Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Consequences
In fact, I don’t think I sleep at all.
My brain never shuts up, and whenever I think I’m drifting off, I startle awake with a nightmare of Luke pushing me into the lake, where I sink underwater until I can’t breathe. It feels oddly accurate to my suffocating situation.
Luke, the fucker, fell asleep almost immediately after he climbed into bed a few hours ago.
The tent’s been filled with the sound of his snoring ever since, only adding to my restlessness.
I guess he couldn’t be gifted with ethereal beauty and raw talent without having some kind of fault, and this was how the universe decided to keep the balance. Lucky me.
No amount of rationalization makes this make sense.
Even with time and distance from that beach, I know what I saw.
It wasn’t simply a matter of impaired judgment tricking me into believing it was real.
Although, at this point, it doesn’t matter if it was real or not.
In the end, Luke made his feelings clear, and I got what I wanted.
The answer to the question that’s plagued me for the last couple of weeks—whether or not Luke would be interested in me.
He isn’t. He drew a firm line in the sand, and I have to face the reality that I crossed that line.
I misread the situation and acted rashly—selfishly, even—messing everything up because of it.
I made a mistake, plain and simple.
It’s better to think that than to welcome the thoughts currently clawing at the back of my brain, trying to take over.
The ones telling me that I’m an undesirable fuckup and there’s no way in hell Luke would ever be interested in me because I’m unworthy of love.
Even though I know it’s a lie, intellectually, it would be so easy to give in and believe it.
Thankfully, I’ve come a long way since I was nineteen when those thoughts would have consumed my entire soul until I was a barely functioning mess on the floor.
Years of constantly working on my mental health have made it so I can passively acknowledge them without spiraling into the abyss of self-deprecation and despair.
Although, it seems I’ve got my work cut out for me tonight, keeping them at bay on top of everything else.
Eventually, my anger thins, giving way to a numb ache in my chest instead.
Things didn’t go according to plan, and there’s nothing to do now except live with the consequences, whatever they may be.
If Luke decides to stay angry and never talk to me again, that’s his choice.
I won’t spend the rest of the weekend resenting him for it.
I’ll just let it go and pretend it never happened.
At least it'll be easier keeping the space between us now that I know that's what he wants.
Just before dawn, Luke rolls over, jostling me awake from a light sleep. The distance between us suddenly disappears, and I freeze as he curls up along my back with a shiver.
Glancing over my shoulder, I see he’s still asleep. He probably doesn’t even realize what he’s done, unconsciously searching for something to ease the cold, and I’m the closest heat source.
I could be an asshole and shove him off. All it would take is a push, and it would make up a little for the way he’s treated me. But I don’t have it in me to be mean, even if some part of me thinks he deserves it. Instead, I listen to the way Luke sighs with relief against me, envying his peace.
It’s impossible to miss how my heart beats faster now that he’s touching me—how my whole body reacts to his presence with a warm, tingling sensation.
I know I shouldn’t want this. My brain is yelling at me to remove myself from the picture, to save myself from the heartache.
But how can I ignore it when a simple embrace has the power to unravel me like this?
I can’t get enough of it, even though it’s killing me.
It’s not genuine affection since Luke’s not even aware he’s doing it, but I can’t deny him all the same, even if it’s to my detriment.
His touch is like a drug, and apparently, I’m just a hopeless addict.
Luke might not want me, but right now, I can serve a purpose for him, and I’m content to let him use me. Evidently, I don’t have enough self-respect to be upset by that fact.
Surprisingly, though, after a few minutes of lying with him pressed against my back, I finally feel my body ease into a more relaxed state, and I’m able to drift off to a dreamless sleep.
When I open my eyes again, it’s around 7:30. The sun is barely up over the horizon, but it’s shining into the tent, and my body slowly wakes, despite my exhaustion.
It only takes two seconds to notice that Luke and I are folded together in a mess of limbs like an origami masterpiece, and my heart aches.
I never would have guessed that the man was such a nighttime cuddler, clearly lacking any sense of boundaries in his unconscious state.
