Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
S erenity watched Luca out of the corner of her eye as he came back in with his meal. For a moment, she’d had a hit of extreme embarrassment that she’d bothered trying to make his favorite.
It had been years since they’d dated. How in the world could she still know his favorite? But Luca, in true Luca fashion, had smoothed it all over.
The spot on her cheek still tingled and Serenity knew her face was probably bright red, but she didn’t care. Her feet were still floating two feet above the ground, and she wasn’t going to let anything bring her down.
Luca groaned and slouched in his seat. “I haven’t had a roast in forever. This is amazing. Thank you.”
The heat in her skin jumped another ten degrees. “You’re welcome. I’m just glad you still like them.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Did you really doubt it? I don’t think people tend to change their comfort all that often.”
Serenity shrugged. “Maybe.” She took a bite of her own leftovers and chewed it slowly. As wonderful as things had been with Luca, new and wonderful, she had questions. But the timing on when to bring them up was difficult to figure out. Would it ruin their budding relationship if they talked about why he’d left? Why he cut her out?
Starting things on the right foot was important, but which one was right?
“So…” Luca cleared his throat, his focus on his food. “I, uh, figured you’d probably have some questions for me.”
Serenity jerked a little. “Do you read minds?”
He chuckled and glanced up from under his eyelashes. “No, but it’s written all over your face, not to mention, it just seems practical.” He took a deep breath. “I know there’s still some awkward stuff between us, and maybe it’s time to get it out of the way.”
Serenity pinched her lips between her teeth, then nodded. “I think I'd like that.”
He nodded. “Okay.” Sitting up straighter, he braced himself. “Where would you like to start?”
“Me? You want me to start?”
“I want you to tell me what you want to know.” He waved to his face. “I think some of my story is pretty obvious.”
Serenity settled her food in her lap. She swallowed, her stomach suddenly feeling jittery. For so many years, she’d wondered what had happened between them, and now Luca was offering her a completely open forum for finding out. Why did the offer feel so intimidating?
She took a deep breath. Then another.
Luca chuckled. “Okay, how about I do my best to talk, and you can interrupt when you’re ready?”
Serenity smiled. “I know things have changed between us, but somehow, you still know how to smooth things over. You’re still a problem solver.”
One side of Luca’s mouth pulled up in an adorably boyish grin. “You’re not far off from that yourself. Look at the neighborhood group you’re putting together.”
Serenity shrugged. “I suppose. But it’s never been easy for me. You, on the other hand, move along as if obstacles don’t exist.”
Luca’s shoulders fell. “As I talk, I think you’ll see it differently.”
Serenity nodded and put her food back in the bag. She didn’t have an appetite anymore.
Luca blew out a breath. “So…I got wounded.” He grunted. “My eye was irreparable, and as you can see, there was some burning down my neck.”
Serenity tried not to fidget. She hated the idea of him hurting. While the wounds were long healed, she still didn’t like the idea of him injured and bleeding.
“I was treated on site, as best as could be managed,” Luca continued, his gaze on the floor. “But when I was shipped home, as you know, my family decided not to bring me back to Lighthouse Bay.”
“I never understood why,” Serenity interrupted softly. “The twins told me about it, but no one would tell me why you weren’t coming here. Was it so bad that only Portland had the right medical facilities?”
Luca pursed his lips and nodded. “Sort of. They sent me to the hospital first. I recovered there, but it was the next facility, Northwest Veteran Rehab, that became my new home for the last several years.”
Serenity frowned. “What did you do there? By that point, you’d stopped talking to me and I—” She cut off, snapping her mouth shut when a sharp pain began to pulse in her chest. She hadn’t realized how much talking about that time would hurt.
The sweet kisses, the soft touches, all of it had been so wonderful the last couple of days, but now that they were discussing the past, all the pain and angst was coming back and the twitterpated feeling from a moment before was forgotten.
Luca reached out and grabbed her hand, gently pulling it toward him. Serenity hadn’t realized that she was rubbing a spot on her chest, the spot where the pain was originating from.
“I know,” he said, his tone soft and apologetic. “I know.” He brought her hand to both of his, gently massaging her palm. “I take full blame, Seri. It was my fault, and I know it. After all the time you wasted waiting on me and I?—”
“It wasn’t wasted.”
Luca’s head jerked up, his brows furrowed.
Serenity shook her head firmly. “I don’t regret waiting for you,” she rasped, her throat suddenly dry. “Our time together and our long distance relationship shaped a lot of pieces of me, matured me in new ways.” She curled her fingers around his hand. “I might hate what happened next, but I can’t regret that. Please, don’t say it was wasted.”
Luca stared and his eyebrows twitched several times, but finally he nodded. “Okay.” Clearing his throat, he went back to his story. “I still take responsibility,” he pressed. “I’m the one who cut things off between us, but…” His lips pinched together. “I wasn’t right in the head, Seri.”
Her vision blurred.
“I was hurt and angry, and the mirror made me look like a monster.” He barked a sharp laugh. “You all joke that I look like an assassin. You should have seen me when it was still healing. The blood, the bandages, the swelling.” Luca shook his head. “Today I might as well be a princess as compared to what I looked like then.”
Serenity blinked several times, but she couldn’t get her vision to clear. That spot in her sternum was pulsing again, and nausea fought to overcome her. “I wanted to be there,” she choked out. “I wanted to be by your side. I don’t care what you looked like, Luca. I wanted to be there.”
He looked up. Every line in his face was taut, and his eye was painfully narrowed. “Part of me wanted you there, as well,” he whispered hoarsely. “But the bigger part of me wanted you far away.” He slowly shook his head. “You deserved… deserve …much better than that. I couldn’t face you.”
