Find Her, Keep Her (CFTM Sequel)

Chapter 24 (Part 1)

*Note: Click the Youtube link above to listen to the Audiobook Version of this chapter voiced by Kristen ()featuring music by The Used, Tommy Lee (Ft. Andrew McMahon), and Andrew Belle.

Elias

Two minutes after Tanner's text comes in, it happens.

Panic steps up to the plate, drags its bat through the dust, and squares up to take me down.

I stare at my phone trying to figure out how this happened and when this happened, but I can't fucking think straight.

I can barely see straight. The whole damn world's out of focus aside from the black and white picture of me kissing Jersey.

I shut my eyes and try to remember the night. Bits and pieces flicker across my brain in fragments.

The warmth of Jersey's mouth on mine. The taste of cinnamon and moonshine on her lips.

The music.

The lights.

So many damn lights.

Too many.

Enough to mask camera flashes and hide the eyes and faces of people standing around us watching everything.

Photographing everything.

Ruining everything about a moment no one was supposed to see.

But now everyone's seen her.

My heart's beating a mile a minute, but every beat's shallow and aggressive. My pulse radiates through my chest, down my arms, and into my hands which are gripping the shit out of my phone. The screen pops and clicks till the glass cracks on both sides of the body, but I'm too pissed to care.

If breaking my phone was enough to undo what happened, I'd crush it to dust.

But I can't undo anything. Not last night. Not the kiss.

Not a single damn thing.

A second buzz pulls my attention back to my messages.

Tanner follows up his first text with a screenshot of locally trending topics on Twitter.

#WhoIsJersey is sitting near the top of the list burning it's way across the internet a tweet at a time.

My phone buzzes again, but I close my inbox before I read anything else that'll set me off.

I reach up and lock the screen like locking it will somehow stop the chaos on my phone from getting to Jersey, but it's too late.

Her eyes are still stuck on the tiny black square in my hands while she breathes into the silence.

I loosen my jaw to say something to her, to try to figure out the right words to make some part of this situation okay, but my muscles won't move. My mouth tightens up like a vice grip, and all my explanations and "I'm sorrys" suffocate somewhere in my throat.

I watch everything beautiful about Jersey's face fall apart a second at a time. The slight flush in her cheeks catches fire while the light her eyes fades to black. I look for her telltale smile, the one she puts on whenever she's more sure of things than I am, but her lips stay still.

I wanna tell her that I can fix this. That I can figure out a way to "reset" this moment and make it so it never happened. But I don't know what to do.