Chapter 46 #2
“That night, when you texted me that you wanted to talk,” Luke continues, a deep frown across his brow.
“I almost ignored you again. I stared at that message for over an hour, debating whether or not responding would just fuck up your life more than not. What would have happened if I’d followed through? ”
“When you did text me back, I was at the bar with the guys trying to figure out ways I could win you back. It was not a pretty picture. I even wrote a bunch of horrible sonnets on a napkin, hoping they’d impress you.
Thankfully, the evidence was destroyed….
” The poor napkin was so drenched in blood that it wasn’t salvageable. “But I never gave up on us.”
Luke gives me a small smile, but it’s laced with sorrow. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I’m sorry for putting you through all that.”
I sigh, looking away. Would it have been easier to avoid all of this?
Absolutely. Do I regret any moment of it?
No. Not when I know what the alternatives could have been.
I can feel how this is still weighing on him, even though it feels like it’s ancient history to me.
All of it became irrelevant the moment I thought I’d lost him forever.
“Are we going to be okay, though?” I ask, studying him closely.
“Do you want us to be?” Luke replies cautiously, hesitantly. Like he thinks I could honestly tell him no.
“Of course I do. There’s no question. At least not for me.”
“Oh, thank god. Because I was ready to get on my knees and beg you to take me back,” Luke laughs, the worry fading from his face.
Then he goes pensive again. “I had this whole plan and everything. When I asked you to come over, I didn’t know what was happening between my mom and Pete in the dining room.
I couldn’t have cared less about their fighting anymore. But then I heard a gunshot….”
My brain fills in the rest, the picture of that night seared in my memory like a cattle brand, and I flinch. It doesn’t go past Luke’s notice.
I clear my throat, banishing the unpleasant thoughts. “You wouldn’t have needed to beg.”
Luke grips my hand in his, squeezing it tightly.
“I feel like I still need to beg.” He looks at me sincerely, like he knows how much stress and anxiety this whole ordeal has put me through, and he can’t atone enough for being part of the source.
It’s almost too difficult to look him in the eye. Still, I put on a smile.
“If that’s what you get off on, I guess,” I tease.
Luke laughs, his cheeks flushing. “Fuck, it’s incredibly difficult to be serious and apologize to you when you won’t stop looking at me like that.”
I quirk a brow. “Like what?”
“Like you love me.”
I smile, leaning forward, and I clasp Luke’s hand between mine, leaving a delicate kiss across the backs of his knuckles. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Did you really fall in love with me that quickly?” Luke shakes his head in disbelief.
“I was infatuated with you from the beginning. No one had ever piqued my interest like you did. I’d never felt those feelings quite so vividly before, either. It scared the shit out of me with how fast it happened, but I knew for a while.”
Luke smiles at me, and I could forget how to breathe all over again.
“What about you?” I ask. “Mr. ‘I said it first.’”
“Honestly?” he muses, thinking back. “It was the garbage spaghetti.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.” Luke chuckles. “That day, when you didn’t come to work, I was absolutely miserable without you.
It was the first time I had a conscious thought that life was unbearable without you in it.
When I came to check on you and found you in that awful headspace, something in me just took over.
Like this possessive need to be there for you.
And even though my cooking was a disaster, the fact that you still ate it was the end for me. That whole thing really solidified it.”
“Glad to know my poor mental health brought about something good.”
Luke laughs. “I can’t even begin to explain why that was the moment for me, but it was.”
“Why didn’t you say anything after you figured it out?”
“Are you kidding?” Luke scoffs. “I felt like that was too soon for me to even be feeling those things. In no reality of mine was there a chance you’d have already fallen for me, and I wasn’t about to scare you away with that so soon.”
“Meanwhile, I was so in love with you that I bought a house before I’d even had the courage to say the words.” I swallow hard. “That didn’t go as I’d planned. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the money or ask you about the house first.”
“I don’t care about the money, Ethan,” Luke says seriously. “I mean it. You could lose it all tomorrow, and it wouldn’t change anything.”
“You’re not mad?” I frown.
Luke purses his lips slightly before he grins. “I mean—” he drags the word out. “I know I may have been mad at the time, but like…I’m not mad mad about it.”
