Page 148 of All the way home

“I thought you were going to end it before . . .” Lucas trails off, sitting up and letting his hands fall. “Before Kieran.”

That’s a surprise. “Oh?”

“Weren’t you?” Lucas isn’t crying, but his nose has gone red like it always does when he’s about to.

Probably Rena should not touch him, even though it’s instinct to want to reach over and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “No. You thought . . . ?”

“You weren’t happy,” he says. “I could tell.”

Rena thinks back to last Christmas. Before everything with Kieran. That Christmas party, where Oscar had told her he was going to propose, she and Lucas had orbited each other the whole night, magnets that never quite met. She’d thought it was an off night. She’d thought Lucas was just tired.

You asked me how you were supposed to know if you actually loved someone.

Blinking, it hits her all at once. “You weren’t happy either.”

“I was trying to be,” Lucas tells her, and the first tear falls. He lets it. “I’m still trying to be.”

“Don’t we both . . . ” Rena trails off, sighs, and turns so her knee knocks against his knee. “Don’t we both deserve more than that?”

Lucas closes his eyes. A second tear rolls down his cheek. “I guess I just thought it would work out.”

“So did I.” Rena wants to laugh and cry at the same time. Choking back which of those was closer to the surface—Rena doesn’t trust herself to know—she shakes her head.

“I thought we were it,” Lucas says, with breathless desperation.

Feeling slow and sick, Rena nods. There’s a bustle of activity in her peripherals at the flight desk, but she keeps her eyes on Lucas. “It’s not that I don’t love you. In the way that I can.”

Lucas rubs a hand across his forehead.

“You know it’s not about that,” she whispers.

“I know,” he whispers back, so quiet it’s hardly audible.

And then there’s nothing left to say. Half of her—the part that feels as though she’s just stabbed herself through the ribs—wishes she could take it all back and go back to earlier when they had exchanged I-love-yous without a second thought. The other half of her feels like a kite with the string snapped cleanly in two, soaring away, suddenly weightless.

Something sharp and excruciating unfolds itself in her chest, spindly legs of glass piercing right through her heart.

“You’re one of my favorite people in the world,” she whispers.

And it’s true.

After the longest silence of Rena’s life, Lucas sighs. “What now?”

Heart aching, Rena says, “I don’t know.”

Abruptly, Lucas stands, turns to Rena, schools his features, and holds out a hand.

At first, it seems like he’s meaning to help her up, but then she realizes it’s a handshake.

So she stands up and shakes his hand.

The familiarity of his touch sears like a chemical burn.

“In an ideal world, I’d like to be friends,” he says, after she lets go. “Eventually. But . . . ”

“I understand.”

Surveying her, Lucas tilts his head. “Will you say no if I ask for a hug? Since it’s the last one.”