart at the same gap it always has—at the missing page in my crumbling memories—and I wake up alone on the couch, bathing in a bright rectangle of warm sunlight.

I know exactly what happened in the gap. It lives on as a terrifying still-image, a photograph burned into my brain that I’m never going to forget. Some people remember their fifth birthday or their first puppy... but me? Ha, no way. Like I'd get to have a
good
memory.

My last remaining memory of that year is watching him beat my mother—hurting her badly in a way my five-year-old brain couldn’t understand—and the feelings of confusion and terror as it happened.

I sit up and groan as my head throbs painfully. The empty cough syrup and beer bottles next to the couch immediately clue me in on why I feel like shit, and I close my eyes and rest my head in my hands as I wait for the room to stop spinning.

I should have gone home. I should have gone to see her, to make sure that she was okay after what happened between Dad and me. He may have broken my hand again, but in the end, he lost the fight at my apartment because I didn’t go home. I don’t know why he wanted me to go back to Long Island and I don’t believe for even a second that it was because my mother missed me, but whatever the reason, he wanted to take me away and failed.

So instead he took his anger out on Mom when he got home, and now she’s in the hospital.

This is all my fault. It shouldn’t be—intuitively I know it can’t
possibly
be my fault—but somehow it still is. Mom’s dying because I resisted being controlled.

“
I didn’t really resist, though... Maria did.
”

She’s the one who stood up to him, not me. She protected me and all I did was get her hurt.
That’s
what started the fight—seeing Dad hit her. The second he touched her, something snapped inside me and I barely remember the rest. I wanted to kill him for trying to hurt her the way he hurt my mother and me.

A wave of guilt squeezes the air out of my lungs as it crashes down on me, and I lie down and bury my face in the cushions again until the feeling passes. I was lying here last night just like this, wasn’t I? I tried to hide from everyone, but someone found me. I remember arms around me, holding me until I finally fell asleep.

Maria was here. I don’t remember why, but... yes, I asked her to stay. I remember that too. God, my head hurts so much.

What did I say to her? Did I tell her what happened?

As I sit up again, my eyes latch onto the yellow sticky note affixed to the top of my pile of homework assignments. It’s written in Maria’s tiny, delicate handwriting.

Well, I guess that answers my question. I didn’t tell her about my parents yet and I don’t know if I’m going to. She’s finally feeling happy—finally starting to be less afraid—and it’d be horrible of me to pile my problems on top of her. I’m not even sure what to tell her anyway because I don’t know why my father’s death even bothers me. I don't want her to worry about me when I don't even know what's wrong.

My stomach grumbles loudly as I finish reading her note. I hop up and head to the fridge, and my eyes nearly pop out of their sockets at what’s waiting for me inside. Maria brought enough food to feed a small army. Styrofoam takeout containers filled to the brim with spaghetti and meatballs are stacked high in the back of the fridge, but as if that wasn’t already more than I deserve, she drew hearts in red marker on all the lids.

She’s too good for me. I love her to death, but I don’t deserve her at all.

Maria

“S
o before we finish up the interview, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your research?” asks Janet. She’s a recruiter from Verta Pharmaceuticals out in Boston, and even though she’s hiring for pretty close to my dream job, somehow I’m not nervous today.

At least, not nervous the way I usually get during interviews. I’m usually a stammering, bumbling disaster of a candidate, but today I’m actually passing for a reasonable human being.

“Oh, not at all!” I answer, perhaps a little too exuberantly. “What would you like to know?”

This is the best interview I’ve ever had. I’ve
never
had one go this well before but I’m not exactly sure what the difference is today. Well, there are a lot of differences, now that I think about it. For one, my interviewer is a woman so I’m nowhere near as nervous as I usually am, and on top of that, she’s easy to talk to. It’s less of an interview and more of a conversation with someone on my level. I don’t feel like I’m being judged, and without that pressure, everything’s coming together perfectly.

“How about we start with your most recent manuscript, the one out for review at Nature Biotechnology? It’s not every day that I see journals with that degree of prestige on an undergrad resume,” she tells me.

“Well, while it’s still under review and not accepted yet,” I answer honestly, “tentatively, my co-authors and I developed a new gene marking approach based on...”

Janet props her chin up in her hand, all the while maintaining eye contact and listening attentively as I tell her about my research. I can’t believe this is working. I can’t believe I’m actually acing an interview. I’d be proud of myself if I wasn’t so stunned.

I’ve known the answer to every question she’s asked but what’s even better is how well the conversation has flowed. Now that she’s talking about my research, all the words somehow flow perfectly from my brain to my mouth, coming out in wonderfully coherent sentences. This just doesn’t happen. I never, ever make it through an interview without embarrassing myself.

This can only mean one thing: I’m about to wake up.

I surreptitiously pinch myself under the table, but nothing happens. I shouldn’t feel this relieved.

