Goodness and Light (14 page)

He heard her take a breath to say something but before she could speak, he cut her off with a joyless laugh. “Just listen. I’m not exaggerating.” He pulled in a deep breath for courage. “After she died, the rage—I swear, Elena, it was so huge, it had its own heartbeat. I spent about a year walking around like a—like a lit fuse, pissed off and ready to brawl with anybody who looked twice at me—and some who only looked once.”

Her hands, still clutching his, squeezed gently—a show of support that gave him a glimmer of hope.

“One day, I saw this guy who just looked wrong to me. Suspicious—like a terrorist. I started in on him, he got up in my face and next thing I know, I’m in handcuffs and covered in his blood. I fractured his skull, Elena. I beat him almost to death—and I think I would have if somebody hadn’t stopped me.” He dropped his head back, squeezed his eyes shut. He hated remembering this part—hated that he was capable of hatred, of violence—of being the very thing he despised most.

“I was arrested, charged with assault, attempted murder.”

She shifted. He lifted his head, met her gaze, thumbed away the tears that still shimmered on her lashes.

“All I kept thinking was my mother was right. She was right and I hadn’t listened to anything she’d taught me. She’d have been so disappointed. She
forgave
me before she died and I went and –” He couldn’t say it. Her arms came around him, stroking his head.

“The guy I hurt testified in court—he described every word, every punch. I puked right there in front of the judge. They had witnesses, they had evidence—they could have given me the harshest sentence, put me in prison.”

“But they didn’t. You’re here,” she whispered.

“Only because my victim asked for leniency.”

Through his tears, he flashed her favorite smile. “He told the judge that he understood my actions had been based on fear, that he could see the remorse and regret in my eyes and asked if instead of a prison sentence, the court would order me to volunteer my time with an organization that promotes healing. The judge agreed and at seventeen years old, I started working with people who were just like me. Suffering, dealing with loss and unimaginable fear.”

He shifted across the sofa, Elena pressed to his side. “Few months later, he came in to see how I was doing. And I lost it. Just went down to the floor and sobbed like a baby about how sorry I was. He taught me how to find the love and joy in life again. It was always there...I just didn’t know where to look.”

He tucked a finger under her chin, lifted her face to his. “Elena, every time I see him, that guilt’s there. But he taught me how to redirect it. Make it useful. Constructive. Something that’s not based on fear and hate.”

“So all your good deeds—”

He waved a hand. “Just a way for me to channel my guilt, to wish I could go back and, and not have tried so damn hard to deny what that touch to my face really was.” He stood up, crossed to the huge window and stared down at the city – always busy, always so alive. “I have a lot of regrets, Elena, but that one’s the hardest to deal with.”

She was silent for a long time and he hoped she was considering everything he’d told her. He almost flinched when her hand touched his back. He turned, folded her into his arms and held on, held tight.

“Oh, Lucas. I’m so sorry. Every time you did something I thought was too good to be true, all I could think was there was no way I could possibly hold onto you, when I’m not good.” Her voice was rough.

“You
are
good, honey. You came when your sister needed you.”

He felt the sob build inside her and tightened his arms. “Listen to me. You and me? We were both just being the cliché teen. Believe me, I know how much it sucks that we didn’t get to fix things but you have to let it go so you don’t become me.”

She huffed in frustration. “Hell, Luke, it’s not that easy. I push everyone away. I hardly talk to my closest friends and my sister—I’ve done nothing but make her cry.”

He lifted her face. “They don’t know, do they? What you just told me?”

When her face crumbled again, he had his answer. “You have to tell them, Elena. You have to trust them. From everything you’ve told me about your circle, I have to believe they’ll all rally around you.”

She shook her head. “They’ll hate me.”

He sighed, shifted her again until they sat face to face. “Elena, the guy I beat up said something I never forgot. He said,
darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that
.” He waited a beat for that to sink in. “Recognize it?”

She shook her head.

“Dr. Martin Luther King said that. And it hit me like a steel boot to my head that I
was
hate—I’d let it fill every cell in my body. That was the day—the moment when I promised myself I’d spend the rest of my life looking for the light and if I couldn’t see it, I’d
be
it, even when I couldn’t feel it. You look at me like I’m some sort of perfect being, but I’m not. I’m not a hero, Elena. I just believe in trying, that’s all.”

Slowly, she shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. “You’re wrong, Luke. You are good. You are so, so good.” She leaned in, forgot why she had to protect her heart, forgot why she needed to leave, forgot it all except the compulsion to comfort him. She pressed her mouth to his—a sweet, gentle whisper of lips that moved him.

Broke him.

On a gasp, he pulled her to him, kissed her with all that he was. “Stay. Stay with me. Love me,” he whispered against her lips, already pulling her toward him.

“Yes,” she whispered, overcome.

They spent what was left of the day making love, whispering in the growing darkness, healing each other. Lucas turned on the Christmas tree lights, grabbed some pillows and blankets and they made love on the floor in front of it.

I
t was dark when they separated, stretched out on the sofa with nothing but the tree lights to see by.

