They're Strictly Friends (Tough Love Spinoff Book 1)

by Chloe Liese

  “I couldn’t,” he whispered against my hair. “I wouldn’t have the strength to do it if I had to look you in the face and say goodbye.”

  I knocked my head against his chest, and he took it. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I can’t stop hurting you. Because I’m fighting this, and I can’t seem to surrender when I keep unfairly leaning on you.”

  I stared up at him. “But I could help you. I could learn by your side.”

  “It’s not healthy for me to allow you to help this way,” he said, voice strained, stepping away. “I will always want your partnership, but what we’ve been doing…it’s not that.” He choked on what I feared might be a sob and caught it, slamming his hand against his chest as emotion tightened his face. “Perhaps you think it’s arrogance or pride or chauvinism, Elodie, but it’s not. I need to be independent and brave, so I can stand proudly next to you and face life together. I will be the man in your life, or I won’t be in it at all. You deserve someone who’s strong and steadfast, not dragging you into the depths of unhealthy coping and misery.”

  A tear streaked down his cheek as he walked up to me, grabbing my face in his hands. “This stops now, this business of you settling for my arseheaded behavior and me leaning on your grace.” He released me and stepped back.

  “Lucas,” I whispered.

  Rounding on me, he kissed me roughly, passionately, desperately. I grabbed his shirt, tugged him against me. “I will not fail us,” he said. “I need you to trust that, Elodie. I have to know you believe this will work.”

  “I do,” I whispered through tears that choked my voice. “Lucas, I love you. I’ll m-miss you.”

  He held my face, kissed me once more, a smash of tongues and lips, deep, hard tastes and bites. When he pulled away, his eyes met mine. “No, you won’t. You won’t miss who I’ve been. You’ll miss who you wanted me to be. The man I should have been.” One last kiss, long and firm, before he stood back. “And when you see me next, that’s the man you’ll meet.”

  He strode past me, into the house, and panic gripped my heart. I stared at the ground, trying to breathe but finding it impossible. This was all wrong. We were supposed to do this together. Guilt and fear tightened my throat. Had I done this? Pushed him, demanded more than I should have? Where was he going? What would happen?

  I ran through the house to the door and swallowed the desperate need to scream his name as his cab disappeared down the road.

  He was gone. He was really gone.

  I crumpled in the doorway and sat there longer than I should have, shivering and bottling my cries. I wanted to beat something senseless. I wanted to scream at the universe for making us go through this. For taking his sight and wrenching us apart.

  Finally, I stumbled into the house. The sun broke the horizon and glanced across the piano lid. Dust floated through the air. No running water or thundering feet. No ten-minute toothbrushing or morning lovemaking. It felt wrong without him.

  I walked to the kitchen in a daze, running my hand along the cold, smooth counter, empty of his glasses and tumbler of water, until my fingers bumped into the French press, followed by the grinder. He’d still set out the coffee for me and my coffee mug. And underneath it, an envelope.

  Shoving the coffee cup away, I snatched it up and tore it open.

  My dearest Elodie,

  You’re reading this letter because by now you’ve woken up, poked about, and realized I’m not here. For my cowardly disappearance, I am already sorry. I simply can’t look you in the eye and disappoint you. I know you want to face this together, Elodie. I think I’ve tried, you know? In my poor, shoddy way, but it’s not been enough. I’ve begun to accept that this part of the journey I must go alone.

  You know already I’m a prideful arse and terribly English—I like to leave the past in the past, the unpleasant stuff buried, and as much as I can, act as if nothing’s ever wrong. It’s a pathology of our culture, Elodie, and I’m not defending it, but simply explaining that this is how I’ve always worked. I’m trying to be better—to be honest and open. It’s not easy, but knowing what joy it brings you—the closeness and intimacy it affords us when I’ve managed it—it’s a habit I aspire to become much better versed in.

