Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Luke and I had been on completely different wavelengths since the hospital.
We lived right next door to one another, but he might as well have been millions of miles away.
I started to run again in the mornings, and I always made sure I looked exceptionally sexy in my tight running pants, just in case he finally came to join me like old times, but nope. Nada.
One morning, after I’d given up on him joining me, I ran my normal two miles and was starting back up my steps when he emerged from his house. He gave me a tight smile and a half-nod and started jogging in the direction I’d come from.
Awkward wasn’t even close to describing how pathetic our interactions were. They were downright painful.
I started to look at different homes in the area, because I just didn’t think I could handle living with him so close, yet so far away, for much longer.
I would rather have given up my cute, affordable, perfectly located historical home and found somewhere else if it meant I could start putting myself back together .
I was always on alert. Wondering, pondering, fantasizing. Wishing that Luke would just come bursting through my door, but…
I needed to stop.
I needed to get a hold of myself.
Rounding the corner of Church Street, carrying a take-out bag from The Chelsea (with enough food in it to feed a small village—don’t judge me; I was still wallowing, even weeks later), I stilled my feet. My eyes found the one man I wasn’t expecting to see.
Grant.
It had been months since I’d seen him last. I mean, my last encounter with him had been in his apartment with jelly in his hair, cuddling a blow-up doll. Agh. The memory of Luke and me flashed through my brain, and I physically cringed.
That was the first night I had felt that we truly connected, and it was the first night that I had started to really develop feelings for him. I shook my head, dissolving the memory, and then my eyes met Grant’s. His eyes went wide, and his mouth parted before it formed into a scowl.
I mean, he knew where I lived, so if he had wanted to pick a fight with me, why hadn’t he just come over and done it? Or just called me?
Had he been waiting for the perfect moment?
That, apparently, was right now, since he started to travel the necessary distance toward me. I gave him a quick wave, but he didn’t wave back.
Okay, so this wasn’t going how I’d planned.
I’d been prepared to say, “Oh, relax. It was a small prank. Your hair has grown back. Blah, blah, blah.” But instead, I took off in the opposite direction.
I literally ran from him while trying to hold in a laugh that was bubbling up from deep inside of me.
My life was a joke.
A big fat joke!
I got a few yards away, rounded another corner, and then slammed into something extremely hard.
“Oomph,” I wheezed, still clutching my brown, paper, take-out bag. Catching my breath, I squeaked, “Excuse me!” and hands curled around my arms. I turned my head up and instantly lost my breath.
Two sea-glass green eyes stared back at me, a small smile playing at his lips.
“Clumsy much, Doc?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but then I heard Grant yell my name from a distance. Luke’s head swiveled toward the voice.
“Run!” I gasped.
Luke looked confused, but I snagged his hand, and we both took off sprinting through the courtyard.
We kept running, striding in pace with one another, until I felt that the coast was clear.
I breathed, “Okay, I think we’re good.” I looked back and didn’t see or hear anything unusual, only passing cars and a bird chirping in the distance.
“Who was it?” Luke asked, out of breath. “Do I need to kick someone’s ass?”
My heart was pounding excitedly in my chest at our close quarters. I swallowed and grinned.
“Grant.”
He laughed. “What? What did you do now?”
I shook my head. “Nothing! But he spotted me, and I got scared, so… I ran.” Luke boomed with laugher .
“He can’t still be mad about the jelly thing. That was forever ago.” Luke shook his head.
Except it somehow feels like it was just yesterday.
I shrugged. “He looked angry.”
“Well…” Luke looked around me and shrugged, too. “Let me walk you home so you don’t get attacked with a blow-up doll.” I hid my smile and followed after him.
We made it one block before I finally asked, “So…how ya been?”
He slowly looked over at me. “I’ve been fine.”
Guilt had started to weigh on my shoulders the night after he’d come to the hospital.
I was angry with him before, clouded by contempt over what had happened with Ash, but as soon as he told me the truth, I felt absolutely sickened at the fact that I hadn’t even had the courtesy to ask him how he was since coming home from Afghanistan.
