Lost and Found

Hi all! This is the first chapter of a new series titled "Lost and Found," which will follow the relationship between Lila (now 20 years old) and Cameron (now 38) that began in my series "Becoming His." This series takes place about two years after the events of "Becoming His." I've written it so that you can read it on its own, but if you're interested in reading the past that these characters share, here is a link to the

Series Page

for "Becoming His."

This story features an age gap relationship and a BDSM dynamic between the two main characters, and is told from Lila's point-of-view. The first few chapters will be set-up focused without too many sexy bits, but the heat level will ramp up from there. I will try to give a fair idea of the content of each chapter in the opening blurb of each one.

For anyone who might wonder, some locations referenced are real locations that I'm familiar with; others are fictional.

I hope that you will enjoy reading this chapter!

***

Across the table from Lila, Tori had begun to page frantically through her day planner, which never meant anything good. They were sitting down among the stacks at Tisch Library at Tufts, and Tori was being too loud for comfort. Lila, for her part, had just come off a shift at the reception desk on the first floor.

"No, it can't be! It can't

be

!" Tori exclaimed, rifling through the pages once more. "I triple-checked, to no avail! God, I feel the like old Tori! It's been a long time since I've felt this way. This is a big problem, Lila. But it's not even my fault! There was no preventing it."

"If you tell me what the problem is, I might be able to help," Lila said softly, with a glance over her shoulder at the library assistant who had just peered down the aisle toward them, clearly in pursuit of whatever noise was currently violating the sanctity of the stacks. Hopping up, Lila caught Tori's arm and pulled her to her feet, gathering half the books that lay spread across the table.

"On second thought, this is a discussion for outside," she said, leading the way.

They went out the side entrance and spilled onto the path that wound along the hillside. Tori quickly broke from it and made for their favorite tree, a newly-budding oak. They settled in among the roots. It was the beginning of May, and spring had been warm so far that year, and that day was possibly the most beautiful one yet. Birds sang among the boughs above their heads, and fat white clouds floated on wings across an otherwise-unbroken blue sky.

Despite all this, Tori was worked up about something, and that, as Lila had already noted to herself, was never a good sign. Beneath the dappled shade she laid it all out to Lila.

"See, I was going to tell you..." She lay back against the roots, regarding Lila through tired, half-lidded eyes. "I was going to tell you soon, I swear! But I landed a meeting with a guy at Schar and Elmhurst."

"At my stepfather's company?" Lila asked, her eyes widening.

"Yeah, at Robert's company. Schar and Elmhurst."

"Tori, that's not just my stepfather's company, that's -- "

"Your long-lost ex-paramour's, I know, I know. So I was going to tell you soon, because it's the middle of finals and I didn't want to work you up about it. My advisor knows this guy who works there, Jake Finnegan -- "

"That's Robert's boss," Lila said flatly.

Tori's eyes bugged out.

"Robert's boss?

Really

? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Anyway, go on," Lila said.

She stroked a long tendril of grass up and down, fighting the rush of emotions rising in her throat. It was the same whirlwind that consumed her any time she thought about Schar and Elmhurst, or about anything at all that reminded her of the older man with whom she'd shared a month-long love affair almost two years ago, on the heels of her graduation from high school. For a moment, she felt like she was drowning. Then she blinked, and she was back on the hillside, rooted to the spot.

"

Anyway

, to make a long story short, he was able to land me a meeting with this Mr. Finnegan, your stepfather's boss. To pursue financing options for our product!" squealed Tori.

"

Your

product," Lila said pointedly. "All I've done are a few sketches for the proposal."

"Our product. Yours will be the first name on the board after mine," said Tori, leaning over and knocking Lila a kiss on the cheek. "And if you do me one really big solid, I might give you co-founder."

"Oh, boy," Lila muttered, rolling her eyes to heaven. "Here it comes. So, Tori, whatever has gotten your panties in a knot?"

"A very good reason!" Tori said. "You see, I scheduled the meeting for May 12, since it's the last day of the finals block and I knew my last test was on the 9th -- that would give me three days to prepare. Only... Blasted Professor Anderson had a family emergency, and he isn't going to be back until the 11th, and he's holding our final on the 12th, non-negotiable. That might be okay, but his non-negotiable final time starts a half hour after my meeting with Mr. Finnegan is meant to begin. There's no way I can make both!"