  In therapy, I realized something during our conversation—part of why I’m so poor at vulnerability is that I’ve spent so much of my life not feeling like I needed it. I’ve had it easy—financial comfort, a gratifying career. A decade in the Prem, playing the beautiful game, happy, carefree and pampered. I’ve had the world at my fingertips.

  But as I look back, it all began to shift when I decided to leave United. I was thirty-one, and there was young fresh blood ready to step in. I’d also begun to notice oddities in my vision, which of course, I’m sure not to your surprise, I ignored and dismissed. But in the back of my mind, I knew something was wrong, that I had to make my exit from the highest class of football. I considered staying put and retiring, transitioning to Farthington then, as I’ve now done, but, Elodie, I just knew in my bones I was going to lose this experience and never have it again—being the sharp eyes, the fast hands, the dependable last man. I wasn’t ready to leave the rush of adrenaline as you walk onto the pitch, the blare of the lights, the sound of the ball as it cracks off your boot and flies through the air, the feeling of belonging to my mates, working brutally hard to be better as individual players and as a unit. I couldn’t leave it yet.

  The fact is this subtle transition to playing in America allowed me to extend the delusion that everything was “all right” when in truth, I knew it wasn’t. Denial has been my crutch for too long, Elodie. And I’ve struggled to want to give you the whole of me as I battle these building feelings of inadequacy after so long trying (and often succeeding, frankly) to live up to my ideals and highest expectations of myself.

  I say all this, not to excuse my behavior or minimize its impact on you, but to try to practice what I aspire to—vulnerability. I’ve behaved badly, mired in my own pain and grief, too often pushing you away rather than letting you in. You have every right to tell me to sod off and never look back, but I hope for our sake, you can forgive me, allow me to earn back your trust that this is the last time I will step away from you like this.

  I must face the past and my present, Elodie, so I can live in our future, darling, and not be a monster, consumed by grief and anger. Because you deserve a partner who knows how to live well with you, not because of you. When we sort all this out, and have another baby—yes, we’re having a houseful of them, Elodie—I want to be a happy husband and dad who can navigate blindness and marriage and fatherhood healthily. And then, God willing, when I’ve long accustomed myself to the dark world that awaits me, even should we have a little girl, and she gives us grandsons, they will have the necessary gene therapies to send this horrific disease into the obscurity of medical history.

  We’re engaged. We’re young, surrounded by smashing friends and family. We have our health, mostly, and we love our jobs. This should have been a happy season for us, and I sullied it because of old devastation, new wounds, and their scars. This divide between my heart and my head, I take full responsibility for it. You know I’ve sat down and chatted it out with the shrink about these things, from my bad breakup years ago to impending blindness. I’ll continue that, I promise you. And I’m doing it for no one but me and you, and our future children. I want to be the man we all deserve, because I can’t imagine a point to my life besides that. You’ve altered it that significantly, Elodie, and though you might not believe it, or even think of me the same way anymore for my silent retreat this morning, I can’t stand for you not to know that you’re truly the fulcrum of my existence, the point from which everything else is done, weighed and measured.

  The very first time I met you, and you tripped into my arms at the hospital after Nairne’s fall, I knew I desired you—that you were beautiful and kind, that you loved your friend loyally and had a generous heart. But it was that hot summer da
y in London, when I came upon you in the park as you picnicked with our friends, that I knew I loved you. You can call me ridiculous, say it was infatuation or lust, not love, but you’d be wrong, because I know my heart, and I can tell you that it beat differently the moment I saw you that day. You were sprawled out, your chestnut curls fluttering about in the wind. The sun caught those tiny blond pieces near your temples, and you had a flower stuck in your hair. Your face was so peaceful, and your strong, long body lay soft and sated, like you were one with the earth and the blossoms surrounding you. You were Diana the huntress and Aurora the dawn. You were fierce yet tender, strong and soft. You were my perfect fit, I knew it already. And I knew you had to be mine.

