Lost Days (Four Days Book 4) Read online

  I permit myself to stay in her arms which are squeezing me and holding on to me, for just enough time to help calm me down and understand what the hell is happening to me.

  Just this once.

  I can let myself go just this once.

  One damned time.

  2

  CIARA

  I help him get back in the room, bracing him up under the arm and it’s hard for me to stay balanced. Aaron is a tall hearty guy, more robust than my brother and all the others, but right now it seems like he’s lost all of his strength and self-confidence.

  So I help him sit down on the bed while he still has that lost look on his face, lost in something that is bigger than I am and surely bigger than he is.

  I help him take off his shoes and stretch out his legs on the bed. I kneel down next to him and smile, because I know he needs to be reassured right now. I watch him close his eyes and relax a bit so I stand up, with the intention of leaving him in peace and going back downstairs, but before I’m able to do so, he grabs my arm.

  “Please,” he says in a thin voice. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  His words leave me feeling disoriented but I try to hide my confusion because seeming undecided as to what to do would certainly not be helpful right now.

  I sit on the bed next to him and caress his beard-covered cheeks. They haven’t seen a razor in at least two months.

  He looks at me so intensely that I feel my heart beating in my throat. His glance penetrates my mind and latches on, so much so that I’m not able to look away from them because they are imploring me to stay, locked in concert with his. His hand is over mine, preventing it from moving. And I hold my breath, fearful that the slightest thing could break this spell. He pulls me to him and I almost faint, thinking he’s about to put his lips next to mine, but then with his other hand, he brushes me behind my nape and pulls my forehead down towards his mouth. He gives me a near fraternal kiss in my hair before letting me rest my head on his chest and I curl my body up to him. I put my arm around his waist and lightly rub his side, under his shirt, feeling his skin shiver under my fingers. He continues to breathe in the scent of my hair and every hot breath he exhales melts every thought in my brain, setting it in overdrive, no longer able to send sensory information to the nerves in my body.

  Because we’re talking about Aaron, the boy that I have spied on and dreamt about in silence for my entire life. The man all of my fantasies have been based on since I turned thirteen years old.

  Aaron, my brother’s best friend, who one day was forced to swear to Patrick in the garden behind our house, ‘I’ll never mess with one of your sisters’.

  —

  AARON

  Another ‘girls’ night out’ before the wedding is in full swing at the pub. I seriously don’t understand how many fucking times they need to celebrate this damned marriage. People get married every day, what’s the big deal? And then, they’re always together as if they’re never going to see each other again, but they’ve forgotten that we all live in the same overcrowded house together and that we all work at this pub. There is no way to get separation or lose sight of one another, even if we wanted to. We are all tied to this place, like it or not.

  Erin is having a drink, although it’s not her usual habit. She’s taking advantage of the fact that her mother is here these days, taking care of Lily. Rain is satisfied with her usual Diet Coke as she doesn’t drink. It confuses her and makes her more awkward. Alex doesn’t dare even sniff a glass of beer. In a nutshell, Erin is the only one really drinking and then again, she’s the only one who has the right to. She’s got to marry Patrick. Come on, are you serious? What the hell is she thinking?

  It’s true that Patrick has completely changed since he’s been with her. To be honest, he started changing the minute Erin began smiling at him a bit too much. Erin’s eyes are deep and sincere, she’s smart and sunny, just what the doctor ordered for a womanizing-liar-hardened-constantly angry-with-the-world guy like Patrick. I have no problem believing that he fell in love with her.

  And with Lily.

  Lily has changed his life. He doesn’t seem like the same old asshole who slept with a different woman every other day.

  That girl trusted him and he looked inside himself, going past all that he was working so hard to show everyone and was able to clean his soul, making him a different man, a man who was able to love his woman above all else.

  Who would believe it.

  Maybe it’s the only thing that there is no explanation for.

  I clean the glasses and put them away on the shelf behind me as Patrick joins me at the bar, smiling as usual.

  I almost preferred him the way he was before.

  “Hey, buddy, is everything alright?”

  My thoughts rush back to two nights ago when I had a breakdown in her arms and I was able to start breathing normally again only thanks to her scent.

  “Is this going to go on for a long time?” I ask, cutting to the quick these thoughts that have been torturing me all night.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The girls.”

  He looks over at them for a minute and then goes back to staring at me.

  “What’s your problem? You wanna turn the table over?” he says, making fun of me. He has no idea of the burden that I’d like to rain down on him.

  I’m just about to reply to him in the same tone of voice when the pub door opens, letting in a whirlwind with it.

  And not just that.

  My breath is trapped in my throat again.

  Shit.

  She’s wearing a colorful plaid shirt over a pair of jeans which are short and torn up. Luckily for me, she’s got something like nylons on under, covering up her legs because otherwise…

  What the hell is going on in my mind? What the heck does it matter to me how she dresses when she goes out?

