Variant Lost (The Evelyn Maynard Trilogy Book 1) Read online

Everything felt sluggish: my mind, my body, the light with its lazy blue hues beckoning me back to sleep. But I needed to check on him. I knew he was alive—I could feel his chest expanding with strong steady breaths, hear his heart beating under my cheek—but I had to look into his face to convince myself.

  As I shifted gently in his arms, angling my head to get a better look at him, his body responded immediately. The hand on my waist pressed down ever so slightly—as though to keep me in place but unsure if demanding this halting of movement was permitted.

  I dragged my eyes slowly up his chest, over the curve of his neck, past the angle of his jaw, to look into his face.

  His eyes opened. They looked as sluggish and relaxed as I felt.

  An inexplicable warmth flooded my chest at the sight of him conscious and well, if still a little out of it. I sighed with pleasure, and the corners of my mouth curved up infinitesimally in a lazy smile. He responded with a soft smile of his own.

  For a few moments we just stared at each other, as if to make sure the other person was real. I’d never looked someone in the eye for so long before. With anyone else, in any other setting, it would have been too weird, too intimate. One of us would have turned away, cracking a silly joke to dispel the intensity.

  Yet staring into Ethan’s eyes as we held each other felt perfectly normal and comfortable. It didn’t matter that I hardly knew the guy, that we had met only a handful of times. In that moment, I knew him. I knew who he was underneath all the bullshit and the secrecy and the big boisterous personality that matched his big boisterous physique.

  It felt right to have his hand on my waist—his fingers now flexing just slightly on my bare skin. It felt natural when we both leaned in.

  We were on opposite ends of an invisible tether, being tugged toward each other.

  It was not a desperate and frenzied embrace—it was slow with inevitability. Our lips met halfway and pressed together softly. Once again moving in tandem, my arm traced his shoulder and landed behind his neck while his hand snaked up from my waist, underneath my tank top, toward the middle of my back.

  We pulled each other closer at the same time.

  Our chests pressed together as the kiss deepened, still slow and gentle but steadily increasing in intensity.

  As naturally as it had started, the kiss came to an end with slow pecks against swollen lips. Our foreheads met, and our noses rubbed gently together.

  He extracted his hand from the back of my tank top, and his fingers tangled into my hair, beginning a gentle massage on my scalp.

  “Thank you.” He whispered it so softly that if my face hadn’t been pressed into his, I wouldn’t have heard him. I wasn’t sure what he was thanking me for, and I couldn’t find the energy to think about it. Unconsciousness was tugging at me again.

  He rolled onto his back and took me with him, gently cradling my head and settling it into his shoulder. The arm under me curved around, his hand finding the sliver of exposed skin once more. It seemed we both still craved skin contact.

  I settled into his side, and we both went back to sleep.

  When I woke up the second time, it was broad daylight, made painfully obvious by the sun streaming in through the window in front of my face, blinding me even through my closed lids.

  I groaned softly and shifted, intending to roll over and away from the offensive light, but I froze. There was an arm slung over my middle and a warm chest pressed into my back.

  Why was someone in my bed?

  Even as the thought floated through my mind, I realized it was inaccurate. I couldn’t have been in my bed. There was no window directly opposite my bed and therefore no way sunlight could be shining on my face.

  I was in someone else’s bed. With . . . someone?

  I was now wide awake, all senses on alert, my heart hammering in my chest.

  Forcing myself to take a deep, calming breath, I tried to pinpoint the last thing I could remember, but my train of thought was immediately interrupted by the person behind me, who had responded to my deep breath with a breath of their own and a tightening of their arm around my waist. He—I didn’t know any women with arms that wide—snuggled in closer to my back, nuzzling his face into the back of my head.

  Did he just smell my hair?

  I needed to extract myself from this person and try to figure out where I was.

  As slowly as I could, I wrapped my fingers around the wrist resting on top of me and lifted it gingerly, then awkwardly shimmied toward the edge of the bed.