  And since that time, I’ve done a spectacularly terrible job of showing you just how sure I am of that, how much I know our lives must be forever entwined. I yanked you around—protecting my heart, deferring my actions, telling myself it could all amount to nothing when in truth I lived for every moment I got with you, every glance or begrudging laugh you gave me. Those breadcrumbs were my sustenance, and rather than be brave and bold—tearing after you and the life we should have, I moped and wasted away, like the arse that I am, terrified that I cared for you as much as I did, and terrified that I might not ever get to hold you in my arms.

  Nairne and Zed’s wedding was my low point—I knew about my prognosis, and I was feeling desperately bleak. Then you had to walk around all night as if you floated on air, like the brightest star in the night sky with your sapphire dress, those glittering diamonds in your ears and on your neck. You were the love I knew I’d never have, because I could not fathom giving you my humiliation, my fear, my pain, and thus my heart.

  I’m not making such a nice case for myself, am I? But this letter isn’t about me convincing you of anything, as if I could—you’re a singular-minded woman, for which I love and admire you immensely. It’s about being honest with you as I’ve failed to be thus far, so that you might know how I am weak and how I am determined to become strong. Why I have faltered and will falter, yet differently in the future, if you decide to wait for me.

  The last thing I have to say is this—after how I’ve behaved and what I’ve said, I don’t want you to stay if it’s not your heart’s desire. Please do me that honor and be honest about what you want, as I have tried to be with you. But know that if you love me as you’ve said—if you can forgive me, if you do want me—I’m yours, darling, every scrap of me, until the very end.

  My mind’s starting to scatter, and my hand hurts from writing, so forgive that my form’s rather falling apart. I want to finish by saying how much I miss you already, how horribly I feel, how very much I wanted to wake you in bed and worship your body, then never hurt you again like I have.

  Stay here. Be at home. Our home. I’ll let a flat, where I’ll do what I need to learn the ropes of vision loss. When I’ve determined I’m ready, when I know I’m worthy to even ask your forgiveness and another chance, I’ll come home, I promise.

  Final very unromantic note: Dad’s graciously holding down the fort for me until the new year. That’s the longest I’m giving myself to pull myself out of this—five weeks. If working with him is too much, take as long a leave of absence as you need. Dad and Gina and the lads will figure it out.

  That’s all I can write, even though my heart is bursting with so much more that it wants to say. But it must wait, mustn’t it? Until I’m worthy to share it all with you.

  I love you, Elodie, and I always will.

  Your Lucas

  Tears slipped down my cheeks. The clock ticked loudly, the only noise in the whole house. Staring down at his words, I ran my fingers along the dried ink as it blurred, and pressed it to my lips.

  “What a horribly poetic, beautiful, infuriating man.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Elodie

  Snow drifted against the black sky. It was bloody frigid, so cold that each inhale burned my lungs.

  “Yes, yes, goodnight!” Jack called, sending off the last of the Farthington stragglers. Tugging his coat against his body, he walked my way. “Thank you for all your hard work these past four weeks, Elodie. I’m so grateful to you, and I know Lucas had peace, confident he was leaving the place in good hands while he’s gone.”

  The air thickened with unease. It was the first time Jack and I had even spoken of Lucas the whole time. But we’d been buried in work, trying to survive. Now it was time to finally come up for air, and that meant seeing the landscape around us.

  “Well, you know I love Farthington, and all of you. I’m glad we could do a good job of it.”

  He shuffled his feet a bit and drew a line through the freshly laid snow. “Indeed. Well, whether or not Lucas joins us, I’d love to keep Christmas with you.”

  I took his hand and squeezed it gently. “You know I’d like that too, but I don’t think it’s wise. I should wait to decide until I hear from him.”

  “He hasn’t contacted you this whole time? Not even to plan for the holiday?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t expect him to, Jack. If he needed to be apart from me while he did this, I wouldn’t see why he’d find talking helpful.” Zed had been similarly surprised by Lucas’s silence; Nairne on the other hand had only nodded her head knowingly and said, “That kind of therapy is supposed to be immersive—sounds about right for what he’s working through.”

  Jack sighed. “The git.”