  I swallow the saliva and something that feels like a nail which is threatening to pierce my esophagus.

  Double shit.

  She looks around, wrapping a swatch of hair around her fingernail that’s painted in one of those hot pink colors that are popular for giving fair-haired girls with long hair beautiful light reflections. It falls gently over her shoulders, framing her sunny, fresh face from which two intense, penetrating eyes peer out. She has a full red mouth that makes me instantly regret over-analyzing every detail of her body.

  I try swallowing again.

  Nothing.

  I’m going to suffocate. I’m sure of it.

  She finds the table where the party girls are and hurries over to join them without even looking over to the bar.

  I’m safe for now.

  The future bride stands up and smiles at her in greeting while she greets all the girls one by one. Then Erin gestures to me with her hand to ask me something, but I don’t understand, I can’t hear what she’s yelling, I’m not even able to blink.

  It’s not the first time she’s been here and certainly not the first time I’ve seen her. I’ve known her practically since she was in her crib.

  And yet, tonight, she’s a different girl. Or maybe she hasn’t been the same since longer than the other night when she found me on the damned roof in the middle of a breakdown. And she stayed with me. I begged her to.

  Where in the world was my head?

  I had been drinking, maybe.

  I was confused, out of control and I let her hug me and console me and that she lay down next to me, on my bed.

  How long has it been since something similar has happened? When was the last time I held someone in my arms?

  I don’t even know how long she stayed there because once I was snuggled in her arms, I fell fast asleep in a way that I haven’t done in a long, long time.

  God, how could I do it? What must she think of me?

  She is Ciara, Patrick’s sister, just little more than a girl. One of those who wait around for Prince Charming or some shit like that. A dreamer, a girl with her head in t
he clouds—one of those types that believes in people, has hope for the future.

  Someone who believes in love.

  I am a man, with a past and full of my own troubles. I am a realist and even a bit of a cynic with a family to support and a shitty life to manage.

  A man who made a promise to her brother years ago: ‘I’ll never mess about with one of your sisters’.

  And a promise made is a debt unpaid.

  Always.

  3

  CIARA

  I take a deep breath and push the pub door open with a bit of difficulty because of the strong wind that’s out tonight. I’m worn out by a day spent in the basement painting the walls and I still smell of paint and white spirit, not to mention being covered in the paint splashes I’ve got on my clothes. I didn’t even bother to change before coming.

  I take a few steps inside and look around, disoriented by the noise here and tired from a hard day’s work and from sheer exhaustion, when I see Erin get to her feet and she nods at me. I approach the table where she’s waiting for me together with Alex and Rain.

  “You made it!” she says, smiling at me. “We’d almost given up on you.”

  “I’m sorry for being late, I was all tied up.”

  “I can see that,” Erin says, pointing to the paint splashes still on my hands. “I hope that’ll wash off in time for the wedding.”

  “Oh, sure it will,” I lie. I guess that my hands will never be their natural color again.

  “How are things going?”

  “Full speed ahead.”

  “Are you still hoping to become a teacher?” Rain asks hopefully.

  “Um-hmm.” I feel a bit embarrassed to talk with her about my dream of teaching art at school. I know that she used to be a teacher before the terrible accident and that she’s not able to go back to a job she had always dreamed of doing.

  “You’ll love it, the children are…”

  And then she is no longer able to control her emotions and a tear falls straight down her neck into her T-shirt.

  I feel guilty for making her feel sad, but Erin smiles at me in reassurance and tries to change the subject.

  “Will you have something to drink?” she asks, standing up and yelling something over my shoulder.

  I instinctively turn around as if there were a greater force making me do it. As if all of my body were responding to a call that only he is able to send.

  And I see him, standing at the bar, looking right at us.

  His posture is tense, as if he were on alert. His arms are folded over his chest, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his forearms exposed and his veins raised. His mouth is slightly crooked in a grin which is just noticeable in his shaggy, sexy beard. He has that hard look in his eyes, and yet it’s magnetic…

  Good Lord, help me.

  He’s looking in this direction, I can feel his eyes on me as if he were looking at me for the first time as Ciara and not as Patrick’s little sister. A shiver of excitement runs through each part of me. He continues looking at me without moving a muscle. Not even the pat on the back my brother gives him seems to shake him.

  He is paralyzed by my presence just as I am in his.

  And it’s strange because we’ve known each other forever and have been close many times and spoken, joked around and he’s even made fun of me and angered me like no one else, but never, ever in all these years has he ever looked at me in this way.

  I push away the illusion that has just risen in my heart and I turn towards the girls with a forced smile. I do not look at him again and when my beer arrives, I dive into it without thinking twice, emptying half of it in one gulp.

  I feel his eyes burning into my back and hope fills me, hardening every centimeter of my skin. I shouldn’t feel like this, I have no right to and more than that, I shouldn’t feed something that I put to rest a long, long time ago, because I’ve always known in my heart and in my head that Aaron was off-limits, that I should never get close to him and what’s more, he should never do the same with me.

