Chapter Thirty-Six
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck!” Luke held his hands up and ducked his face behind them.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. Luke was here. My Luke. In my apartment. I wanted to run up and hug him and never let go. I wanted to drop down to my knees and beg him to forgive me. But instead, I scooped up Marty who had been racing around the room, barking with excitement and said quietly, “What are you doing here?”
“You scared the crap out of me,” he breathed, lowering his arms and smoothing his plaid shirt over his chest.
“Well, to be fair, it’s my house, I’m the one who should be here.” I picked up my purse and hung it on a hook by the door while I tried to catch my breath.
“Good point,” Luke said, nodding.
“How did you get in?” I said, asking a question I already knew the answer to. Terrified to ask what I really wanted to know.
He pulled a key from his pocket and held it up. “You gave me a key to check in on Marty. Remember?”
“Right.” I glanced at Marty, who was happily wriggling his bum as Luke scratched him behind the ears.
“So.” I crossed my arms over my chest, hoping the pressure would slow down my heartbeat. “What are you doing here, Luke?” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice. “I’ve been emailing you. And texting you before that.”
“I didn’t get your emails or your texts,” he said as he slid his hands in the back pockets of his cargo shorts, his expression serious.
“What—” I started to protest, my confusion displaying as frustration.
“Wait.” He held up his hand. “I didn’t get them when you first sent them.”
I stood silently, waiting as requested, eyebrows raised, eyes questioning.
He gestured to one of the wooden chairs he’d pulled out from my kitchen table. “Please sit. I think my heart has slowed down enough that there is no longer any danger of me having a heart attack.”
“You know,” I said, continuing to stand, “you scared me too. It’s not every day that I come home to an unexpected man in my apartment.”
“Fair.” He nodded. “In hindsight, showing up at a single woman’s house unannounced probably wasn’t the best plan.” He grimaced. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Well,” I said, “you definitely achieved your goal.” I smiled tentatively. “Now, can you please tell me why you’re here?” My body tensed as I realized this could be it. This could be the moment Luke told me to stop bothering him. That he never wanted to see me again.
Luke took a deep breath, his demeanour calm, his entire body radiating strength and purpose. I had missed him so much. Until this point, he had been standing in front of the counter, but he now stepped aside, holding his hands like a game show model, revealing what appeared to be a cake.
“I made you a cake.” He gestured again in case I’d missed it.
“Why?” I took a couple of steps towards the counter and stopped.
“Come see,” he said. “It’s not going to explode.”
The cake was round with white icing and gold piping, made to look like a one-year AA chip, exactly like the cake I had ridiculed on the day we first met. “You are my hero,” I read, and I laughed as my eyes simultaneously filled with tears.
“I thought we should properly celebrate,” Luke said, his eyes soft.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, no longer caring what my face looked like, no longer trying to hold back the hope. “Why are you here? Where did you go? Why didn’t you answer my emails?”
He breathed in deeply, the pain in his expression mirroring mine. “You really hurt me that night a month ago. The night we slept together.”
I lowered my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“I know,” he said as he set his hands on my shoulders. “Let’s sit. Please.” We walked over to the couch and sat down.
“So, I get why you asked me to leave that night,” I said after we had settled. “But why did you have to leave too? And where did you go for so long?”
He took a deep breath. “Initially I was just going to take Hannah to visit my sister in Ontario. I had some holidays saved up and Hannah was almost on summer break, so I thought I’d take her remaining schoolwork and try to recover surrounded by family.” He closed his eyes as if reliving the pain. The pain that I had caused. “I couldn’t be in my house. I couldn’t be in the place we’d been together. I had to get away from it all.”
“Away from me, you mean.”
“Well, yeah.” He laughed. “Of course. I told you I was falling in love with you and your response was that the amazing night we’d spent together was just about sex. You ripped my heart out. I wanted to get as far away from you as possible.” He shrugged as I winced. I mean, I didn’t blame him at all, but it was like a punch to the gut to hear him say it out loud.
“But then I got your first text. And it was just like a normal text. Like a ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ text. Like nothing had happened. Like you didn’t feel anything.”
I lowered my head, knowing how it must have seemed but also knowing how wrong he was.
“And honestly?” he continued. “As shitty as I felt, I had been ready to give you the benefit of the doubt. I knew I had dropped the ‘I love you’ bomb pretty early and I knew you were skittish in that department to begin with, but after that text, I had to get even further away. I needed to escape,” he said. “I needed to get off the grid.”
I nodded, trying against every natural impulse not to interrupt. As much as I wanted him to answer my questions, I could tell that he needed to say this.
“Despite the fact that she’s not the most outdoorsy person in the world, Hannah had been begging me to take her camping for months, so that’s what we did. I found a cabin to rent in northern Ontario, completely isolated in the woods but close enough to a national park in case of emergencies. We packed all our stuff and away we went. Our own little adventure.”
