Losing Me Finding You (26 page)

“These kinds of things?” I ask smiling.

Ben laughs. “Yeah you know, the crazy kind of stuff that doesn’t seem real or plausible or possible. It’s just easier to accept when you still believe magic can happen I guess.”

“I’m not exactly sure it’s magic,” I scoff.

Ben smiles now as he leans in to kiss me. “There’s definitely some magic involved, baby,” he whispers and a part of me knows he’s right. There’s certainly some kind of magic between us, there always has been.

“Do you want to tell someone?” I eventually ask him. “Your family maybe, or Paul?”

Ben stares at me for a few seconds, not saying anything. “Nah, I kind of like that it’s our secret now,” he eventually says. “And hey, maybe it won’t matter anymore.”

I can hear the hope in his voice as he says this. The hope that I know we’re both feeling. Maybe this is all really over now. Maybe all of the things we went through; my shitty parents, the fight, Ben’s fall, maybe it was all to reach this point of being together. And now that we have, it’s done.

Smiling, I slide closer, pushing myself against Ben’s body. He rolls us over so he’s lying on top of me, and I reach up and hold his face in my hands. “Maybe it won’t,” I whisper.

Ben smiles. “Whether it does or it doesn’t, nothing’s going to change the way I feel about you, Evie,” he whispers, his hips moving against mine.

I arch up to meet him, my eyes closing as he moves inside me. “I love you, Ben,” I whisper in the darkness. “Thank you for today.”

And then he kisses me and today turns into tomorrow and I am still here.

With Ben.

23rd December 2005

Twenty-nine years old

“Thank you, Ms Brown,” the waiter says, handing back my credit card and the receipt to sign.

“Brown?” Rachel asks, glancing at me. “Since when has your last name been Brown?”

Shit
. I glance up at the waiter, who’s now looking from Rachel to me with a very confused look on his face. I imagine he’s wondering if this isn’t part of some credit card scam and I’m not really Evie Brown at all. I try smiling at him, as I frantically scribble my signature under the name I’ve had for the last year, leaving a generous tip in a bid to stop him asking any questions.

I should have known something like this would happen sooner or later. Even this time, when I didn’t leave, I still woke up with a different name and a new identity. All the cards in my wallet had changed and instead of Evie Jackson, I was now Evie Brown. It seems on my twenty-eighth birthday I did change after all, I just got to change into the life I’ve always wanted to have.

When the waiter leaves, I quickly stand, hoping Rachel will drop it.

“Evie?” she asks, letting me know she won’t. I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to explain this to her. It was bad enough when I suddenly reappeared in Ben’s life after being gone for four years.

As we walk out of the restaurant, I finally turn to look at her. “Yeah, Brown,” I say.

“I thought your last name was Wakefield?” she asks and I can see how confused she is.

There have actually been a few more since then, but I’m grateful she thinks Wakefield is the last one I had. It makes my explanation a bit easier. Smiling, I link my arm through hers. “It was,” I say. “But I changed it.”

“Why?” Rachel asks me as we head down the High Street to continue our Christmas shopping. We’re all spending Christmas together with Ben’s parents, in the town I once lived in with the worst parents I ever woke up with.

“You remember what those people were like?” I ask, glancing at her.

“Oh, shit,” Rachel says as it suddenly dawns on her.

The Wakefields’ were my parents, at least in that life they were. But to everyone except Ben, they were just my latest foster parents. And they were also pretty awful. Rachel saw what they did to me, the remnants of the bruise on my face that was the final straw for Ben. It was still pretty obvious when we’d sat around the table and asked his family if I could move in the night they came home from their holiday.

“Yeah,” I say, tugging her closer to let her know it’s okay. “I kinda didn’t want to be reminded of those people anymore.”

“I can totally understand that,” Rachel says, leading us into a gift store. “I’m sorry, Evie.”

“It’s okay,” I say to her, even if it isn’t entirely okay. Changing names and identities is not fun and even when I do find Ben and come home to him, it would be nice to just stay one Evie for once. To know what my last name is going to be instead of having to open my wallet to find out.