If only I’d found that out under better circumstances.
As I contemplate all the places our bodies meet, I have to remind myself that this isn’t real.
It’s a comedy of errors, and I’m the butt of the joke.
But I can’t say I don’t love the warm, peaceful sensation that accompanies waking up with the touch of another body on yours.
That kind of connection is seldom welcomed in any other context and would be even less accepted in this particular situation if Luke were truly aware of it.
His head is on my shoulder, with an arm draped across my chest. The sound of our slow, steady breathing forms a calming rhythm—the picture of serenity.
I could easily fall asleep again if I’m not careful.
It would be so simple to settle in and drift off, like this was the actual outcome from last night.
The problem is that it feels strangely right, like this is how we’re meant to be. I know that’s wrong, and I’m leery of whatever Luke's reaction might be to finding us like this, even though it’s not my fault he can’t keep himself to himself.
So, after allowing myself another moment of tortured bliss, I carefully peel my body out from under his grasp, moving slowly so I don’t wake him up. He hardly stirs with the movement, sighing as he settles again on the bed, never even opening his eyes.
A thick lock of golden hair falls over his forehead.
The urge to reach over and brush it out of his eyes is more potent than any notion of self-preservation I should have, so I don’t even try to stop myself.
Luke’s brow furrows with my touch, and he lets out a small sound, almost like a soft moan, but he doesn’t wake.
Instead, he shivers like he’s cold now that I’m not there, curling in on himself a little more, trying to get warm.
It pulls at my heart in more ways than I can fully comprehend, but I have to remind myself that he doesn’t want me there. Not really.
Still, I carefully pull the blankets over him so that he’s fully covered and watch as his face softens. I could sit here and watch him sleep all day, but the time to observe Luke like this has passed, and if I don’t respect that, I genuinely am a creep.
Moving over to my bag, I search for one of the books I packed, even though I had heavily debated whether or not I’d need them this weekend. I didn’t think I’d require the distraction, though I didn’t expect to have the blow-up of the century, either. Now I’m glad I listened to my better judgment.
As quietly as possible, I unzip the tent and go outside, shivering slightly in the crisp morning air.
Dragging a camp chair to sit in a sunbeam, I open my book.
At first, it’s hard to settle into it, but my concentration is eventually sucked into the fictional world and transported away from the real-world problems I’m trying to avoid.
For a little while, I can forget my own life and fully immerse myself in theirs.
Sometime later, a hand taps my shoulder, scaring the shit out of me.
I snap back to reality to find Marcus standing at my side, watching me closely.
I blink with confusion. How long has he been there?
Tiff is almost done building a fire across from me, and I never heard any of it. She’s only a few feet away.
Marcus frowns. “Damn, you were zoned out. I haven’t seen you do that in a while.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, rubbing at my eyes, which I now realize are also stinging. Reading almost two hundred pages for a couple of hours straight will do that to you. “It’s a good book.”
“Apparently.”
I sense Marcus studying me, but I shrug it off.
“Did you sleep okay?” he asks, attempting to sound innocuous, but he can’t hide the concern from his voice.
I sigh. “Not really, but I’ll be fine.”
Marcus and Tiff share a pointed glance, and for some reason, it irritates me. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
“Did you and Luke get into a fight?” Tiff suddenly asks, her face full of sympathy.
My heart leaps in my chest, and my brows furrow. “No… Why?”
“We heard you guys arguing last night.”
Fuck. It’s not like I forgot we weren’t alone out here, but it was so late at night that I assumed everyone was asleep.
I’m sure I wasn’t exactly quiet. I just never stopped to think that we might have had an audience for our little scene.
I wrack my brain for whatever the hell I may have said, but I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t anything too revealing, at least not about what happened on the beach.
To them, the fight could have been about anything.
I’m not ready to have this conversation, especially given the context and their lack thereof. Now isn’t the time to reveal my truth when I’m too raw from everything else.
“It’s fine.” I shrug, returning to my book.
I can feel their questioning stares beaming down on me, the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife. I know they’re dying to ask me what happened, but thankfully, they leave it there.