by Zante, Lily
“If that’s what you think then I don’t know what you’re doing here,” he shot back.
“Because I—” she paused. It wasn’t love. She didn’t know what love was. She really didn’t. Not the type of love that Savannah knew. But she had liked taking care of him. She had liked knowing that he needed her, because nobody had needed her before the way Luke had needed her now. “Because I was trying to be like most normal decent people. I was trying to do the right thing.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Because she was starting to think he might be changing for the better. “Because sometimes you can be nice.”
“Nice?” he scoffed.
“I do care about you, even if it’s not the same anymore.”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “What do you mean it’s not the same?”
“You know it’s not,” she replied, and before he could question her, she remembered something she had been meaning to ask him. “Why does Maggie annoy you so much?” She wanted to know why he’d fallen out with his brother, but that could wait. Her need to find out about Maggie was more pressing.
“She just does.”
“And your brother?” She sat down next to him, not close, but with enough space between them that he wouldn’t feel she was intruding. Any conversation about his family seemed to hem him in, and she wanted answers. She’d let it go too long, watching, saying nothing, and yet it was clear to her that the biggest problems he had stemmed from them.
“Don’t ever talk to me about my brother.”
She pressed her lips together. “You hate Maggie because she married your brother?”
He looked at her as if she had stumbled across a secret. “Did Amanda tell you?”
She had stumbled across a secret. She remained quiet, letting him think what he wanted, then, when he didn’t let up, “Your sister said she was surprised and pleased to hear that we’d been together for a while.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, as if doing so would block out everything. “I needed someone to go with me.”
She frowned, not understanding. “Go where?”
“To the wedding. I would have hired someone, but you were on the scene, and you seemed different.”
She swallowed, still not understanding where this was going. “Different?” she asked, hoping to coax it out of him.
“With your banking background. I knew you’d make a better impression on my family, in case you were unlucky enough to get into a conversation with them.”
“To make an impression on your family?” she asked, alarm bells going off in her head. She shifted, twisting her body towards him. “Who were you trying to impress, your father?”
“That piece of shit.” The mere mention of the man seemed to make Luke’s muscles freeze up. Lifting his hand to his neck again, he gingerly touched below the scar. “I think I impressed him the most when he caught me screwing his whore.”
Her eyes nearly bugged right out of her head. “You… you did what?”
“I wanted to get my own back,” he said, staring at the floor, his hands steepled together. “After my mom killed herself, I knew the only way to get him back, to hit him where it hurt was to show him what it felt like when the person you loved screwed someone else.”
Sadness swirled around her, leaving her tied up in ribbons of pity and love and hurt. She felt for this man, felt his pain as acutely as if it were her own. He turned to her and smiled. “Turned out, she was only seven years older than me. So we ended up in bed.”
“She seduced you?” Kay asked, horrified. .
“I seduced her. Wasn’t hard. I was a fumbling teen until I met her.”
She tipped her head to the side, forgetting to breathe.
“She didn’t take much persuading either,” he continued, “After sleeping with a shriveled old prune like my old man, she was desperate for someone more her own age.”
She couldn’t find the words to voice her shock. The scene played out in her head and the idea of Luke as a motherless teenager seeking revenge upset her in so many ways. “But you must have been underage.”
“It’s no big deal. Sex is sex. I was almost of age. And at least I wasn’t a virgin anymore.”
Now she understood it all, his coldness, and contempt, and the way he had sometimes treated her. This man was messed up, and he was hurting, and none of it was his fault. She leaned towards him, putting her arm around his waist. “You wanted to impress your father’s wife? Is that it?” she asked, not quite understanding his quest for one-upmanship.”
Luke laughed cruelly. “This new one’s wife number three. He married the one I screwed, and then he threw her out the day he caught us. I’d been fucking her for months by the time he found out.”
“You poor thing,” she murmured. Her head was spinning out of control; the thoughts, the images and the sadness of it all, of how his young life and family had shattered. She wanted to hold Luke in her arms and cradle him.
“It was the same day he threw me out, and then I moved into Travis’s apartment.”
“There was nothing more between you two?”
“Hell no. I didn’t love her. I didn’t even care for her. I used her. She was a means to an end, and it worked. It almost destroyed him when he found out.”
It still didn’t make sense.
Who had he wanted to impress?
“I wanted Maggie to know I was doing fine.”
“What’s … ” She had started to ask what Maggie had to do with any of it, and it took a moment, maybe three or four moments, before she pieced it all together.
“She broke my heart,” he said, his voice tapering off as he looked away. “I walked in on them one day when I came back from work early,” he told her. “It must be hardwired into my DNA, walking in on people having sex.”
It was there, starting to rise, the bile, and acid, and feeling of nausea. Rising from the pit of her belly, a slow, heaving monster ready to push upwards. She could feel the room spinning around her, as if a tornado had gobbled it all up.