Lucas kissed her hair. “Al is a hundred percent convinced that my mom is working with yours to set us up.”

“My friends are just as bad—Cass and her bag of presents, Kara arranging our dates.” Frustrated, Elena sighed heavily. “Don’t you wonder maybe all these signs are some kind of, I don’t know, an illusion?”

“They led us here, didn’t they?” He countered with a sweet smile.

Maybe they did.

It hit her then with all the force of a two-ton blast.

His smile.
That
smile.

“Hey, hey, you okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.” Frowning, he tilted her face up to his.

Not a ghost. An angel.
“Lucas, I need to tell you a story so you can tell me I’m not completely insane.”

Still frowning, he rolled to his side and propped his head on his hand. “Tell me.”

She swallowed hard once, then twice. When she could talk, she blurted out the first thing that hit her—that mattered to her. “The way you smile at me. Oh, Luke, I love it, love it so much. It—you—remind me of this boy I met. It was the first Remembrance event.”

“I remember it. I was there.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head. “Standing on the ramp, leading into the pit. I was staring down, down into that pile of rubble and thinking about... about the darkness and the destruction and there was this boy, a boy who was so, so tall. He smiled at me and put something in my hand.” She was rambling now because the more she talked, the more she knew she was right. “He had terrible skin and braces on his teeth and he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen and he saved me and I think I always knew and that’s why I was so afraid—I think he might be you and I—I just don’t know what to do with that.”

Luke’s dark eyes, round with shock, closed. “What did this boy put in your hand?” he whispered.

“A snowflake. A crystal snowflake.”

He made a noise like he was choking and her eyes snapped to his in alarm. But his no longer held any light. He got up, walked to the tree and pulled off an ornament and held it out to her. She knew without looking what it was. A cold dread grew and spread and sucked all the hope from her like a collapsing star. She forced herself to face her sentence. She looked down, saw a snowflake ornament identical to the one that a beautiful boy had given her all those years ago. The one that even now was carefully wrapped in the bottom of her suitcase.

His voice sounded miles away. “...part of a set. There’d been six—my sister has three but I only have two. I gave away my third back in ’01, at the first holiday event to this girl who looked like she wanted to jump into the pit at Ground Zero.”

She didn’t move—she couldn’t. Oh, the pain was vicious. She could barely hear his words over the blood rushing in her ears. She stared at the crystal snowflake—saw but refused to believe. Lucas—he—ah, hell, he was the boy who’d—who’d
saved
her. Could fate be this cruel? She turned and looked at him—truly looked. The braces were gone, the pimples were gone. But that smile was the same—how had she not seen it?

“Why?” She croaked out the question.

“I needed her to know there was still light in the world. She was so lost and I was afraid...afraid she was going to do something terrible. I told her—you—to hold it up to the light,” he said, still looking at the ornament.

Elena said nothing. She remembered doing just what he’d said and the snowflake in her hand caught the light, sparkled and shimmered. And while she stared at it, he’d disappeared and she’d thought she’d imagined him, thought he was an angel sent from heaven to stop her from doing the most selfish thing she could have done. She’d
hated
that boy for saving her—for years, she hated him, when the pain in her chest grew to unbearable levels. And yet she would pull that crystal snowflake out from its box and stare at it until she could get her bearings once again, and it worked every time.

Lucas was that boy—her angel. Her savior. But as the years piled up, she’d cursed him for making sure she could never forget, never close the hole, the gaping pit in her soul, never get a moment’s peace from the words she’d screamed in a child’s temper tantrum.

She lifted her eyes to heaven and cursed her mother for punishing her like this.

She turned and fled upstairs for her clothes.

Lucas watched her run, his heart in splinters.

L
ucas was a smart man.

When Elena went white and turned for the stairs without a word, he knew—knew as sure as he knew his own name that even though she had the crystal snowflake he’d given away all those years ago, even though she was the girl he’d spent the last thirteen years worrying about, even though she was the woman he loved, she would only ever see this as a sign she’d been damned.

Instead of bringing them together, that stupid snowflake would be the wedge that split them apart.

He didn’t have a clue how to stop her, how to convince her she was wrong.

He crossed to the sofa and sat, his hands curling into fists when the ceiling over his head creaked. It took her a few minutes and then she was back, dressed. She grabbed her outer gear and her bag and without a word, moved to his door.

A tidal wave of panic rose up in him. “I always figured I’d find that girl with my snowflake someday,” he began. “Al’s signs drive me nuts, but deep down,” he slapped a hand to his heart. “Deep down in here, I
believed
, Elena. I believed if I kept looking, one day I’d find that girl and she would be in my life. But that’s impossible now because you refuse to
see
. You want me to believe my mother hates me and is punishing me—punishing us—and I
can’t
do that. She
forgave
me, Elena. I
won’t
believe she sent you here to punish me. I called you a cab. You can wait for it on the curb. Want the rest of that cocoa to go?”

It was cheap and childish but damn it, he was raw and he’d needed to make her hurt the way he was. When she flinched, he figured the barb had hit the target. And then he cursed himself for hurting her, cursed her for hurting him.

She opened the door.