I felt a little silly. I had planned to distract him, but his very fine-looking presence was distracting me from what I needed to do. “Luke?—”
He looked at me expectantly and started to roll up his shirtsleeves. I stopped talking and watched him. Wow, he had nice forearms. All tattooed and strong, with a few delicious-looking veins running up and down and—Gah!Did he have the same plan I did? To distract me? Well, it was working. Apparently, he was a better person than me. He hadn’t looked at my boobs once, save for the single up-and-down perusal from before. But nothing lingering.
Have I lost it?
I shook my head.
Focus.
“We need to postpone our date. We have to slow down so we can be sure. I don’t want to hurt Dylan.” There. It was out. I’d said it.
“Stop worrying. I’m sure.” His voice was firm and unwavering, and his face was like stone. I knew that look. Even though I hadn’t seen it for years, I knew it. It was his stubborn look. He was going to push me and not give in. That look was how we’d ended up skydiving on our twentieth birthday. Yeah, so it was exhilarating and sort of fun, but Lily liked to keep her feet on the ground.
He took a step in my direction, and I stepped away as I gazed up at him with big eyes. I was in trouble. He knew how he was affecting me. “How can you be so sure?” I asked. I found myself up against the back of his desk, so I leaned on it to appear casual. “We’re different, Luke. It’s been a long time. You don’t really know me anymore. What if you get toknow me again, and I annoy you? I’m a worrier and I can be a pain.” I crossed my arms under my breasts, hugging myself. The air conditioning was ridiculous in here. But the action made him look! He licked his lips and stared at my chest. Ha! I still got it. But why did I want it? I was supposed to be trying to break our date so we could get our friendship solidified first.
He rolled his eyes. “Lily, you always did worry a lot. That’s not new. As for anything else that may come up, I don’t care. You’re worth it.” He took another step in my direction, then crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring my pose. His biceps bulged, and I quickly looked away.
Were we playing a game? I rejected that idea. Luke was too good for games. But he wasn’t too good to push me beyond the border of my comfort zone, a limit we were rapidly approaching.
I cleared my throat. “I’m not trying to end things or like, break up. I don’t know what we’re doing. I just want to be friends first. Why can’t we do that?”
“It’s just a date, Lily. I’m not asking you to marry me.” His irresistible half-grin was back, only this time I could see it better because of his trimmed beard.
My head snapped back to him. I held on to the edge of the desk. It wasn’tjusta date. Nothing would ever be that simple with him. There were too many feelings and expectations involved. And that was just between the two of us. Throw in my family and Dylan, not to mention Calla, and the complication level went up exponentially.
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings and I’m really not trying to jerk you around. I’m just... I can’t...” Why couldn’t I explain how I felt?
Maybe because I don’t know how I feel.
I finally said what I’d been worrying over. “Luke, what if we try to be together, and it doesn’t work out?”
“What if we try, and we are happier than we were before?”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand to see the hope in his, not when I felt so hopelessly confused.
“Lily, you can’t live in what-ifs. I did that. What if I hurt you in my sleep? What if you were afraid of me? And look where it got us. But what if I had fought for you back then? We could have been happy this whole time. I wouldn’t have missed out on years with my son. Do you want to dwell on something that might never even happen?” His eyes bored into mine. I couldn’t look away from him, even if I’d wanted to. His voice gentled. “When you are with me, I forget about everything except you, me, and the kids. I stop obsessing about the past and the struggles, and I’m just Luke again. I don’t want to lose that.”
“I don’t want to keep Dylan from you. That isn’t what this is about, it’s?—”
He cut me off. “Do you ever miss me, Lily?” I was floored by this question. Floored, then angry.
“How can you ask me that? You know what I went through trying to get to you. We talked about it yesterday.” I was getting emotional again. I had been on a roller coaster since I got home, and it had to stop. I stood straight.
He flinched. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I mean, since we’ve both been back, and you have an understanding about why I did what I did. Do you ever think about us? How it was when we were together?”
I turned away. I didn’t want him to see the tears welling up in my eyes.
“Lily, please talk to me. Look at me.”
I faced him. “Yes,” I hissed. “I can’t stop thinking about it. But I don’t want to do this now. It shouldn’t be this way, Luke.”
He had never turned away from me. “What way?” he asked gently.
“It was never supposed to be this complicated!”
He looked stricken for a second, then controlled his expression. I kept getting the feeling that he was hiding how hereally felt, that he held something back. It had always been one of our problems. He always wanted to protect me against things he thought would hurt me.
“I spent years being angry with you, Luke—and so hurt. I know now that you didn’t deliberately abandon Dylan. But for a long time, it was like an open wound that wouldn’t heal. I’m not ready for this. I don’t want to need you. I don’t want to want you like I do. I didn’t want to feel this way ever again. Now I’m wondering if I can do this at all.” The tears I’d been holding back spilled from my eyes as I turned to gaze out of the window behind his desk.
