Magnolia
“Lukas, I can put weight on it. That’s what the walking boot is for.”
Lukas grumbles, reluctantly setting me down on my feet.
Once he’s confident that I’m stable, he reaches for my hand, and we take the few paces to the elevator.
The silver doors open for us, and we step in, silent as they close behind us.
“You should let me carry you,” he finally mumbles, and the disappointed, childlike look on his face has a giggle bubbling from my chest.
“And what? Let you walk the two miles to the clinic carrying me like a baby?” I take a step forward, pressing my palms to his chest. “As much as I love being wrapped up in you, we’d sure be a sight, maneuvering through noon traffic in downtown Paris like that.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, and he leans down, pressing a soft kiss to my lips. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. Just want you healthy. Healed. I don’t like seeing you wince in pain.”
I thought he had missed the few times I winced while stretching out my foot and ankle.
The boot helps keep my fracture from worsening, but I’m allowed to take it off twice a day, and there are daily stretches I’m advised to do.
It’s not that they’re particularly painful; it’s that my foot isn’t used to that kind of movement right now.
And the fact that this is the third injury to the same spot doesn’t bode well.
The elevator opens, and Lukas reaches for my hand, lacing my fingers together with his.
The crisp wintery air slaps us in the face as soon as we exit the lobby.
“See,” I tease, playfully swinging his hand back and forth.
“Good thing we’re taking a cab, or you’d be carrying me through the winter storm. ”
I turn my back to him, raising my free hand in the air to signal for a cab.
Lukas’s lips press against the side of my neck, and a soft kiss is placed before his mouth moves against my skin.
“Wouldn’t that have been romantic? Me, traipsing through the blizzard, muscles flexing beneath my ratted T-shirt as I carry the love of my life—the injured love of my life, may I add—to the closest doctor? ”
I giggle, shoulders squirming at the feel of his lips against my neck. “I love the idea of watching your muscles flexing, but what happened to your jacket?”
“Mmm, I ditched it in the effort. Used it as a weapon to fight off wild animals.”
“Ahhh, yes. The wild animals that roam the streets of Paris.”
A cab pulls to the side of the road, and Lukas reaches to open the door for me. I climb in and slide across the seat, giggling as Lukas tries to bend and fit his six-and-a-half-foot frame in the small car.
That’s one of the things that surprised the both of us when I first moved to France.
In America, it seems like everyone has a big vehicle.
An SUV that seats eight, a pickup truck with an obnoxiously loud engine, an eighteen-passenger van.
Around Europe, it’s the opposite. Small two-seater cars, or maybe a car that has a small back seat.
If someone drives a truck, it’s a single cab, lower to the ground, used for hauling items back and forth as opposed to showing off.
I hadn’t noticed how hard I was squeezing Lukas’s hand until he brushes his shoulder against mine. “Nervous?”
I nod. Nervous that the x-ray won’t show that I’ve healed.
Nervous that an injury like this will keep happening again.
I’m pushing thirty, which is young, except in the ballerina world where I’m considered middle-aged.
Most ballerinas with my company retire in their mid-thirties.
Hell, the agency has a mandatory retirement age of forty-two.
Since I’ve been with this organization, only a few have made it that far.
“Distract me,” I whisper, leaning my head on his shoulder.
“Tell me what our plans are for the rest of the day.” Lukas arrived yesterday, and he gets to spend all day today and tomorrow with me before taking his flight back home.
I’m already dreading the goodbye, wanting to hold on and savor every second we have together, knowing it’ll likely be months again before we see one another.
He presses his cheek against mine. “I was thinking about a lot of things. Mostly things that our driver probably doesn’t want to hear.” Even though he whispers it, lips brushing against my ear as he speaks, my eyes flick to the rearview mirror, and I can see the driver try to hide his smile.
“But we should definitely pick up some chocolate mousse. Or maybe one of those tartes we had before.”
I bring my head up, lips pressed against his ear as I whisper, “I can think of a few creative ways to use that mousse.”
