“Funny,” she said, “I never pegged you for the selfpitying type.”
His eyebrows went up. “Is that what I'm doing?”
“Maybe. I wasn't there with you in the hospital, but it sounds like you've already beaten yourself up pretty bad about it. And besides,” she said with a grin that she didn't real y feel, “it final y got you to my doorstep, didn't it?”
“It shouldn't have taken that, Janica.”
But it had.
She drank in his chiseled features, his al -male scent. If she stayed another sixty seconds she'd be tasting his mouth, ripping off his clothes and pul ing him down over her.
It was time for her to go.
Clearly sensing her thoughts, he gripped the skirt of her dress in his fist.
“You also asked me if I like being a doctor. If I became one because of my mother. A week ago I would've told you I loved my job. Now I don't know anymore. But yes, she's the reason.”
“Don't let what happened one night when you were tired change the color of your career for you. You stil love it. I know you do. Just like I know that your mother would be so proud of you. So proud of what you do. And who you are.”
“When she died,” Luke said softly, his eyes going slightly unfocused as he faded back into memories,
“Travis pretty much fel apart. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I had to keep it together for both of us. And any time he acted like a dick, I needed to be even nicer. Wherever he took a risk, I made sure to play it safe. So there'd always be one of us there to fal back on.”
“Like me and Lily,” Janica said softly. “Only in reverse.”
“I guess so.”
“You've never had a chance to let loose before, have you?”
“Not until you, sweetheart.”
His sweetheart shot like an arrow straight through her heart.
He must've seen the pain in her face, because he was suddenly saying, “Sorry isn't good enough for the way I behaved in front of Lily.”
“You don't have to apologize for being honest. For feeling what you feel.” She moved her hands over his and squeezed them. “I'm real y, real y happy for you. I'm real y glad that you're final y starting to work through everything.”
“Please don't say but.”
She had to.
“But you were right.”
His eyes flared with something that looked a hel of a lot like fear.
“No, sweetheart, I wasn't.”
“You were. You and me, we're not going to work.”
She didn't want to be the one to say goodbye. But she would.
Because she loved him that much. And he deserved to be with someone he could love whol y, without reserve. And then, maybe, in the future, if he missed her enough, he would come ba—
No.
It wasn't just the way he'd acted around Lily. The hard truth was that she had no future with Luke in the real world. Because even if a man like him who'd always walked the straight-and-narrow could fal in love with the woman she was now, she knew with utter certainty that he could never truly let himself love the wild girl she used to be too. And that was the only way it would work...her heart came as a package deal.
Al or nothing.
Which was why letting him go did not mean he was going to come back around to her.
Ever.
* * *
Luke couldn't remember the last time he'd felt pain this intense. And he couldn't remember the last time he'd been this scared. Terrified of al those empty spaces Janica was going to leave him with.
Al his life he'd done what was fair, what was expected of him. Al his life he'd put helping other people over helping himself.
Right now, he had to try to help himself.
“Do you remember what you said? About not being able to stop yourself from loving me? No matter what?”
Even as the words came, he knew they weren't fair. He shouldn't be using her words of love against her. Especial y when he hadn't even come close to giving them back to her yet.
“Of course I remember,” she said gently, as if she knew how deeply her leaving was going to cut him and she wanted to try to soften the blow in any way she could.
“I'm keeping that promise, Luke.”
He watched a tear fal down her cheek and had to touch her, had to brush it away. She turned her face into his palm for a split second and he prayed, silently begged the universe to give her back to him.
Please don't let her leave me.
But then she was pushing off the couch. Moving away. Away from him.
Taking al of her warmth and softness with her.
“I love you, Luke. Enough to know that you don't belong with me.” She picked up her bag. “I've got to go now.”
“How can you leave when I think I'm fal ing in love with you?”
She went completely stil , not moving at al , not even blinking. “If you ever know for sure, let me know.”
She was halfway down the stairs when he said, when he begged, “
Stay.”
She'd said the same thing to him that first night. Now she was the one leaving without a backward glance.
Janica had never worked harder. It was amazing the things she could accomplish without a heart. She final y had her col ection accepted by the department store chain in Japan that she'd been wanting to get into for years. One of her hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind dresses had been selected for display at the Museum of Fashion in Paris. Teen Vogue had cal ed about a half-page feature on up-and-coming designers.
She was getting everything she wanted for her career. And she was miserable.
Not that anyone knew it, of course. Not even Lily. Mostly because Janica had gone out of her way to avoid her big sister. Actual y, she'd gone out of her way to avoid everyone. She hadn't seen her friends, hadn't gone dancing, had barely left her studio for fourteen days and nights.
Tonight, however, she'd been unable to come up with a good enough excuse to miss a family barbecue.
“He isn't coming, Jan,” Lily had told her on the phone that morning.
“It's okay if he does.”
It wasn't, of course. Saying that was nothing but sheer bravado. But the thing was, even though it wasn't at al okay now, it was going to have to get okay. Because at some point she was going to have to learn to deal with him.
At some point she was going to have to learn how to be in the same room with Luke and stil be in love with him.
At some point she was going to have to figure out a way to watch Luke talk or drink or walk around and not replay, in excruciating detail, how it had felt when she was being touched by his hands, kissed by his mouth. And at some point her brain was going to learn how to stop replaying his parting words.
I think I'm falling in love with you.
Obviously, though, he'd been wrong. Because she hadn't heard a word from him in the two weeks since she'd left the cabin in Big Sur.
After making a pit stop at the cupcake store, she headed over to Lily and Travis's house. The kids greeted her as if it had been a lifetime since they had seen her.
“They've missed you, Jan,” Lily said. “We al have.”
“Cupcakes.”