"Reschedule the meeting?" Lila asked.

But Tori had already turned her large, supplicating blue eyes toward Lila.

"You don't have any finals on the 12th, do you?" she asked softly. "I would reschedule if I could, but you know the schedules of successful financiers. Immovable objects, just like this final of mine."

"Oh, God, Tori, no. But also

no

." Lila's heart began to pound. Panic swelled again. The feeling of drowning returned, stronger than before. "I can't go there. I can't meet with Jake. It's a conflict of interest, first of all. I know him from family parties and all that jazz. Secondarily, if I go to the Boston headquarters of Schar and Elmhurst, there's a possibility I'll bump into -- "

She fell abruptly silent.

"Cameron Winthrop," Tori finished for her, with a little laugh. "Jesus Lila. It's been two years. You'd think you'd be able to say the man's name if you were over him. You'd also think you'd give some of your other admirers the time of day. Jonas Keaton's been patiently waiting since before freshman year. He drives over here from Harvard at least twice a week to come visit you. And what has he gotten for it?"

"Nothing," Lila muttered. "And he isn't going to get anything, because I don't like him like that." She raised her eyes. "But I

am

over Cameron! There, see I said his name."

"Yeah, and you're blushing," Tori pointed out.

It was true. A hot flush had crept across her cheeks. She ducked her head again. She didn't want to think about Cameron, or about any of the things that had happened between them. Being over the man himself was one thing -- being over what had happened, that was another. Sometimes she lay in bed at night thinking that it was going to take her a lifetime to get over those things, and that by the time she woke up at ninety feeling ready, she'd be about ready to drop dead. And when it came to the other men she'd considered, Jonas Keaton and boys she had met in classes or at the gym, she had found each and every one wanting.

"Oh, I know," Tori said with a roll of her blue eyes. "It's the hard-knock life for you. A billionaire sweeps you off your feet at eighteen into a passionate love affair that crashes and burns a month later. And that's your first experience with romance. Tough, I guess. Only... You ended it with him, Lila! Not the other way around!"

"Yeah. Gee, thanks," Lila said. She raised her eyes. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. Why don't you just say what it is you want me to do?"

"Attend the meeting with Jake Finnegan, of course. In no world would you be taking my final for me." Tori tossed her hair and fixed Lila with a serious blue gaze. "This means a lot to me. I mean, this is

everything

. If we win Jake over, we get the financing team at Schar and Elmhurst on our side, and that means that there's a good chance our product could hit drugstore shelves by the time we graduate."

"Your product," Lila corrected again. She let out a long sigh, air hissing between her teeth. "All right, fine. Only for you, Tori, and mostly because I know you won't give it a rest until I say yes."

"Thank God! You made it easy for me!" Tori said with a squeal of unrestrained joy. She jumped to her feet, pulling Lila up with her. "Let's walk back to the apartment."

At that, Lila smiled to herself. All semester they had scrimped and saved, Tori at her under-the-table job as a cocktail waitress, Lila in her much more reputable position at the campus library. At last they had enough to afford rent for the summer, and they'd hunted down an available apartment. Tori's father had provided a co-signature, and that had allayed any fears their new landlord had harbored. Honestly, his fears had seemed pretty allayed by the miniskirt and revealing top Tori had worn to their initial meeting. She was one persuasive girl, and that was all Lila could say. She knew how to pull on people's strings, one way or another. Really, Lila was endlessly proud of how well her wild child friend had turned out. One hard-fought semester at NYU had paved her way here to the hill at Tufts, and since then she'd been the epitome of focus and ambition, working tirelessly on her beauty concept for over a year.

Now it seemed things might be coming to fruition, except that the fate of the product had fallen on Lila's much-less-capable shoulders. She heaved a sigh as they turned down the tree-lined street only a few blocks from campus on which their apartment was situated. They had one half of a small two-family home.

"You're quiet," Tori said. "Are you still thinking about him?"

"No, actually," said Lila, glancing over at her friend. "I was thinking about how glad I am I don't have to live at home this summer."