He immediately groans, a loud, satisfying groan, and I bite down my smile as soon as the cabbie pulls the car to the curb.
Lukas climbs out first, and he reaches his hand toward me, ready to help me out as soon as I slide across the seat. Once I’m standing, he pulls me to him, his grip taught, and my chest slams against his. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Banks.”
I press a quick kiss to his lips. “Since when am I one to back down from a challenge?” I cock a brow in his direction and turn toward the clinic, leaving him standing on the side of the street with a boyish grin spreading across his face.
“What did the x-ray look like?”
I shrug. “All x-rays look like a black and gray mess to me. I couldn’t see the fracture the first time until the doctor pointed it out to me.”
“Are we seeing the same doctor you had before? Is that who you’ve seen each time?”
“No.” My answer is quick, immediate, and it has Lukas spinning from where he was standing against the wall, flipping through a magazine that I know he doesn’t understand a lick of.
We’ve talked about our dating lives outside of each other. Lukas knows I tried to be intimate with one other man, my boyfriend at the time. The only part I left out is that my boyfriend was a doctor that I had met while Lukas and I were still together.
I hadn’t meant to withhold that. I doubt Lukas would even be upset.
Absolutely nothing happened between Keith—Dr. Armstrong—and me while I was with Lukas or the few months that followed our breakup.
After my relationship with Keith ended, I had hoped I’d never see him again in a professional setting, as seeing him would mean that I injured myself somehow.
“What’s going on, Mags?” Lukas tucks the magazine back in a holder that hangs off the wall and is about to take another stride toward me when the door swings open.
Dr. Armstrong enters the room with a smile on his face when he sees me, that smile dimming slightly when he sees Lukas standing at my side.
“Magnolia. Hi, I—” He pauses, looking from me, to Lukas, and back again. “Ms. Banks.” He nods. “Dr. Dubois got pulled into an emergency surgery. I offered to cover some of his patients, so I hope it’s okay that we’ll be going over your x-ray together.”
I nod my response, the tension thickening the room nearly overpowering.
Lukas stares at the side of my face, and I know I don’t have any reason to feel guilty.
Anything Dr. Armstrong and I had was after Lukas and I ended.
I try to shake it off, and I turn to Lukas, offering my best genuine smile.
“Lukas, this is Dr. Armstrong. He was the orthopedic I worked with through my first injury, and we got to know each other after. Dr. Armstrong, Keith, this is Lukas Hart.”
Keith flinches at the sound of Lukas’s name, as he should.
When we tried to take our intimacy to the next level, and when I had a full-blown panic attack over it, I cowered into myself, spilling out all my anxieties and thoughts, and eventually said Lukas’s name out loud.
I told him a little of what we went through, and once I had stopped crying, Keith very calmly got dressed and suggested that we would be better off as friends.
Keith reaches a hand out to Lukas, and Lukas grabs it, shaking once. “Nice to meet you,” Lukas says, and Keith nods.
“Likewise. Let’s pull up that x-ray.”
He reaches for the rolling chair, taking a seat and firing up the computer. Lukas looks over at me, his head tilting in a “is that the guy” expression toward Keith.
I purse my lips together, nodding once, and to my utmost surprise, Lukas raises his brows in almost a “nice” gesture.
I twist mine together, a silent conversation passing between us that we will absolutely be discussing later.
Thirty awkward minutes later, Lukas and I are sitting outside the doctor’s office waiting for a cab. It’s the same bench I sat on the first time, when Lukas called and I was hoping for some reassurance, but instead, he told me he was extending his deployment.
“How do you feel about the news?
I stare off at the other side of the street where there’s a small park.
A group of moms are together, sitting and laughing with one another as their kids play nearby.
The children are bundled in all of their snow gear, scooping up handfuls of the fresh dusting from the ground and tossing it at one another.
The snow gets caught midair, usually flying in the other direction, but the kids don’t seem to mind.
Their infectious giggles echo across the road, causing an immediate smile to grace my face.
“Well, it isn’t what I wanted to hear, but kind of what I expected.