“But she’s married to your brother.”
“She was my girlfriend first.”
Maggie had been the one who’d left him broken-hearted. Kay remembered back to that first night, when he’d mentioned his rules. She’d hit on the truth without even realizing.
“Maybe she preferred him to me. Maybe I need to treat women better than I do. Have respect for them, but you tell me, how the hell am I supposed to do that?”
He was blabbering on, not even realizing.
“So it was Maggie you wanted to impress?”
He nodded.
And that was why he’d asked her along to the wedding? All along she had foolishly believed he’d invited her because he was starting to feel something for her.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
She scooted a couple of inches away from him, as if she was seeing him with new eyes. She had given him her all; her body, her time and her attention, and all for nothing. For a moment she was powerless to move. Paralyzed to say anything, or fight back.
The shock of what he had told her reverberated inside her head, in her belly, in every fiber of her body. She had lied when she’d said it was because of Marie that she had stepped up to take care of him. The truth was, she hadn’t done any of this because she expected a medal. She’d done it because she had genuinely cared for this guy; for this selfish, twisted man with issues. A man who could not love, and could not allow anyone to love him.
When was she ever going to learn that love didn’t come from these types of connections?
“Where are you going?” he asked, as she got up without saying a word.
“I need to go.”
He reached for her hand, and missed. “It’s not like that now. Maggie’s in my past.”
She folded her arms together. “But you used me. You took me to the wedding not because you cared, but because you had ulterior motives.”
He looked puzzled, but didn’t answer back.
&
nbsp; “You wanted to impress her, even after all these years that she’s been with your brother. You still have feelings for her.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but the denial was too hard to make. She didn’t need his validation of it. She knew, because of his actions, it was clear.
He was so messed up he couldn’t even see it.
She nodded. She was done with his bullshit.
Nothing he said to her now would make a difference.
The man needed a psychotherapist, not a girlfriend.
Chapter 39
She had been so incredibly blind, and so incredibly stupid.
Tears threatened to fall again as she rushed into her apartment block, only to find Arnold standing in front of the elevator. He turned around on hearing her footsteps, and she couldn’t hide her blotched face.
“Miss,” he said, moving out of the way, but resting his hand on her arm. “Why are you crying?”
She shook her head. Not now, Arnold.
“Did someone hurt you?” he asked, looking cross.
She shook her head again, praying that the elevator doors would open so that she could shoot right in.
“Miss.” This time he placed himself directly in front of her so that she would have to swerve around him to get in. “This ain’t like you.”
She huffed out an irritated breath, and then stopped herself. Just because Luke had put her in a foul mood didn’t mean she had to take it out on anyone else. That would be stooping to his level. “Not now, Arnold. It’s…it’s not been a good day.”
“I can see that,” he said, nodding his head, listening.
“It’s…I’ll get over it,” she said, choosing her words carefully.
“One minute, Miss,” he said, when the elevator doors swooshed open. He rushed over to his desk, grabbed something, then rushed back. He held out a large, unopened bar of chocolate. “This’ll make things look better. Won’t fix anything, but …” he nodded, shoving it further towards her as she resisted taking it. “Take it.”
She chuckled, and it felt so odd that she could laugh about something in this moment. Her eyes welled up, in gratitude.
“Thank you, Arnold.” She didn’t know what else to say. His offering overwhelmed her. It was such a simple gesture, yet full of care and concern. Worth its weight in gold. This man whom she had practically never acknowledged, had lifted her spirits when he could just as easily have ignored her. “This is…,” she was choked up by his kindness, “this is so sweet of you,” she managed as she stepped into the elevator and watched his grinning, toothless smile while the doors closed.
With Luke, she often felt that he was the taker, and she the giver. She was the one who cared, and many times she was the only one who hurt, and loved and had feelings. She had pretended it wasn’t one-sided, when she should have known from the start.
She should have put Marie right, and not gotten involved even when she found out about the cancer. She might not have ever discovered the truth about Maggie, and he might not have revealed more of his past, but would it even have mattered if she had already walked away? Ignorance would have been bliss.
He wasn’t boyfriend material, and she had been sucked in, once again, into believing he was more. But that stopped today. They were done. She didn’t need to go and explicitly break it off with him. She had suffered enough, mistakenly thinking she could fix this man and make him love her. Luke couldn’t love anyone because he couldn’t even love himself. He was in complete denial of his issues, and there was no hope in helping a man who couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with him in the first place.
She deserved better things. A decent man, and a relationship that had a future.
~ ~
“How are you feeling now?” Amanda asked.
He was mildly irritated and hoped she wasn’t going to make a habit of calling him daily just because he was a cancer survivor. She’d only seen him yesterday. “The same as yesterday,” he replied.
“Kyle said he’d like to come and see you sometime.”