The tears began to trickle over, and Serenity couldn’t stop her shoulders from starting to shake. She managed to swallow the sobs, but they were building dangerously in her throat, cutting off her air supply.
Closing his eyes briefly, Luca set the food in his lap on the floor and tugged on her hand. She didn’t bother to put up a fight. Slipping onto his lap, Serenity wrapped her arms around his neck and let go. Her body shook so hard, her teeth rattled, and she knew, in the back of her mind, that she was getting tears and snot on Luca’s t-shirt, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
It was so much worse than he thought. Luca rubbed his hand up and down Serenity’s back as it shuddered and quaked. He hadn’t just hurt Serenity, he’d broken her.
Luca knew exactly how that felt. He hated that he’d done it to Seri. His Seri. The one he’d planned to spend his whole life with and had built a future around.
How could she even consider letting her back into his life?
Luca closed his eyes and let his head hang forward as she sobbed in his arms. He would never take a choice like that away from her again. If she was going to let him back in, he would include her every step of the way. No more broken communication, no more choosing for the other, no more walking away when things weren’t pretty.
He would have to be all in. And he would be, as long as Serenity would let him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sitting upright and wiping at her face. “Ugh. I’m such a mess.”
Luca shook his head. “No. You’re beautiful.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes, but the small smile she couldn’t contain eased Luca’s guilt just the slightest bit. “I cried all over your shirt.”
He shrugged. “They’re absorbent.”
“There’s probably snot there too.”
Luca raised his eyebrows. “It’s washable.”
She laughed through her tears. “Do you have an answer for everything?”
He opened his mouth with a quick reply, but stopped. “No,” he said, his voice dropping unconsciously. “I don’t have an answer to how much I hurt you.”
The smile she’d been sporting fell. “And I don’t have an answer to how you were hurt either.” Her hand shook as it went to his eyepatch. “It hurts me to know that you were hurting…alone.”
Luca leaned into her touch. “I wasn’t completely alone,” he said. “There were doctors and nurses, and my family visited once in a while.”
Serenity shook her head. “That’s not enough.”
He gave her a tight smile. “It was what it was.”
Serenity dropped her head back, sighing before bringing her chin back down. “It is,” she agreed. “But I don’t have to like what happened even if I can’t change it.”
Luca nodded. “True.”
She twisted in his lap, searching the room. “Why don’t I ever keep tissues around?”
“Here.” Luca set her back in her chair, then walked to the bathroom in the back. The new toilet was in, and he was sure he’d find the supplies he needed.
Grabbing an entire roll, he brought it out front and offered it to Serenity.
“Thanks,” she said with a soft laugh, taking it and pulling some off to clean her face and blow her nose. “If Shiloh could see me now.”
“She’d agree with me,” Luca said.
Serenity looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “You know…she probably would. Either that or she’d declare that looking ugly was my right, and if any man dared make an insult, I should knock his block off.”
Luca chuckled and folded his arms over his chest to keep from reaching to pull her back into his lap. “I always wondered if she’d slow down after high school. I think I have my answer.”
Serenity nodded. “Yeah…she’s been good for me.”
His smile fell. “I’m sure she has.” He took a breath of courage. “Do you want me to finish the story?”
Serenity’s eyes widened. “There’s more?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Not much, I suppose. Really, it comes down to just a few things. I was hurt, and my brain didn’t bounce back as well as my body. I couldn’t bear the thought of you dealing with this.” He waved at himself. “So I shut you out and prayed you’d move on.”
Serenity huffed. “Believe me, after a while I tried.”
Luca shoved down the unwarranted jealousy that immediately began to churn in his stomach. “You were supposed to.”
“I failed.”
“You never were very good at following directions.”
Serenity laughed. “Then I suppose you should have known better.”
He grunted. “I suppose I should have.” Heaving his hundredth sigh, he leaned his elbows onto his knees and rubbed a hand over his head. “By the time I got my head on straight, I didn’t think I could come home. So I stayed and helped other wounded vets find the same healing.”
“So you continued to be a hero.” It wasn’t a question.
“No,” Luca argued. “I simply acted as a punching bag or a jerk until they got their heads back on. The patients didn’t need a hero. Just someone to stand their ground.”
Serenity’s eyes were still glassy as she smiled at him. “I just have one more question.”
“Go ahead.”
“What brought you back?”
Luca fought the urge to shift in his chair like a recalcitrant young boy. Yet again, Serenity just cut to the heart of the matter. Sitting back up, he searched for the right words. He wasn’t eloquent, and he wasn’t good at flattery. Luca tended to be blunt, not flowery, but he couldn’t help but wish he could give her something a little more in this part of his story.
“A client of mine helped me realize I’d been a coward.”
Serenity’s eyebrows shot up. “What?” she squeaked.
He dropped his eyes to his lap, studying his large, callused hands. He still wondered if they were the right hands to be holding Serenity Michaels. They’d been through a lot and worked hard, but they’d never be smooth or elegant. “He’d also left a girl behind,” Luca forced himself to continue, but couldn’t look Serenity in the eye. “For six months there’d been no contact and An—...the client was sure that he’d lost his chance.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I attended their wedding a couple months back,” Luca finished, holding his breath at the end.
“So she forgave him?” Serenity whispered.
He finally looked up and nodded slowly. “She did.”
“Are you asking me to forgive you? Is that why you came home?” Her face was growing red again, and her lips twitched with a deep emotion.
Luca didn’t look away. She needed to know how serious he was about this. “I told my brothers I was coming home to give everyone closure. So I could move on, and you, if necessary. I wasn’t really sure what you were doing when I made the decision.” He swallowed hard. “Yes, I was hoping for your forgiveness, but the truth is, I came home because I needed to know if there was any chance…even the slightest bit of hope…that you might find something in me worth holding onto…again.”