She held the box out between them, as if she were trying to use it as a barrier, as a way to keep Lily from trying to get her to spil out everything she was barely holding back. But when Lily took the box and put it on the counter, judging by the way her sister was looking at her, Janica had a bad feeling about the barbecue.
“He's coming,” Janica said in a flat voice. Lily nodded. “I'm sorry. When Travis told me I could have kil ed him.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about. Like I said before, I'l deal.”
Not wel , probably, but that was beside the point. Violet reached a dirty hand into Janica's bag and pul ed out some pretty pink ribbon and tul e. “Is this for me?”
“You bet,” Janica said, picking up the bag and heading into the backyard. “We are going to make you and Sam some special barbecue outfits.”
Lily spoke in the soothing tone that Janica remembered so wel from their childhood. “He's going to come to his senses, honey. I know he is.”
But Janica was already measuring ribbon and tul e.
* * *
Fourteen sunrises. Fourteen sunsets. Three meals a day. A handful of hours of sleep every night. Every minute, every second, he'd missed her. On the phone with Travis that morning, his brother had mentioned a barbeque. Evidently, Lily hadn't said a word to her husband about finding Luke and Janica up at the cabin together. If she had, Luke knew he would have never heard the end of it from his twin. Why, he'd wondered, had she kept something so big from her husband?
But it hadn't taken a brain surgeon to figure out why. Lily was waiting for Luke to tel his brother—to tel the entire goddamned world—how he felt about Janica. Hel , they were al waiting for that.
When he'd asked Travis if Janica was going to be there, his twin had said, “I think so. Lily said something about cupcakes. That usual y means her sister is attached to them. I swear, she's a total sugar addict.”
A flash of kissing her sweet lips, sticky from s'mores, on the beach had assaulted him.
The sound of Janica's laughter floated al the way out to the sidewalk and he stumbled, nearly dropping the bottle of wine he was holding. The front door was unlocked and he let himself inside. After putting the merlot down on the kitchen counter, he walked into the living room where there was a sliding glass door that led out to a huge atrium.
Janica was dancing with the kids to a pop song he'd often heard playing at the hospital. Violet and Sam were dressed in ribbons and fabric and Janica was holding their hands and spinning in a circle. He swore to God he'd never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his entire life.
He loved her.
Nothing had ever been so perfectly, blatantly obvious. Al these years he'd tried to tel himself she was al about taking. But he'd been blindly, stupidly wrong about her.
She'd given and given to him, never once asking anything for herself. And looking at her with her niece and nephew, seeing, knowing how completely open and joyous she was with them, the truth hit him like a ton of bricks.
He'd lied to himself al those years—wasting each and every one of them—to try and keep himself safe. Safe from losing someone he loved again.
When it turned out that the only true safety he'd known since he was ten years old was with Janica. It didn't make any sense. He wasn't at al sure how—or if—she would fit into his world, but none of that seemed to matter anymore. If the two of them had to go live on a remote island to make it work, that's what they'd do. Travis came around the corner just then, clapping him on the shoulder. “Hey bro. Just in time for the gril ing to begin.”
That was when Janica looked up and final y saw him, her eyes going wide, her face flushing an even deeper shade of rose.
He didn't answer his brother. Instead, he walked straight over to the woman who meant everything to him. The woman who had given him her heart again and again.
“I—”
The part of him that stil couldn't believe he was going to say it—to Janica of al people!—made him pause. Damn it. What was wrong with him?
She needs to know how you feel. And then maybe, if
you're the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet, she'll
take you back. Just spit it out already. You might not
have picked her, but that doesn't matter anymore. It
wasn't your choice to love her, but that doesn't
change the fact that you do.
It isn't going to kill you to say it, to admit the way you
really feel. Maybe it will even save you.
“I love you.”
The kids continued to dance around her as the song played on, but Janica just stood there and stared at him.
Why wasn't she throwing herself in his arms? Why wasn't she saying the words back to him.
“I love you,” he said again. “I can't help myself. I've tried for so hard, for so long to stop feeling what I feel for you, but the truth is I've never been able to help myself, Janica. It shouldn't have taken me this long to figure out that I love you. So much, sweetheart.”
The tension between them grew so palpable that even the kids stopped dancing. Lily, Travis, and both kids stood in silence, al of them waiting for what came next. Final y, Janica dropped the children's hands and moved toward him. His heart had just started to beat again when she said, “Thank you for letting me know.”
And then, instead of walking into his arms, she walked past them.
Al the way out the door.
And out of his life.
* * *
He heard Travis say, “Take the kids, Lily,” and then his brother was right there in his face.
“What the fuck was that?” His twin was incredulous.
“I love her.”
And he'd lost her.
Travis shook his head, looking more confused than he ever had. “I don't get it. You and Janica? How? When?
Where?”
“A few weeks ago. I went to her apartment.”
He'd been in pain and she'd been the person he'd turned to. The only person who could give him what he must have known he desperately needed.
Not just her body.
But her heart too.
“She's right, you know. I don't deserve her.”
“Look, Luke. I don't know what the hel is going on with the two of you, but you've got to see that it could never have worked between the two of you. I mean, Janica is—”
He had his brother's shirt in his hands so quickly neither of them saw it coming. “Janica is what?”
After thirty-five years of Travis playing the tough guy and Luke playing the nice guy, everything switched in an instant.
“Say it,” Luke dared his twin, wanting nothing more than to pound his brother's face into the pavement. Clearly seeing the raw violence pounding through Luke's veins, Travis backed down. “I'm sorry, man. I like her. You know I do. I'm just surprised by your coming here and saying that to her.”
Luke forced himself to drop his brother's shirt. “Tel Lily I'm sorry I can't stay.”
An hour later Travis walked into Janica's studio as if he owned the place. She purposeful y ignored him. Which wasn't easy to do when he was hunkering over her, huge and angry.