“That sounds…pretty?” I tried.
He chuckled. “I know that’s not your jam, but it was pretty. It was gorgeous. Crystal clear water, star-filled skies; the only sounds at night were the crickets and frogs. Hannah loved it. We both did.”
“So, when you say ‘off the grid,’ does that mean you didn’t have—”
He nodded. “I didn’t have Wi-Fi. I didn’t have cell service at all actually.”
“Wow,” I said. I honestly couldn’t imagine that. “What if something had happened?”
“I had a satellite phone for emergencies,” he said. “And only two people had the number. Janet and Ben.”
“Ben? Ben had the number?” Why hadn’t Ben told me he had the number? I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks.
“Because I’d asked him not to,” Luke said, reading my mind. “I had begged him not to. I needed time to get over you, and I knew if I had access to you, or if you had access to me, it would make it that much harder.”
I nodded, the anger dissipating as quickly as it had risen. “That makes sense.”
“But then, a few days ago, he called.”
My head shot up. “What did he say?”
Luke smiled. “In true Ben form, he apologized because the reason he was calling wasn’t a true emergency, but as he spoke, I realized that, to him, it kind of was. He was worried about you, Julie. He knew you were emailing me and he knew how upset you were.”
A tiny dart of guilt poked at my stomach. I had finally broken down and told Ben and Kate everything—about all of my feelings and the mistake I had made. I should have known Ben would be worried.
“So, I went into a little town nearby,” Luke continued, “and turned on my Wi-Fi at a café, and while Hannah played with the café dog, I read your emails.”
“And?” It came out as a whisper.
“Well, my first reaction was anger, to be perfectly honest,” he said as tears filled my eyes, my body slowly deflating. “I had tried so hard to force you from my thoughts.” His fingers lightly clenched at his sides as if he was reliving his efforts at self-preservation. “At first I didn’t want to believe you,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to forget. I just wanted to heal. But then….” He trailed off, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
I held my breath. Waiting for whatever he said next. Knowing that, whatever it was, whichever direction he’d decided to go, would change my life forever.
“Remember when you said that love wasn’t worth the risk? That if you were lucky to feel that one great love, it wasn’t worth all the potential heartache?” he said, eyes staring into my soul.
I nodded. “I don’t think that anymore,” I said, instantly knowing it was true. Because, really? No matter what he decided, no matter what he said next, all the pain I had felt since he’d left, all the misery I had gone through, it was all worth it to feel the love I felt for him at this moment. To know that I had that capacity. To know I had the privilege of loving a man as amazing and wonderful as Luke.
“I know you don’t,” he said gently. “I believe you.”
“Really?” I said, trying to temper my hopes. Trying to rein in the tiny bubbles of joy floating around in my chest.
He nodded, smiling. “Yes, really. And, more importantly, I believe myself. What happened that night really threw me for a loop, so much so that I started to doubt my own feelings. I started to doubt my instincts. I needed that time away to learn to trust myself again. Because, if I was being honest, I didn’t believe that you thought what we’d had together was only sex. I didn’t believe that the connection I’d felt was only one-sided. I knew you loved me too. I knew that you had to or everything I’d felt, everything I’d experienced was wrong. And I knew nothing in my life had ever felt so right.”
I was shocked, mouth hanging open like Marty waiting for a treat. “How did you know?” I finally asked. “How did you know how I felt before I even did?”
He lifted my hand and turned it so my palm faced up, tracing the lines with his finger. “You might be surprised at this, Julie, but despite all of your efforts to shut me out, I’ve gotten to know you pretty well. I knew, even though you tried so hard to hide it, underneath all of your sadness and sarcasm and biting wit—”
“Hey!” I interrupted. “My wit is not biting, it’s hilarious.”
He laughed. “Under your hilarious wit, there was a whole lot of love that, every once in a while, would push its way through. I saw that love when you talked about Kate and Ben. I saw it when you played with Hannah. I saw it with Marty. And I saw it when you looked at me that night. I knew it was there. You just needed time to find it.”
I’d given up on trying to hold back the tears and they were now freely streaming down my cheeks.
“I thought you hated me.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“I could never hate you. I love you, Julie.” His eyes darkened and I knew it was true.
“I love you too.” I reached up and touched the side of his face, making sure he was truly there, making sure he was real.
In one smooth motion, he slid his strong hands around my hips and pulled me closer and my stomach flipped.
“You’re all I ever wanted, Julie,” he whispered as he leaned in, our lips millimeters apart.
“Promise me you’ll never leave again,” I whispered back, breathless with anticipation.
“I promise.”
His lips, soft on mine, parted with a sigh and I knew. Whatever heartache I’d felt, whatever pain I’d gone through, if it had all led up to this moment, if it had all led up to ending up with Luke, it had been entirely worth it.