“How was shopping?” Ben asks as I carry my bags into our old room several hours later. “Did you buy me lots of presents?”

I smile at him as dump them in a pile by the corner. “It was good, but no looking through the bags, okay?”

“Maybe,” Ben says, smiling at me.

“Ben,” I warn, knowing he’ll be rummaging through them the minute my back is turned.

“What, baby?” he says, a huge grin on his face as he wraps his arms around my waist and tries to look over my shoulder.

“No looking,” I tell him, turning in his arms and putting my hands on his chest as I try to push him back towards the bed. “Or no sex.”

“What the fuck?” Ben says, his eyes back on me now. “No way, Evie, no fucking way.”

I grab him by the hips. “I knew that would get your attention.”

“No, that’s just not fair, baby,” he says, pouting. “And besides, like you could go without.”

I smile, as I press up on my toes and kiss his lips, knowing he’s right about that. “Well then, you’d better not be looking then, had you cheeky boy.”

“Tease,” Ben whispers, smiling back at me. “You’re lucky I love you, Evie Brown, really fucking lucky.” Ben’s words remind me of what almost happened at lunch today and it must show, because he tilts his head at me as he asks, “What?”

“I had a close call with Rachel today,” I say, glancing over at the still open bedroom door. I think everyone is downstairs, so hopefully they won’t hear this. “When we were at lunch.”

The smile disappears from Ben’s face. “Why, what happened?”

The sound of footsteps on the stairs stops me from talking, as I see Ben’s dad appear on the landing. Turning back to Ben, I say, “Wanna go for a walk?”

“Sure,” he says immediately. We grab our jackets, scarves and gloves and head downstairs. “Ma, we’re just heading down the pub for a drink, we’ll be back in an hour or so,” Ben calls out as we head out the front door.

Nobody asks to join us thankfully, and I guess they figure Ben and I are going out for some alone time because we’ve been apart all day and we’re sappy like that.

As we head out, into the darkening afternoon, Ben wraps his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close as I wrap mine around his waist. It’s stopped snowing, but the ground is still covered in white. It looks beautiful though, like we’re in for a white Christmas.

“So, you want to tell me what happened?” Ben eventually asks.

“It was at lunch,” I say. “When I paid with my credit card. The waiter thanked me, called me Ms Brown. Rachel wondered why he said that, why my last name wasn’t Wakefield anymore.”

“Shit, I’ve always wondered if something like this was ever going to happen,” Ben says, squeezing my shoulder. “What did you say to her?”

I glance up at him. “I told her I changed my name, that I didn’t want to be a Wakefield anymore because of what had happened.”

I feel Ben’s lips as he presses a kiss against my temple. He always gets funny whenever these parents come up. I still don’t think he’s forgiven himself for what he thinks was his fault, everything that happened to me when I was still living with them.

“I think she sort of felt bad because of what she knew about that time, and then she dropped it,” I continue, my head resting against Ben’s shoulder now. “But yeah, it was weird and I’m not sure I could get away with it again, especially when my name changes next time.”

“No,” he says quietly and when I glance up at him, I can see him staring straight ahead.

“It’s annoying,” I add on, trying to get him away from thinking about that life. “Even not disappearing this time, I still changed names, it’s like I still changed, even though I didn’t leave.”

Ben exhales. “You don’t ever change, baby,” he says, pulling me closer as he looks at me again.

“Yeah I do, Ben,” I say, a little frustrated. “Every four years I become a different Evie. I can’t ever be the same one and it pisses me off, trying to hide whatever person I suddenly turn into. I just wish I could be one Evie.”

Ben pulls me away from the pub now as we cross over the road and keep walking. The early evening is cool, but I feel warm, wrapped against his body. “You are,” he says simply. “You’re my Evie.”

“Yeah, but which one is that,” I say, my fingers tightening at his hip. “I mean I’m disappearing Evie, I’m strange Evie, I’m Evie who can’t stay in one place longer than four years.”

