Chapter Twelve #2
Blair sighed. She also thought they should talk. That was why she was here. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly. She set a one-minute timer on her watch.
‘Perfect.’ She heard footsteps, a door open and then close. Blair stood on the stairs for a full minute, then went back up. Luke was presumably still in his bedroom, so she perched on the edge of his stiff peach-coloured sofa and waited, quite sure that she was as red as a tomato.
Life was so much easier before Luke came back to town.
Luke came out of his bedroom about a minute later wearing his perfectly fitted Levi’s jeans and a black T-shirt.
The shirt wasn’t exactly tight – it hung off his square shoulders.
Every other time she’d seen him since he’d come back to town, he’d worn a collared shirt – either a flannel or denim one.
It was weird. In a too-big T-shirt he looked more like the Luke she remembered, because he’d worn a T-shirt pretty much every day in school.
Except now Blair knew that under his clothes he looked nothing like the Luke she used to know.
Ugh. She needed to stop. The image of the dark line of hair under his navel was burned into her brain, and she wasn’t sure anything could exorcise it.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked. ‘I have an espresso maker, but it won’t be as good as yours. Or I can make—’
‘No, I’m fine.’
He pulled one of his dining chairs out from under the table and turned it so it faced Blair. He sat.
‘Why did your contractor tell me to come up without knocking first?’ Blair asked.
‘That’s Iris. I’ve known her for years. Excellent carpenter, complete shit disturber.’
‘So . . . that was a prank?’
Luke nodded, a smile behind his eyes.
‘But why? She doesn’t send anyone who comes looking for you upstairs while you’re in the shower, does she? Because that’s—’
He shook his head, chuckling. ‘No, she doesn’t do that for everyone, Blair.’
What did that mean? Why did he say her name like that?
Blair let out a shaky breath. This was a mistake.
Why had that damn prophecy told her to go to her sexy ex-boyfriend who gave Blair her first (and possibly best) orgasms?
How could Luke be essential to saving the festival, Moonbeam Hollow, her sisters and her café?
Blair closed her eyes and counted to three in her head, hoping that maybe she would miraculously stop thinking about Luke in that towel during those three seconds.
She opened her eyes and he was smirking at her.
The strange charge between them from when his body was covering hers at the meeting was back.
Maybe it was a mistake to not seriously date in the last twelve years.
Blair had never had a problem with the fact that she hadn’t really been in a relationship since Luke and never fallen in love again.
It had always seemed too risky to get that close to someone.
Yeah, she had a few dates here and there, and she’d even hooked up with some of them.
They were mostly tourists, not men settled here in Moonbeam Hollow.
It was better that way. Tourists left. Tourists wouldn’t think the way that Blair prioritized her sisters was strange.
They wouldn’t think it was weird that Blair didn’t invite anyone into her home.
They didn’t seem to care about the walls Blair put up around herself.
But Luke . . . Luke was different. He knew her before her walls had been quite this high. Blair had been herself with him once, or at least closer to herself, in a way she hadn’t been able to be since him.
Things were easier when they’d argued every time they saw each other.
She remembered the look on his face before she gave him the potion – he thoroughly disliked her until her special pumpkin spice latte did its magic.
But dislike wasn’t the expression Luke was giving Blair now.
Something else had changed between them yesterday and they both knew it.
When they’d been huddled together, clutching each other with fear, protection and comfort, they’d shifted something between them.
This time without magic. The fact was, Blair didn’t dislike Luke.
At all. And he didn’t dislike her, either.
‘What happened last night, Luke?’ Blair asked softly.
He huffed an awkward laugh. ‘That’s what I was going to talk to you about. I looked for you after . . . Were you and your sisters okay?’
‘Yeah. We wanted to get home before the rest of the crowd came outside. Belinda and Bianca were pretty shaken up. You got out of there okay?’
He nodded, then ran his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture. ‘I wanted to find you to apologize. I know I was overstepping, grabbing you like that. I heard the loud noise and didn’t know what was going on, and my instinct was to—’
‘Throw yourself on me?’
He looked at her, his brown eyes serious. ‘My instinct was to ride out the apocalypse with you.’ His expression was so open. Genuine. Like he really felt that Blair was the person he’d want to be next to during the end of the world. And Blair understood. She might even feel the same way.
He chuckled softly. ‘Honestly, it’s been wild seeing you again. A little overwhelming. I’d wanted to clear the air between us so I could, I don’t know, close that unfinished chapter in my life. Find out what really happened, but—’
‘I don’t want to do that,’ Blair said, interrupting him. Luke tilted his head, confused, so Blair clarified. ‘The past is behind us. We were kids, and we’ve both done a lot with our lives since then. That chapter is long closed for me, and I don’t need to open it up again.’
Luke stared at her. Blair couldn’t read his expression.
Was he upset? The truth was, Blair knew exactly what happened between them.
She had asked him to leave Moonbeam Hollow and told him that he hadn’t meant that much to her.
She’d done it to protect herself and her sisters.
If he wanted to open up the past again, she’d have to admit that she’d lied to him, and she didn’t want to.
Because it was too big. Too catastrophic and painful to admit that she’d known they’d both loved each other so much, and she still asked him to leave. They hadn’t been able to be together.
But Luke’s expression now was a little heartbroken. He was definitely disappointed that Blair didn’t want to open up old wounds. And his disappointed face broke her heart a little, too.