Found in Us (Lost 2)

Parker snaps me back to reality. "You want to tell me why your day has been so awful?"

He stares right at me, his blue eyes boring into mine, as if he's determined to crack open my darkest, oldest secrets.

I lower my eyes to my beer. "My bo... my boss isn't really pleased with my . . . umm . . . job performance."

In a split second, Parker isn't sitting on the chair in front of me anymore, but on the couch right next to me.

"Tell me what happened," he says. His voice is steady, even soft.

I suddenly feel ashamed. He's the CEO of a company, for God's sake. How should I tell him I got shouted at for not putting a decent report together?

As if reading my thoughts, he says, "I wasn't born a CEO, you know."

I smile. "Nothing major happened, really. He shouted at everyone in the office today, not just me. Guess he had a lot on his mind today. Though he was this short," I say, keeping my thumb and forefinger barely apart, "of having a severe case of blue balls. Literally. I wanted to hit him in the groin."

Parker lets out a sharp chuckle, and I relax a bit. He doesn't take his eyes off me, though. "If he's a jackass," he says, "you should consider quitting and finding a new workplace.”

I shake my head. "No way. I don't have a lot of savings, so I can't afford sitting on my ass while I find something else."

"I can help you with that. I know the directors of half the museums in London. I make donations to them on a regular basis. It would take a few days at most to find you something else."

"No, I want to do things on my own.” I want to feel that I'm worthy of something. That I'm not just a big, fat disappointment to everyone. I can imagine how the phone call to my parents would go if I told them I'd quit my job.

"It was just a suggestion, Jess. I don't want you to be miserable."

"Why are you so supportive? I remember you telling me once I should get my act together and be more responsible."

Parker's expression is unreadable. But I can see it in his eyes that he remembers that well. How could he not? After the fight that gave him a black eye and me a broken leg, he reminded me of how irresponsible I was.

That whole incident was more or less my wake-up call that I couldn't continue down the same path. My job search had been one of the only things I took seriously. I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else that I was capable of more than talking my way around entry lines to clubs or flirting my way to pretty much anything.

"And you did. You came here on your own. That's not an easy thing to do."

"Well, I need to work harder if I want to continue staying here. So I will. You don’t look too cheerful yourself.”

“What gave me away?” Parker asks.

“My radar is on today. Being a CEO isn’t what they make it out to be?”

“No,” he says. “Being the CEO of this particular company isn’t.”

“So why are you doing it?”

“Because I have to.” Looking up at me with a sad smile, he adds, “I don’t really want to go into detail about this right now.”

“Okay.” I shift closer to him, and his scent seduces me. “But you told me once that the only things we absolutely have to do are the ones we can’t live without. That we owe it to ourselves to do those things, but nothing else.”

Parker’s voice seems to have dropped an octave when he replies. “You remember that?”

“Yeah.” As if I could forget it. While I was confined to my apartment in California with my leg injury, I had a particularly unpleasant conversation with my father on the phone. He reminded me—again—that my choice of major would set me up for a lifetime of low pay. I usually brushed off his comments, but I let doubts get the better of me then. Parker visited me shortly afterward, and I brought the issue up with him, though I didn’t explicitly mention my dad. Parker’s response helped me shake off any doubts.

“Well, let’s just say, if I don’t do this, I won’t be able to live with myself,” he says. “Now, let’s not make this about me. It’s about you.”

“I don’t want to think about today.”

He takes my hands in his in a gesture so tender I cannot help remembering what happened between us last night.

"Then don’t. What you need is a change of scenery. Let's go away for the weekend," he says in a low voice. "A cousin invited me to her estate in Worcester. Dani has agreed to come, too. "