“Yes you can, you do actually.”

“No, Ben, I really don’t.”

Ben stops walking now as he turns to face me, grabbing my face in his hands and holding my cheeks so I’m forced to look at him. “Yes, you do, Evie. You might not think you ever stay anywhere, but I’m telling you, you do. You’ve actually been here,” he says, taking my hand and placing it on his chest, over his heart. “You’ve been here for the last twenty-five years, baby.”

I smile, my heart melting a little at his words. “You are such a softie,” I whisper, pressing up on my toes to give him a kiss.

Ben grins at me in that cheeky way of his that tells me he knows he is, but he also knows I love it too. He’s right, I totally do. There isn’t a single thing I don’t love about this man.

“I love all of my Evies, baby. Evie Roberts, Evie Sutherland, Evie Smith, Evie Wakefield, Evie Jackson, Evie Brown …all of you,” he says now.

“Yeah,” I say, exhaling loudly. “I know you do, Ben. It’s just, well it would be nice to be one Evie, you know? The same one, every single time.”

“You can be, baby,” he says so softly, I almost miss it.

“How?” I ask. My hand is still on Ben’s chest as I stare up at him. “How can I possibly be the same Evie all the time?”

Ben steps closer, so his body is almost touching mine. His hands move back to my cheeks now as he leans in and gently kisses me. “Be Evie Foster,” he says, his eyes staring in to mine.

I’m suddenly laughing at Ben’s words, not because of what he’s suggesting, but because I can’t believe he’s actually found a way to make me be just one Evie. That he’s found a way, which is so simple but so goddamn fucking perfect at the same time.

His fingers stroke my cheeks, as he smiles down at me. “You think it’s funny?” he asks, but I know he understands why I’m laughing.

“No,” I say shaking my head. “I don’t think it’s funny at all. I think it’s perfect, Ben.”

Ben’s grin gets even bigger. “Yeah it kind of is, isn’t it?”

I nod. “No, it
really
is.”

“So?” he says, wriggling his eyebrows at me.

I smile, knowing exactly what he’s suggesting, but asking anyway. “Just to clarify,” I say. “You are asking me to marry you, right?”

Now Ben’s laughing, his hands, sliding from my cheeks to the back of my neck before he pulls me in for a deep kiss that leaves both of us breathless. As he pulls back, his eyes look at me with so much love; it’s impossible for me not to fall just a little bit further in love with this guy. “I certainly am, Eva. So what do you say, you wanna marry me?” he asks, still smiling.

I bite my lip as I pretend to think about my answer. Ben shakes his head at me, before leaning down to press his lips to my cheek, my jaw, my neck and finally just below my ear. His breath is warm against my skin, his lips softly trailing the lightest of kisses. He’s doing that seducing thing of his again, even though he totally doesn’t need to work his magic on me this time. Or ever really.

“Baby, I’m still waiting for my answer here,” he whispers, his lips at my ear now.

With a fist in the front of his jacket, I pull him even closer so our bodies are pressed together. “Yes, Ben,” I breathe out. “You know I’ll marry you.”

“Good answer, Evie,” he whispers, his lips trailing back along my jaw.

“The only answer, Ben,” I whisper back.

Just as his mouth reaches my lips, I feel his smile against them, hear him murmur, “I’m definitely gonna get sex for this, right?”

And I’m smiling at his words and about to answer him when my mouth is covered by his. My fingers still grip Ben’s jacket and his arms wrap around me now, holding me against him. He’s kissing me deeply, intensely, and passionately, taking all of my breath away as I push up on my toes and kiss him back.

Ben’s kiss is telling me how much he loves me, wants me, needs me and I know mine is saying all of these things back to him. I don’t know how long we stand in the snow like this and it’s not until afterwards that I realise, we have somehow found our way back to this spot. The exact spot where Ben asked me to be his girlfriend, for the second time anyway, fourteen years ago.

Only this time he’s asked me to be his wife.