"Ha, the look on Robert's face when you told him," Tori said, triumphant. "It's a smack in the face, when they live right across town. Lets them know how badly you want to stay away."

"Well, I still drop by often enough." Lila swept her hair out of her eyes. They mounted the steps, and Tori unlocked their door with her key. In they went. They had just cleaned out their dorm room and moved in the previous week, right before the start of May, and the place was still sparsely furnished. But they had bold decorating ambitions. It was their hope to renew their lease through the next school year, and possibly beyond.

"So I shouldn't give Jonas our new address?" Tori asked momentarily.

"No, please no. He'll drop by at odd hours. Or send presents. You know how he is."

"He's

pining

after you, Lila. After you and Cameron -- Well, he just thought he'd be next in line."

"There isn't a line. There shouldn't be a line," Lila said. She stepped into her bedroom and glared at Tori from the doorway. "Leave me alone for a few hours, will you? I need some rest. I have to meet with my stepfather's boss in a week about your product, so I better start steeling myself now."

"Yeah. About that. We'd better go over some of the essentials tonight, so you'll have them down by next Friday." Tori slapped her books down on the dining room table, a larger furniture object they'd thankfully found on the curb. "I'm gonna look on Wayfair for some chairs. Want to help?"

"No, I trust your impeccable taste."

Lila shut her bedroom door. Inside, she leaned against the wall, slowly slipping down to the floor. The room was bright, sunlight splashed across the floor. It was one of the things she'd loved about the property when they'd toured, the abundance of natural light. She'd already set up her easel in the corner and laid out her present work, a triptych of paintings in black and white. Summer was now the only time she had to fully relax into the comforting embrace of paint and canvas. She'd quickly found that successfully pursuing a psychology degree, while not difficult, made it difficult to juggle a full-time art schedule. She'd planned to take enough art classes junior and senior year to scrape together a minor. That was something, but she would have been lying to herself if she'd said it was enough.

Sometimes she wondered whether her father would have been proud of her. Other times, against her own will, she wondered whether

Cameron

would have been proud of her. Or whether he

was

proud of her. With a sigh she dropped onto the edge of the fold-up cot she'd been sleeping on for the past week. Oh, Cameron. It had been over a year now since she'd seen him last, at Schar and Elmhurst's annual Christmas party.

Two years ago, it had started with driving: his offer to teach her how to drive. The summer after things had fallen apart, she'd worked nonstop with Tori to learn on her own, and in the fall she'd passed her driving test. All this without him. At some point he'd learned about her plans to start at Tufts earlier than expected (or at all, for that matter), and she'd wondered about his reaction. Had it surprised him? Did he approve? Suffer from some kind of secondhand regret on her behalf?

In the short time they'd seen each other, he'd been so supportive of her art. She'd taken a few lessons with Ed Krueger, his friend and the owner of a prominent Boston art gallery where her own father had once worked, but the lessons and meetings had tapered in frequency until she only spoke with Ed every few months by phone, and visited the gallery less, usually in the company of friends. She hated being unable to form the kind of relationship with him that she'd wanted. She

did

need a mentor. But being around him and his gallery reminded her of Cameron, and she couldn't have that.

All the same, she had a sinking feeling that in her pursuit of leaving this man to memory, she was slowly building walls around herself, closing herself into a fragile shell and closing herself out of the world around her. She lay back on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Frustration mounted inside her. She had worked so hard to banish this man from her life, her thoughts, her memories. But it was impossible. Too many things reminded her of him. She couldn't give up on her art. She couldn't avoid going into the city from time to time. She couldn't turn down invitations to baseball games at Fenway just because Fenway happened to be reasonably near his Boston apartment.

If only there had been a period of a few months that she could go without thinking about him at all. Some kind of buffer zone, an unremitted space between them. The closest she had came had been the first few months of her first semester at Tufts. But then spring had come, glorious in its flowering, and it had swept her off her feet and back, metaphorically, into his arms. Only one year before, she had embarked on a journey of first love.

