“You really believe that?” I snap, silently wanting to believe it myself, but a part of me is still stuck in that night.
“After what I experienced this weekend with my dad, yeah, I do believe that. What happened with Barry that night changed you. You might see it as something negative, but I don’t. I see it as something that brought you closer to God, helped you rule out some real jerks in your life, and while you were growing into who you are now, I was becoming the man I should’ve been all along…for you.”
I study him for a moment. My eyes travel down his flannel shirt, now crumpled and unbuttoned at the collar, exposing a dusting of dark-brown hair. The way his dark scruff paints his jawline in shadows. How his brown eyes are revealing the battle happening inside of him.
“You might have seen yourself as broken back then. But I didn’t. I loved you just the way that you were.”
His shoulders slump in defeat. “I loved you so much that I knew I needed to change. So I got sober. I cut ties with the people who were pulling me down, and I chose a different path. It’s why I became a cop. You’re the reason that I chose a different path."
Choosing each other should always be easy.
His words from that night echo inside my head. In his own way, Luke chose me, but it also messed everything up. Choosing to love Luke has never been easy.
And before I can stop myself, I whisper, “Maybe you should’ve tried not to love me.”
His face contorts as my words physically hurt him. He takes a step back, pressing a palm onto his chest as he stares at me.
“You don’t think I tried? I convinced myself you’d be better off without me, and I tried towillmyself not to have those feelings for you. But it was pointless. So I decided to stay your best friend, no matter how difficult it was for me to choose to love you in silence. Every woman I tried to date never compared to you. As long as you're near me, my heart will always gravitate toward you. It’s been heartbreaking, loving you when I felt like I could never have you. But then this weekend happened.”
Luke looks away, his jaw flexing, before he looks back at me and walks toward me. My brain yells at me to step away, but my heart whispers for me to stay. I’ve always listened to my heart when it comes to Luke, and look at where it’s brought me.
His palms catch on my wrists, tugging me gently to him, and a shiver runs through me at the feeling of his large hands connecting with my bare skin.
“I felt like God was giving us another chance. This time, I had to do things right.”
A breath stalls in my lungs, and my heart beats rapidly. I was wrong before when I thought my heart wasn’t working properly, because now it feels as if it’s stopped functioning completely. I practically jolt out of my skin when Luke’s hand lands heavily on my hip.
I know what happened that night was years ago. We were kids, trying to figure out this thing called life, and we were meant to make some mistakes along the way. But that’s not what’s breaking my heart right now.
What hurts is that he’s carried this truth all these years and never told me. He’s loved me silently, from a distance, and never once let it show. And you know what the worst part is? I did the same thing.
I buried how I felt because I didn’t want to risk losing hisfriendship. I convinced myself that loving Luke would ruin everything we had to rebuild. The truth is, he’s always been everything to me. He still is.
“You’ve been who I’ve deserved all along,” I admit, and he shifts his body toward me, but I place a hand onto his chest to stop him. “I can’t do this right now, Luke.” There’s a quiver in my voice.
He studies my face for a moment before he releases his hold on me, taking a step back.
“This has been a lot to process. I need some time to think, and I don’t want to fight with you.”
Panic flashes behind his dark eyes as he says, “But you always fight for what you?—”
“Yeah, well, I don’t feel like fighting right now.” I exhale, feeling exhausted.
“I know I messed up by keeping this from you and that it changed everything for us. I’ve thought about what I did and have kicked myself for it every day for the last decade. We’re not kids anymore, Liv. You told me that we all make mistakes, and we all deserve the same forgiveness. I hoped you could find it in your heart to forgiveme.”
As if I hadn’t already cried enough, fresh tears fill my eyes. Luke reaches out and wipes them away with the pad of his thumb. I allow him to comfort me, for completely selfish reasons, before I take another step away from him.
“I do forgive you,” I say, pausing to suck in a breath. “But that doesn’t mean we can go back to where we left off. This changes things.”
“Please,” he says, his voice thick, “let me prove how sorry I am and how badly I want to make this right.”
“I don’t even know how we go back to being friends after all this,” I whisper, the words catching. “Too much has happened.”
Luke runs a hand over the stubble on his jaw, eyes locked on mine like he’s afraid to blink.
“Cupcake,” he says softly, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore. I want to be your everything.”
The air leaves my lungs.