  Behind me, the mystery person froze. He cleared his throat and gently extracted his arm from my grip, and the mattress dipped as he shifted farther away from me.

  I turned my head to finally find out who had kidnapped me and . . .

  “Ethan?” He was propped up on his elbows, mirroring my position, shirtless, the blanket pooling around his hips. He had a wary, slightly shocked look on his face—as if he too was trying to figure out what was going on.

  “Uh . . . hey?” His eyes flicked down my body and flew back up to my face.

  I looked down at myself—I was wearing only my tank top. The left strap had slipped off my shoulder, pulling the front down to almost reveal my left nipple. I gasped and immediately pulled it back up, suddenly very aware of how naked Ethan was in the bed next to me.

  My mind warred between dragging the blanket up to cover myself and throwing it off to see exactly how nude we were under it.

  I needed all the facts before I could form a conclusion, so, sitting up fully, I lifted the blanket off my lap and peered down. At the sight of my fluro pink underwear, still securely in place, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Ethan chuckled. I turned my head sharply in his direction and glared at him. He was still leaning back on his elbows, his coal-black hair sleep tousled and looking . . . sexy. Dammit! He looked sexy, OK?

  But I wasn’t going to let his shirtlessness and messy hair distract me from my fact-finding mission. I whipped my hand over to grab the blanket at the base of his stomach, yanking it away so I could look under it.

  Ethan chuckled again and asked, “Like what you see?” in his gritty, sexy morning voice just as the door to the room burst open. Josh, Alec, and Tyler spilled inside.

  As if the situation weren’t ridiculous enough, apparently it was time to throw in the boy I’d recently kissed who’d then rejected me, the man who had saved my life and then actively avoided me for a year, and a staff member at the educational institute I currently attended whom I’d begun to develop a crush on. This was turning into a bad improv comedy show.

  We all froze. Me with a handful of blanket held over Kid’s crotch, Josh gripping a steaming mug of coffee in each hand, Tyler similarly holding two plates of food, and Alec just watching everything with narrowed eyes.

  Ethan was the one to break the silence. He burst out with his booming signature guffaw and flopped back onto the pillows. This snapped us all out of the awkward spell we were under. While Ethan continued to laugh on the bed beside me, Josh and Tyler began to speak over each other, setting the mugs and plates down on the desk near the door.

  Alec just crossed his arms over his chest and leaned in the doorway, the slight frown on his face unchanged and directed at me.

  I grabbed the blanket and dragged it up to my chin, scooting back until I hit the headboard. The pressure of held-back tears was making my face ache. I pulled my knees up to my chest, unable to look away from Alec’s stare, its intensity pinning me there, his eyes accusing.

  I had no idea what was going on or how to get myself out of this situation. I was in a room with four other people, but I felt so alone.

  I was still meeting Alec’s glare when the tears welled over and my breath started coming in broken pants.

  Alec’s expression shifted to something incomprehensible—but unnervingly intense. He dropped his arms and took a step into the room before changing his mind, turning on his heel, and stalking out, slamming the door behind him.

  That’s when t
he others realized I was crying.

  The room fell silent as tears began trailing down my cheeks. I dropped my eyes to focus intently on the blanket covering my knees, tracing the swirly pattern in the fabric. I was hoping everyone would just go away so I could think.

  Tyler cursed softly. Next to me, Ethan had begun to fidget, unsure of what to do with the crying girl in his bed.

  After the longest and most awkward few moments of my life, Tyler finally decided to take charge.

  “Eve.” He was using his serious, adult-in-charge voice. “What’s wrong?”

  Despite how confused and scared I was, I looked up at him—his authoritative tone made me feel as though I had to. My gaze wandered from his neutral, serious expression to Josh’s intense, confused eyes and then finally over to Ethan, who looked . . . as if he was in pain?

  Something about that seemed familiar. I felt so lost, and I had no idea how to explain it to them.

  It must have showed on my face, because Josh explained it for me, his voice quiet but confident. “Oh my god. She doesn’t remember.”