Did he see anything awful over there? Did he have any more run-ins with bullets?
His haunted eyes from the night he’d confessed his memory to me filtered throughout my head anytime I tried to sleep.
I would toss and turn and sit up in bed to look in the direction of Luke’s house, just wondering how he was doing, and then I’d plop myself back down on my pillows.
I felt so selfish that I hadn’t asked him. I should have.
I pushed my guilt away. “You’ve been fine since… coming back…to normal life?” My voice dropped, and Luke looked over at me, scrutinizing my motives.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He paused for a moment, stopping on the sidewalk. I stopped beside him and looked over when his smooth voice filled the air. “The hardest part about being over there this time was the fact that I couldn’t get a hold of you to tell you the truth.”
I swallowed and half-wanted to just crush my arms around his neck, but the other half of me didn’t know what to do. I was at a loss. I was stuck, just staring, dazed by his words.
Luke started walking again at a slow pace, and I followed, keeping my mouth shut.
“How have you been?” he asked simply, as if he hadn’t just stolen my heart again.
I shook myself out of my trance. “Fine.”
I could see him nodding in my peripheral vision, and I felt the words in the back of my mind, egging me on.
I wanted to ask if he’d given up on us, or if this was how it was going to be from now on.
Was he truly over the thing with his ex-wife?
How could he ever want to be with anyone ever again after that monster?
I took a deep breath. “Did you get things figured out with Ash? The divorce and everything?” Her name felt like poison on my tongue, and when I glanced up at Luke, he was staring at me intently. Then, he motioned behind me, and my mouth gaped.
I was home. How the hell did we get on our street so fast?
I pulled my takeout bag closer to my body, hearing it crinkle. “Well…thanks for walking me home.”
Luke didn’t look like he was going to answer my question about Ash, and that set a knife to my stomach. I started to walk up my porch steps, the knife digging in further with each climb. The second I got my door open, he answered, “Things are over with Ash.”
I turned around to say something—anything, really—but he was already walking over to his house.
I watched him climb his steps, pull out his key, and insert it into his door. He peeked up and smiled. “Watch out for those blow-up dolls, Doc.”
And then my heart leapt in my chest . There was hope.
A light knock on my door woke me from catching up on all the sleep I had missed on my night shift.
I sat up, massaging my neck from sleeping at an extremely uncomfortable position on the couch.
My cream cardigan was half off my shoulder, but I stumbled to the door anyway, stubbing my pinky toe in the process.
Once I swung it open, cursing my throbbing toe, I was blinded by the sunlight bouncing from behind the person standing in front of me.
I shut my eyes again and then opened them, trying to focus on who was at my door, but all I could make out was the black outline of a head.
Wait…is that?
“Hi.” The voice had my eyes un-blurring themselves pretty quickly.
Anger bloomed within. “Aren’t you at the wrong house?” I sneered. Ash had some fucking nerve. I stared at her, and then my eyes traveled to her now smaller stomach. I only let them linger there for a few seconds before looking at her face again.
She was still pretty—pale skin, jet black hair that was pin straight and framed her face. Her eyes looked a little tired, deep bags formed underneath, but nonetheless, still pretty.
“I’m not at the wrong house. I came to talk to you.”
I pulled my sleeve up onto my shoulder. “Why?”
“Can I come in?” she asked softly, but I wasn’t buying her shit.
“No.” Her shoulders slumped. I took a deep breath. “I’ll come out there.”
Ash’s light-blue eyes showed a sliver of hope.
I stepped outside, glancing toward Luke’s.
His car was gone, so he must have been, too.
Had she come to see him, also? Were they getting back together?
No, they weren’t. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t have taken her back.
I mean, days ago he had told me they were nothing, so I shooed away the thought.
“Listen,” she began. “I was a total, raging bitch to you.”
Yep, you sure were.
She laughed. Oh shit, did I just say that out loud?
“I can see why he likes you. You definitely don’t put up with bullshit.” So I did say that out loud.
“Did you really come all this way to say sorry?” I inched my eyebrows up. “Because that seems awfully nice of you…”
She blew out a breath. “No. I came to make things right.”