Janet stands up about ten minutes later and reaches across the table to shake my hand with an enormous smile on her face.

“Well, Miss Ayala, I can’t promise anything since the final decision goes to a panel of recruiters, but let me quickly congratulate you on one
heck
of a first impression.”

“Thank you, Janet,” I answer, standing and returning her handshake. Firm handshake – good, got it right. Perfect! Yet another social grace I usually fail at, but then again, usually my interviewer is a creepy old guy with wandering eyes instead of a friendly and perfectly safe young woman like Janet.

“
Maybe I actually have a chance at getting this job,
” I think excitedly.

I follow Janet out the door of our impromptu interview room—formerly the track team’s study area—and back into the sprawling maze of company booths covering the basketball court. The career fair at Cornell is so popular with employers that even the largest indoor area on campus isn’t big enough to hold it anymore. The university divides the fair into two days now and assigns each company a single day of recruiting. Major companies from all over the world are here searching for everything from electrical engineers to biologists, and while I don’t know for certain yet, I’m pretty sure that I just aced my interview with one of them.

Janet waves goodbye to me and returns to her colleagues at the Verta booth, and I can’t help but smile as I wave back. I could not have asked for better interviewer. She was friendly and just chatty enough that I didn’t need to lead the conversation, and I felt safe with her because... well... she’s a woman.

No, it’s not quite that simple. I mean, it is... but really, the hardest part of going to interviews has always been the interviewers staring at me—the feeling that they’re evaluating me not based on what I can do but on what I look like. Sometimes women make me feel that way too.

Darren’s face flickers inside me, and for one horrible instant, I’m reliving the cruel laughter in his eyes and his terrifying, almost dehumanizing leer.
He’s
the man most interviewers remind me of and why I have so much trouble holding myself together. They remind me of him evaluating me, deciding whether I was worth hurting.

I shove the thought of him out of my mind, and just as quickly as he came, he’s gone. I’m not going back there. I’m moving on and he can’t stop me.

After what feels like an eternity of navigating through the turbulent sea of students, I finally make it to the side doors and head outside into the sunlight. The sky is blue, it’s warm enough that I don’t need my coat, and a beautiful spring breeze blows through my hair. What an absolutely perfect day. If I weren’t wearing this stupid suit, I’d head straight down to the gorge to play in the water.

In fact, I might just go home, change into some jeans and do exactly that.

“
You were going to call Owen, remember?”
my brain reminds me. I completely forgot.

Owen’s beautiful gray eyes and gorgeous smile flit across my mind, and my own smile grows even wider as I all but skip down the sidewalk. A good interview—maybe even a job offer coming out of it—and the best boyfriend in the world waiting for me back home... when did I start getting so lucky?

I reach behind me and fumble through the side pockets of my backpack until I find my phone. As I start to dial Owen’s number, I catch myself instinctively steering to the right and giving extra room to a boy walking in the other direction down the sidewalk.

No. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not letting myself be afraid of people.

I force myself back on the sidewalk and keep walking straight toward him. The sidewalk is wide enough for two people and a
normal
person shouldn’t have trouble just walking past someone. I look down at my phone and send Owen a text message.

M: Where r u? Interview = awesome!

The boy is much closer when I look up again, and my pulse quickens and a lump forms in my throat as I keep walking. I was fine all through the career fair, so why now? Why is walking past a guy on the sidewalk so difficult all of a sudden?

“
You can’t let yourself be afraid of everyone forever,
” I think, trying to calm myself down. “
Just walk. You can do this.
”

I let myself hold my breath as we pass each other, but in one final act of rebellion against my fears, I force myself to look up at the boy and smile. He nods back to me and then he’s gone, continuing down the sidewalk out of sight behind me. I exhale in relief as each step takes me further and further away from him.

“See?” I whisper to myself. “That wasn’t so bad. I can be normal. It’s not so hard.”

If only it were true. It was so much harder than it ought to have been.

My phone beeps and I glance down to see Owen’s response.

O: Uris Library stacks. Studying. Third floor.

In my four years as a student, I’ve never actually gone back in the stacks of Uris Library. Students in the biology programs have their own library and seldom need to use Uris, but we all know about it from our freshman-year tours. As the university grew larger and larger over the last century, the beautiful old library quickly ran out of space. A labyrinthine four-story addition now houses the majority of the library’s materials. Almost nobody ever goes back there, but Owen claims that the silent seclusion helps him study.

The library is a ten-minute walk from the career fair. Up the stairs to the large, wooden door I go and then, after a quick glance at the library map, I head for the stairwell. The metal staircase clatters loudly with each step I take and ugly fluorescent lights buzz irritatingly in my ears at every landing until I finally make it to the third floor of the stacks. I swing the heavy fire door open, take two steps in and stop dead in my tracks.

There’s no way I’m finding Owen in here.