  Ethan’s pained expression turned into one of shock, and he stared at me, eyes wide.

  It must have dawned on him then what this scenario must look like from my perspective—the girl who found herself half-naked in his bed without any memory of how she got there.

  I looked around at them again; they all wore matching horrified expressions.

  “No!” Ethan reached for me, then thought better of it and snapped his hand back, completely getting out of the bed.

  But that only made it worse. Now he was standing there in nothing but his underwear, and looking at his almost naked body somehow felt more intimate than having him lying next to me.

  “This is so not what it looks like, Eve. Oh god! Why doesn’t she remember?” The last bit was aimed at Tyler.

  “I’m not sure. This isn’t how the connection usually forms. It was a traumatic experience for both of you. Maybe her mind just can’t . . .”

  As Tyler spoke, Ethan grabbed a T-shirt from a chair by the bed and pulled it over his head. “So, what do we do? Eve, what can we do?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice was shaking. “I need to know . . . I just . . . why am I here? Did we . . . ?”

  Tyler attempted to answer my disjointed questions. “You came here last night because Kid was in trouble and you wanted to help. Nothing untoward happened.” He looked uncomfortable.

  Ethan, his hands in fists, leaned on the bed, putting himself at eye level with me but not getting any closer. “You saved my life.” He said it with such intensity, such conviction, that I couldn’t suspect he was lying or being dramatic.

  I stopped crying and released the death grip I had on my knees, straightening up as the sensation at the back of my mind nudged at me again.

  I brought my hand up to my chest, rubbing lightly just below my neck. Lingering remnants of the urgency, the pain I’d felt last night tugged at my memory. I glanced around the room and my eyes caught on Josh. The bright colors of his David Bowie T-shirt served as the anchor my mind needed to put it all together.

  It came rushing back—the sudden way I woke up, the overwhelming desperation that had me sprinting all the way here, the pain at seeing Ethan unconscious and vulnerable, the crushing worry that he might die, the unexplainable urge to touch him.

  I sprang to my feet, and Ethan straightened. He was so tall that my standing on the bed put me only half a head above him.

  “I have a feeling she’s remembering it.” A tentative smile spread across his face, bringing his dimples out.

  He almost died.

  The urge to be sure he was all right slammed back into me, and I bounced across the mattress and launched myself at him. He caught me, wrapping his arms around my waist as mine wrapped tightly around his shoulders.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and smiled wide as I felt the strength in his grip. He was OK. He had made it.

  Our embrace only lasted a moment before two sets of strong hands yanked me back onto the bed. As soon as I was away from Ethan, Tyler and Josh released me and stepped back, though they remained standing close.

  “Probably best if we keep the physical contact to a minimum now that you’re back to full strength. We wouldn’t want to burn down the pool house.” Tyler sounded as if he was explaining their weird behavior, but I only had more questions.

  “OK, someone better start explaining. Preferably with visual aids. Because I’m no longer worried that you’re a bunch of creeps who drugged me and had your way with me, but I am still really confused.” I must have looked like a crazed person sitting in the middle of the bed in my underwear, my face tear-streaked but smiling—because Ethan was OK.

  Instead of answering me, Ethan made a beeline for the plates on the desk and started shoveling food into his mouth. “Man, I’m starving!”

  “OK. Fair enough.” It was Tyler, once again, who was attempting to answer my questions. “But you both need to eat and . . . ah . . . get dressed. Why don’t we give you some privacy, and then we can talk out in the living room?”

  Now that he mentioned it, I was pretty hungry. And now that he mentioned it, I was sitting in a bed in my underwear. I’d spent a little bit of time with Josh and Ethan, but Tyler was still firmly in the category of “official Bradford Hills representative” in my mind. All my interactions with him had been strictly related to Institute business, despite his laid-back approach. Even though I knew he lived here, it was still a little odd for me to be seeing him off campus. In my underwear.

  I slowly lifted the blanket back over myself, feeling self-conscious again, and nodded. Tyler grabbed the other plate and walked out of the room, herding Ethan through in front of him.