  And yet, something happened the other night. A boundary was crossed. The plan was deviated and here I am again hoping that he wouldn’t look at me like a stupid little girl with a crush on him, but as a woman.

  A woman who has desires.

  “D-do you feel alright?” Rain asks, stuttering. “Y-you look p-pale.”

  “Fantastic,” I lie without sounding convincing. “So, what are we talking about tonight?”

  Erin sits up straight on her stool and starts showing us her plans for the bridesmaids: Rain, Alex and poor old me. My sister Amanda pulled out of attending the wedding, leaving me the designated family representative.

  I try to follow her instructions, to concentrate on what she’s asking me to do because it’s her day and it’s important, but my head is somewhere else, my thoughts are all focused on someone else—the last person they should be concerned with. I tell myself not to turn around, that I shouldn’t let myself be fooled and that it’s probably just a moment of total confusion and weakness on his part, that he was upset about something and I happened to be there and he happened to let me get close to him.

  But there’s no need for me to turn around and look, there’s no need for me to verify his presence because I feel it, in my arms, as if his body were still there pressed against mine. As if that heat wasn’t able to leave me.

  —

  AARON

  I went up to the table as soon as she left the pub. She stuck around for about an hour. She drank and chatted with the girls. She looked at me just one time and I wasn’t even able to nod at her.

  What should I have done? Going to the table and talking with her would have seemed out of place. What should I have said to her? The other night was just a big misunderstanding. I was feeling strange, out of sorts… No, to be honest I was feeling like shit.

  Maybe I just felt crushed by other people’s happiness and upset by the events and the fact that no one noticed my discomfort or my absence.

  No one but her.

  She came to me with those deep, sincere eyes of hers and I let myself go in her arms.

  Her arms, for Christ’s sakes.

  I am a colossal idiot.

  When I found her in front of me like that I didn’t see Patrick’s little sister, the girl who used to enjoy herself finger-painting the walls at home, with braces on her teeth and her hands always stained with paint.

  I just saw her and when our eyes met in the dark, I was able to start breathing normally again.

  She was able to calm me down.

  I sit on my bed and let myself be wrapped in the darkness and the silence.

  For I am a rational, self-controlled man. I evaluate a problem and I find a solution for it without over-thinking it. I am the rock of Gibraltar, a safe harbor. For everyone.

  I go on telling myself the same thing, but with the accident and all the shit that’s gone down over the last few years, I’ve felt that confidence waver and that sense of control diminish bit by bit. The other night was the epilogue to a shitty period of time.

  It was nothing, just an episode. I am stressed out and exhausted. It’s just a moment when things are off track, a bad moment. And the idea of her took advantage of sneaking into my mind. Just a thought, something blurry and abstract that I need to cut to the quick. Bury it six feet under if necessary.

  See, I don’t need these kinds of distractions.

  I lost my parents when Rain was still at school, I did the cooking, the washing and even ironed her uniform. I did three jobs at the same time and in the evenings, after she went to bed, I was playing music with my friends. Despite the loss and the pain, I thought everything was going to be alright. Then the accident happened. Neil, one of my dearest friends, died. Another person to mourn. And Rain in a coma. I thought I had lost her too and if I had, I would have been lost as well because I would not have had any reason to go on living.

  My family comes before everything else. Rain is the most important person,
together with my friends. So, I put all of it on my back. Her therapy, the rehabilitation, her new life. I opened this pub along with my friends. I’m there for them when they need me and I try to take care of them, to protect them and not allow anything bad to happen.

  This is my only objective in life. There is no time or space for anything else.

  Years ago I put up a well-marked wall that’s impossible to get over. It excludes the rest of the world from me and eliminates other possibilities because that’s where the problem lies.

  They fuck with your mind and your life.

  And I cannot permit myself to let my guard down even for a second because there is always the unforeseen around the corner and you need to be ready to push back hard, even at the cost of giving yourself up.

  4

  CIARA

  Since that night, I haven’t done anything other than think of him in the state I found him on the roof. He seemed so different, so alone and lost. He was having a panic attack. He was having a hard time breathing and by the look in his eyes I could tell that he wasn’t even aware of where he was.

  How long has this been going on? Does my brother know about it? And the others? Has anyone realized what’s going on here?

  I don’t know what to do, if I should talk with someone about it or with him directly. I also wonder what happened to that strong sure man everyone counts on.

  Aaron and the guys were musicians and were just about to make a big leap. They had been offered a contract, a new album and a European tour. They had just about made it, they had almost overcome their past, their collective difficult past, with little to nothing promising in it, just like mine.

  And then there was the accident in which Neil, the singer of the band, died. Aaron’s sister Rain lost her memory and since then she has always had difficulty with language and was not able to go back to teaching and go on with her life the way she had planned it.