The stacks are dead silent except for the monotone hum of the ventilation system and the buzz of the fluorescent lights dangling overhead. It’s so quiet that, if not for that little bit of white noise, I could probably hear my heart beating. It’s so quiet that it’s actually creepy.

I text Owen again. Even the keypad on my phone seems loud in the silence of the stacks.

M: I’m at floor 3, where are you?

Row after row of shelves line the center aisle, packed in so tightly that there’s barely room for two people to pass each other. Owen is studying somewhere down one of these side rows, and as I search for him, I start to panic. I feel as if the library’s closing in around me, like the shelves are coming closer and closer and just waiting for an opportunity to box me in. This is different from just being in the library; someone could grab me right now and drag me off into the back, and nobody would find me for weeks.

“
Oh stop that,
” I chastise myself. “
I’m in a goddamned library. Nothing’s going to happen.”

The idea of anything happening to me in the university’s library is ridiculous, but the silence and claustrophobia-inducing bookshelves unnerve me just the same.

I nearly jump out of my skin when my phone vibrates in my pocket.

O: Far back right.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and wait for my heart rate to slow down. I need to calm down. I’m just in a library. What am I so afraid of?

I jog down the center aisle, quickly glancing down each row of shelves as I pass. Countless old and dusty books fly past me as I run toward the far end of the stacks. How can Owen study in here? It feels more like a mausoleum than a library.

An empty desk catches my eye at the far ends of every few rows but there’s still no sign of Owen. Where is he? My head settles into a rhythm, bobbing to the left and right as I check each and every row of books. I’m so used to seeing empty desks that when I find him, I go straight past his aisle and have to stop myself and head back.

“
Thank God,
” I think as I squeeze down the narrow gap between the two shelves. “
This place creeps me out.
”

Owen hunches over one of his textbooks with his head propped up in his hands, and he doesn’t say a word as I pull out a chair and sit down next to him. He doesn’t even look up at me. Does he even know I’m here?

I slowly wave a hand back and forth in his peripheral vision and he still doesn’t react. Wow.

“Hi Owen,” I whisper into his ear, and he nearly jumps out of his seat. I startled him so much that his reaction startles me right back, and I almost fall out of my seat as well.

“Jesus Christ, Maria!” he gasps. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry about that,” I apologize, and then I lean in and kiss him on the cheek. He barely reacts to my kiss, and instead returns to his textbook.

“So... I had my interview,” I whisper. It takes him a very long time to respond, and something doesn’t feel right to me.

“How’d it go?” he finally asks, still not looking up. Whatever happened last night must still be bothering him.

“It went
perfectly
. I’ve never had an interview go that well before. I got all the questions right, the interviewer liked me...”

He looks up and smiles at me, but I can tell he’s not happy. I’ve seen his
real
smile. I fell in love with that smile, so I know a fake when I see it.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” he says quietly, and he looks back down at his textbook.

That’s not an answer. That’s just a pile of empty words, like something I’d say to make my mother think we still have a connection. Something’s definitely wrong.

“Owen, what happened?” I ask. I reach out to run my fingers through his hair, but he pulls away from me and shakes his head.

I yank my hand back and bite down on my lower lip as I wait for him to answer me. That one little action—him pulling away from me as I tried to comfort him—hurts me in a way I’ve not felt before. My heart suddenly feels heavy and a nagging worry starts to grow in the back of my mind.

“It’s nothing,” he finally answers and then he sighs and flips the page. He’s reading his statistical topology textbook.

“I don’t believe you. You said you’d tell me today.”

Owen shakes his head and turns the page again. There’s no way he read the last page already. He’s just flipping now. Before my brain knows what the rest of my body is doing, my arm shoots out, grabs his chin and turns his head to face me.

“Talk to me,” I insist. His beautiful gray eyes are dark and sad as he stares back at me, and he silently pulls away and returns to his textbook.

“I’m not going away until you tell me what’s wrong,” I tell him. “I can wait all night.”

“You said that once before,” he whispers. “You said that after I broke my hand and wouldn’t go to the hospital.”

“And I meant it then, too. Come home and talk to me, please?”

“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head and turning the page. “I have an exam in a few weeks and have no idea what’s going on. I have to study.”

“Are you even reading?” I fire back. My voice echoes loudly in the dead-silent library and I lower it to a whisper as I add, “You’re just staring blankly at the pages and aren’t retaining anything. How can you study when you’re feeling like this?”

“Even if I can’t focus on math, at least I can get my thoughts in order.”

He swallows hard as he turns the page again and his hands are shaking so much that the paper rattles. What am I going to do? I have to find out what happened to him. I feel like he’s blocked me out, somehow, and I need to know why.

“Owen, I’m serious. I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me what’s wrong.”

He sighs, marks his page and closes the textbook, and then he scoots his chair closer to mine and finally faces me.

“The police are coming up from Long Island to talk to me on Friday,” he whispers. “I’m kind of stressed out about it, okay?”