“He doesn’t have to,” he said quickly. Did he need to remind her that theirs was a dysfunctional family? That they weren’t exactly regular visitors to one another’s houses, even at times like this.
Weddings, yes.
Funerals, yes.
The next time would be whenever his old man kicked the bucket. If he could be bothered to go.
“We shouldn’t be strangers, Luke.”
He scratched his brow. God, no. He didn’t want to listen to this now. “We’re all busy, Amanda. This works for us.”
“I would like my kids to know their uncles. Is that a lot to ask?”
His head jolted back in shock. “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant,” he said. Because it wouldn’t have been wise, her coming to see him when he was still radioactive.
“No! But we’re going to start trying soon.”
“Already, Amanda?” She was immature, and stupid to be making such moves so soon. The ink hadn’t dried long on their marriage certificate, and she was looking to get knocked up already. What if this man turned out to be Douchebag Number 2? “What’s the rush? Shouldn’t you wait and see how married life works out?” And why the hell would she want a kid, anyway? He was never going to make that mistake.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, sounding downcast. “You were in a lousy mood yesterday.”
“I’ve just had surgery for fucking thyroid cancer.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I know you, Luke. You never look relaxed. You’re always so wound up.”
This was exactly the thing that Kay had said to him. He said nothing.
“Maggie said you looked well.”
“She thought I looked well?” He blinked a few times, mulling over the sentence. She could hardly say he looked like shit, could she? “Why did you bring her?”
“She wanted to come. Marie told us you were at home, and recovering from that iodine treatment—”
“Marie told you?”
“How else were we going to find out?”
“Kay never told you?”
“No. Kay told me to speak to you, but then she said you were resting. She was pretty good at being evasive. If anyone understands you, it’s her.”
He ran his hand over his stubble, thinking. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. The huge argument with Kay yesterday had wiped him out, not just physically, but emotionally and he’d felt drained ever since she’d stormed out. This morning he’d lain in bed, not caring to do anything. He hadn’t even bothered to shower.
“I asked Marie a few days later,” Amanda continued, “and she said you could do with some cheering up, and that you’d be fine by the weekend. She said you’d be less radioactive.”
Dammit.
He’d blamed Kay for it. She had tried to tell him, but he hadn’t believed her, and she’d taken the brunt of his anger. “Funny how you didn’t mention it at the time.”
“I was too worried hoping you wouldn’t go off on Maggie.”
“I wish you hadn’t agreed to bring her.”
“Whatever’s happened, it’s in the past, Luke. We have to get on, otherwise what’s the point? Besides, I like your new girlfriend.”
He was about to say something, but decided it would be better not to.
“She’s nice,” Amanda continued. “Even Maggie said she was nice.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what Maggie said.”
Amanda, like his family, knew about him and Maggie, but time erased all wounds, and they had obviously forgotten the pain and the scandal.
“Daddy says if you need any money—”
“No.”
“For the best treatment—”
“I can afford the best treatment. I don’t need his dirty handouts.” It was laughable, his father trying to buy his affection back now. It was too late for any bridges to be built between them.
“It’s not a dirty—” she started to protest.
“Don’t…” Amanda had
n’t seen their mother on the blood-red bed. Neither she nor Travis had experienced what he had, and neither had they ever suffered the way he had.
While they probably hadn’t been able to forgive, they had most likely forgotten.
It was going to take him time.
“Okay, fine,” Amanda said. “I get it, Luke. I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone.”
Whatever. He was in no mood to get into a discussion with her about that now.
“Maggie feels sorry for you.”
“She shouldn’t. I have a great girlfriend, and I’m moving on.” Except that he didn’t, and he wasn’t. “Next time you decide to bring Maggie over, warn me at least.”
“I didn’t bring her. I know the score, Luke. I’m not stupid. She insisted.”
“She’s wasting her fucking time.”
“All she wants is to get on with you, and move past this.”
“She should have thought of that before she decided to jump into Travis’s bed.”
“She said it just happened. She said you were a real asshole.”
His lips curled up into a snarl. “The two of you bonded on the way here, did you?”
“Maggie and I get on,” Amanda insisted. “I hope me and Kay will too, one day.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Maggie said you used to be nasty to her, that you weren’t a great boyfriend. She said you used to mess with her head.”
He frowned, not remembering it quite in the same way. Sure, he wasn’t so lovey-dovey, and he might have said some spiteful things to her, not told her he loved her, and all that other stuff girls wanted to hear. But he never hurt her. Never laid a finger on her.
“She said that Travis listened to her, and he tried to tell her that you were a little messed up. He never made a move on her, she said, and he tried to steer her back towards you.”
He rubbed the back of his head, mentally clearing the cobwebs that enshrined events that were buried so long in the past. He tried to remember that time, but it was a haze of messed up emotions. It had been an angry, red hot, tumultuous time. He didn’t have counseling, didn’t talk to anyone, and kept everything bottled up.