But it hadn't been love. She pushed back on that. It couldn't have been love. She hadn't known the man long enough to love him. She'd known almost nothing about him. And he was so much older than her. She wished she could condemn him, either for the seduction he'd mounted or for the things he'd done to her. How had he put it?

Debauched

. She'd been debauched by him. No one knew what they had done together in the dark. Not even Tori, to whom she told everything. But

she

knew, and that was plenty.

The worst of it, perhaps, was that she couldn't even bring herself to feel ashamed. It would have been an adequate defense against him, but she couldn't find it inside herself. She'd done it all willingly. And she'd enjoyed it, every second of the debauchery.

She let her arms flop down by her sides, exhaling all the air from her chest. She lay there and wondered what he would think of her now. The answer to that question would answer many more, after all. Would he look at her the same way? Would she be as special? She was twenty now, and much more strongly-girded against the world than she had been at eighteen. Gone was the naive flower of a girl he'd swept off her feet. She was a hundred and fifteen pounds now, not ninety-five, petite but with curves in all the right places, exactly as he'd predicted for her. She gritted her teeth. She was halfway through college. She was living on her own, really on her own, for the first time this summer. She wasn't a child anymore.

Tori's voice pressed through her bedroom door. Yes, of course there was Tori.

"I found a couple twin beds that look okay! But I was thinking that we splurge on queens. We

are

queens, after all, and we need to have at least one decent-sized bed in this place. Otherwise, what will happen when you and Jonas -- "

"That's enough!" Lila sprang to her feet and wrenched the door open. "You need to stop with all the Jonas nonsense. It's seriously preventing me from looking beyond him at anyone else."

"Okay, fine." Tori grinned at her. She'd pulled her hair back with a claw clip. "How about ordering some Chinese? I'm craving Peking ravioli. We can hit the gym in the morning as penance. But right now, Peking ravioli. And scallion pancakes. All the goods. Hey, has Emily texted you?"

"No, I mean, we're still not exactly on speaking terms." Lila winced, following her best friend out of the doorway and into the living room, where she flopped down on the couch -- another roadside find, and a crappy one at that. But it wasn't infested and didn't stink, and those were the bare minimum requirements. Besides it, the room was empty. "I don't know. Life happens. People drift apart. And together. You and I are a lot closer than we used to be. She probably noticed that."

"It just doesn't seem right. We were a happy trio."

"Yeah, but she can't exactly be part of a happy trio when she goes to Amherst and we're here." Lila pulled out her phone and started composing the Chinese order. "Honestly, Tori, it's okay. I'm over it. I'm sure we'll see her at least once this summer. Probably with mutuals."

"Speaking of mutuals..." Tori's eyes had lit up. "I'm inviting everyone to this housewarming party."

"My God, you'd think we actually bought a house."

"It's a great way to get free stuff! Come on, Lila, don't you want to have fun? Blow off some steam? It'll be Saturday."

Lila shook her head.

"No can do. I told my mom I'd go to the soup kitchen with her."

"You're still volunteering at that place? Fine, then Sunday afternoon. After the end of term. And after we secure financing for our product!" Tori waved her hands in the air. "A double victory! I'll invite Em, she'll probably be back home by then. It'll be up to her whether she shows up."

"Okay, but you don't have to try to broker a friendship between us."

"I just feel

responsible

," Tori said. She lay her hand on top of Lila's. "I know she got jealous when she found out we were rooming together freshman year, and then about the business, and that we stayed roommates this year. Though it is her fault that she was away most of last summer, when the two of you could have been hitting the town together. Where did she go again? Cambodia?"

"Thailand. She was volunteering. It was for a good cause," Lila said, glaring at Tori. "Yeah. Invite her. But don't expect fireworks. I'm not exactly thrilled about the way she decided to treat me. Or you, for that matter. Don't you remember how much you two used to argue? And that one time she called you a slut?"

"Those few times, you mean," Tori said with a wince. "Yeah, well, not everyone's a sheltered child like her."

"Yes, which is why she and I are two totally different people who may as well go our separate ways."

"Fine, fine. I get your point. I won't invite her. If you want to see her, see her on your own terms," Tori said, throwing her hands up.

"Thanks," Lila said softly.

"You're welcome. Now where did we land on the matter of queen-sized beds?"