“Oh, no?” I shoot him a steely glare, arching a single brow. “Because I couldn’t possibly keep the house knowing how upset you were. I’ll turn around and sell it if it’ll make it right.”
“Let’s not be too hasty,” Luke adds quickly. “Some words may have been thrown out in anger that I’d now like to officially retract.”
I smile, rolling my eyes. “So, what you’re telling me is that you’re happy I bought it?”
“Emphatically, yes.” Luke laughs. His whole face lights up. “Ethan, you bought a house in New York City. You. Who hates cities! You stepped outside your comfort zone to go there with me when I was at my lowest point even though you were so uncomfortable.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I grumble. “Mostly because I was there with you.”
“And I’d be an idiot not to see how stupidly sweet that is.”
“You’re okay with moving in together, then?” I ask, all of my hopes and dreams for the future tied to the simple question. “Another thing I probably should have asked first….”
Luke smiles that adorable half-smile, sending a shiver down my spine. “I’m beyond excited to move in with you.”
My heart soars with delight, but I arch a quizzical brow, my smile teasing. “And the fact that it’s literally your dream home has nothing to do with it?”
“Well. I mean.” Luke scoffs. “I’m not dead.”
It’s the wrong choice of words, even if it is meant as a joke, and I can’t contain the wince that takes over my face as it immediately brings up the uncomfortable images I haven’t been able to stop reliving since they happened.
This time, Luke clearly catches the involuntary reaction, and he frowns.
“You’re not okay, are you?” he asks softly. I blink up at him in surprise. “This really fucked you up.”
There’s that depth of sadness again in his eyes—the weight of the world put back on his shoulders like he’s taking on the full responsibility for causing me pain. It fills me with a disastrous need to do whatever it takes to wash it away. But he drops his gaze and won’t look at me.
“I’ll be okay.” I shake my head. “I just need time to process it. This triggered a lot of my PTSD from my dad, is all. But I’m okay.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I’ve done nothing but fuck up your life since I got here.”
“Luke,” I snap firmly, and he lifts his eyes back to my face.
He stares at me in shock at the command in my tone.
“You don’t get to decide how you’ve impacted my life.
Okay? My life was fucked up before you got here.
You made it astronomically better. I don’t care how much trauma I walk away with from this experience.
The fact that you’re alive is worth it.”
“Ethan….”
“No, I’m serious,” I say quickly. My voice shakes against my control.
I’m desperate for him to hear me—to believe me.
“Even if someone told me before we met that I’d have the happiest days of my life with you, but I’d have to go through this pain again to get to keep you, I still would have chosen this path.
I would choose you in every probability, every timeline, every universe. ”
Luke reaches for me, tears in his eyes. When I put my hand in his, he pulls me over until I sit on the edge of the bed next to him.
He puts his hand on my cheek, his fingers curled through my beard, and the sensation travels through every nerve ending in my whole body, sending spirals of warmth outward from his touch.
When he smiles, it feels like the break of spring after a harsh winter, thawing out the tension in my muscles.
“I love you,” he says—it’s the first time I’ve heard the words specifically in that order—the full proclamation—and it tears through me with the force of a rocket breaking the sound barrier.
I can’t help but shudder as the words ripple through me, and I smile at how beautiful they sound from his lips.
A garden blooms in my chest, the epitaph he’s marked my soul with for eternity.
He must be able to see how his words affect me—the power he has over my heart—because he smiles brightly, his whole face lighting up. He brushes his thumb over my jaw, and the touch eviscerates me and puts me back together like a never-ending cycle.
But then his expression falters slightly, a twinge of shadow over his sunny features.
“Still. I’m so sorry that I put you through any of this,” he says solemnly. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you if I have to.”
I shake my head. “As long as you have a life to spend, I’ll be happy.”
Luke pulls on my arm gently and gestures for me to lie down with him.
For a moment, I hesitate, shaking my head.
The nurses have been very sweet to let me stick around well beyond visiting hours every day up to this point, but I don’t think they’d appreciate me lying in bed with him, no matter how much I might want to.
There are rules about that kind of thing.
However, in typical Luke fashion, he tells me to do it anyway, and says he’ll fight anyone who thinks it’s a problem. His argument is very convincing.