” Keith had told us that while my foot had healed somewhat, the bones aren’t healing quite as fast as they did the first time.
Makes sense, since they were already weakened to begin with.
I went into the appointment hoping I could get the boot off and start working with PT, but instead, I’m stuck nursing the injury for another four weeks.
“Want to address the elephant in the room?” he asks, reaching for my hand.
I lace my fingers with his and sit up, twisting to face him the best I can with my bulky boot between us.
“That’s the guy, isn’t it?” Lukas gestures to the building behind us with his head. “The guy you dated after me. The one Nana had told me about?”
I nod.
He blows out a heavy breath. “Man, he’s a good-looking guy.”
I burst out laughing at that. “He is,” I agree, pulling Lukas’s hand to mine. “He’s handsome, a doctor, incredibly nice, loves ballet, treated me right…” Lukas’s face twists together the more I go on and on.
Keith was the perfect guy, really. We dated for almost three months, and never once did he push me more than I was ready.
He never criticized me for not wanting to go any further with our intimacy.
And the night we tried, and I had a panic attack, he sat with me until I could regain my breath.
“I hope he finds a woman who appreciates all his good qualities.”
“Hell, if I was single, I’d date him.” He winks at me, then turns away, his gaze following the children on the playground much like mine had.
“Hey.” I tug on his arm. And when his crystal-blue eyes meet mine, I latch onto them. “He was a host of wonderful things, and any girl would fall head over heels for him, but I didn’t. I tried my hardest, Lukas. I wanted to date a guy like him so badly, but you know what?”
He’s quiet, his bottom lip popping open ever so slightly.
“It didn’t matter how attractive he was, how good he treated me. He could have had every textbook quality I said I wanted in a man, and it wouldn’t have mattered.” My eyes dart back and forth across his face. “None of it would have mattered, because he wasn’t you.”
Lukas exhales, nostrils flaring.
“I could never love someone the way I love you, Lukas. I know that now. I think I knew it at the time, too, but I was so sad, so mad, broken. I wanted to believe that I could try.” I pull the panels of my coat closer in to block a sudden wind, and Lukas reaches an arm up to help me.
His hand slides past my shoulder, grabbing the hood of my coat and bringing it up to cover my head.
“You said once, during our first phone call, that you didn't want to hash out our old memories, or you didn’t want us to rely on them to make it work, but I disagree.”
“Oh?”
“I love those memories. They’re what stuck with me, even when we weren’t talking. Even when I thought you had moved on, I think those memories are what kept my heart in it until we could be together again. They’re what make us, us, don’t you think?”
He leans forward and crashes his lips against mine.
A palm comes up to cup my cheek, holding me to him.
I kiss him so hard it almost hurts, but that moment changes something between us.
Just like I needed to meet Candi, to see her and Lukas and Ivy together to understand what they were like, to know for myself that he didn’t fall in love with someone else, maybe Lukas needed to see it with Keith.
Our kiss softens, Lukas seeming to have a visceral reaction to my words.
His shoulders relax as his body melts into the kiss.
A soft hum leaves his throat, and then he pulls back, leaning his forehead against mine.
His hand that had been tightly clenched in mine loosens, and he wraps his fingers around my wrist, bringing it up to rest against his heart.
I can feel the thud through his chest, thumping wildly, a nearly erratic beat, and I close my eyes, letting the pulse of it through my palm play its song in my head.
“I love you, Mags. I know I broke a lot of promises to you in the past, but not all of them.” I bring my good leg up between us, bending at the knee and inching closer to him.
Somehow needing to feel his warmth, his safety, now more than ever.
“I promised you that I’d always love you.
I promised that there would always be an us.
” His eyes begin to glisten with unshed tears.
“I told you there wasn’t a life for me out there if you weren’t in it, and all of that is still true. ”
“I know,” I whisper, leaning forward to rest my forehead against his chest. He wraps his arms around me, tugging me closer, and I inhale his amber and lavender scent, closing my eyes and blowing out a heavy breath. “I know.”