  Josh didn’t follow them straight away. He walked around to my side of the bed, a small smile playing at his lips. He leaned down in front of me, just like Ethan had moments earlier, and looked at me with those intense green eyes.

  “You’re amazing.” He raised one hand and brushed my cheek with his knuckles. Instinctively I leaned into the touch, and that tingling feeling spread like warm butter where our skin met. It felt amazing. It felt like . . . when I’d touched Ethan last night.

  As I grasped at half-understood facts, beginning to maybe connect them into a half-comprehensible theory, Josh straightened and walked toward the hall. Grabbing the mugs off the table, he exited the room and turned, smiled at me again, and flicked his eyes to the door. It swung slowly closed at his command.

  Eleven

  As soon as I was alone in the room, I didn’t want to be.

  I needed answers and knew they had them, but I also just wanted to be around them. The pull I had toward these two guys I hardly knew was beyond anything I could explain. I didn’t feel as if I hardly knew them. I felt as if we were family who just hadn’t seen each other in a really long time. As if there was an established connection regardless of what I knew about their favorite foods and music preferences.

  I was relieved to find a bathroom connected to the room I was in and a spare toothbrush left on the counter for me. After a quick freshen up, I got dressed. It felt warm, so I opted not to put the oversized T-shirt or cardigan back on, but I couldn’t go out there in just my underwear. I rifled through the items on the chair and decided to borrow the shorts that were obviously intended for Ethan.

  By this point, I was so hungry that my stomach was in a constant state of grumbles. I followed the intoxicating smell of bacon down the short hallway.

  “. . . both of you. It’s a delicate situation, to say the least.”

  “What’s a delicate situation?” I wasn’t eavesdropping; I’d simply walked in while Tyler was speaking. It was odd seeing him outside the confines of Bradford Hills, but at least it wasn’t as awkward as him piling into the little bedroom with the other boys when I was half-naked.

  I had run through the pool house so fast the previous night that I had no memory of what it actually looked like. Now, walking out from the back o
f the structure, I saw an open-planned living area. Directly opposite me, a wall of windows looked out onto the yard, the double doors in the middle flung open, letting the breeze in. Alec was leaning in the doorway, looking out at the pool, his back to us all.

  To my right was a small kitchen area; on my left, couches and a TV. The whole space was decorated in the Hamptons style—lots of whites and blues with touches of light timber.

  Ethan sat at a round dining table under the window facing me, already finishing his first plate of food and loading up his second. Tyler and Josh were situated on either side of him.

  All three of them looked up and smiled. “We’ll get to that,” Tyler assured me. “Have something to eat.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I marched over to the table and sat across from them, snatching up a plate heaped with food. As the bacon and eggs landed on my tongue, I moaned, and my eyes rolled back into my head. I felt as if I hadn’t had a meal in days. All my focus was on my plate, until the smell of coffee hit me.

  I reached for the steaming mug in front of me but paused with it halfway to my mouth. American coffee. I set it back down, a disgusted look on my face. “I don’t know how you guys drink this swamp water. I need to find somewhere that does a decent latte around here or I’m going to go nuts. And don’t say Starbucks! Don’t get me started—” I looked up. They were all staring at me. “—on Starbucks.”

  Even Alec had turned around to look at me, an almost smile on his face. I didn’t have a chance to wonder about this sudden improvement in his mood though. Without so much as a “goodbye” to anyone, he turned around and walked out.

  I returned my attention to the three people still present, beginning to feel a bit self-conscious. “What?”

  Ethan just chuckled and took a sip of his swamp water.

  It was Josh who answered me, leaning on the back of his chair. “We’ve just never seen someone eat as much as Ethan.”

  “Oh.” I shrugged. I was not about to apologize for a healthy appetite. Although, looking down at my plate, I had eaten a lot more than I usually did. Double the amount of bacon I could normally stomach, and there must have been at least five eggs on the plate, plus the toast, mushrooms, and avocado.