  “That gives me hope.” I then told Jack what Nairne had said, given her own experience with intensive therapy. “Lucas felt incapable of treating me well given where he was. He’s keeping himself at a distance as he changes that. If he were constantly reaching out, would you think he was truly dedicating himself to the process?”

  Jack stared down at me. “No, you’re right. I’m just ready for this all to be fixed and tidy again.”

  “Yes, well, good things take time.” I was reassuring myself as much as Jack. Pressing on my toes, I planted a gentle kiss to his cheek. “That’s for Charli and all my beloved Edwardses, okay? If I don’t see you, happy Christmas, Jack.”

  I felt his eyes on me as I walked into the snowstorm. “Happy Christmas, Ellie.”

  I walked a while because I needed to wander. I was the kind of exhausted that makes you delirious, and going home to an undecorated, empty house sounded depressing.

  Busy season was done. Farthington was closed until after the new year. I had an entire evening and morning tomorrow to myself before Christmas festivities began, and I planned to spend most of it sleeping. While I’d been tired most of the past four weeks, a heavy blanket of exhaustion had come over me the last few days. Between extreme fatigue and being so bloody loaded at work, I’d barely had time or inclination to eat either yesterday or today. My stomach was tetchy, and at the moment nothing appealed except the idea of a big basket of chips and a gin and tonic—light on the tonic, heavy on the gin, extra lime.

  Just how Lucas makes it.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think about Lucas much. He was a box I’d had to put the lid on and shelve until he came back. Because when I’d left him front and center, wide open and consuming my thoughts, I’d driven myself to despair. I’d cried nightly, missing him, worried for him, grieving what I hadn’t let myself grieve when he was around. Horrible, sad thoughts: If we had children, all he wouldn’t see. Our daughter’s first goal, because I just knew she would play footie. Our son’s first piano recital. My own face as I aged, my eyes wrinkled with laugh lines, the sign of years spent happy. His ties, which he loved to sift through in the morning and decide between. Sunrises and sunsets coloring the world in shades of copper, bronze, and gold. The color of leaves in autumn. The first blossoms on the trees in spring. Sunlight sparkling on snow. The mighty ocean breaking waves along the shore.

  “Stop, Elodie,” I muttered to myself.

  When I was well-rested, when Lucas was filling my days, that grief was the farthest thought from my mind. I pictured all he would experience—the touc
h of our babies’ curly hair, the smell of our garden, the taste of our meals that we’d still make together. The slip of his rough palms against my hips and breasts and thighs. The taste of kisses and tongues and sweat on skin. The sound of piano music, the feel of cool ivory keys beneath his long fingers. I knew he’d love me passionately, that he’d figure out how to run and write checks, and read, and bike. I knew we would have a good life together. But with him gone, all that was good, and the hope that we would get that life, felt so faint—a mirage stretched into the snowy distance.

  Music crescendoed to my right as a door swung open for a couple exiting, then faded as it shut. It was the pub where I’d spent a few evenings with Gina before work got so insane even a cocktail was too much to contemplate.

  I decided to stop in.

  I’d told Nairne and Zed I’d come by tomorrow to catch up, since I’d been working madly for the past month, but tonight was all mine. I planned to get—as Nairne called it—rat arsed, sleep it off, and spend my first free day in a haze of hangover and exhaustion. Then maybe I’d not miss Lucas too horribly.

  Slumping onto a tall chair, I slapped my handbag on the bar, tugged off my jacket, and sighed.

  “That kind of day, huh?”

  An accent, not unlike Zed’s, which was my point of reference for American males. I turned to my right where the voice had come from, and froze. Dark brown hair, cut short. Slate blue eyes. A chiseled jaw and lips that were probably full and soft when he relaxed a little. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but I couldn’t place it.

  The bartender brought me my drink because he knew what I liked by now. I thanked him, took a long sip, then set it down. “Depends on what kind of day you mean.”

  He laughed dryly. “Long and soul-sucking.”

  “Then, yes,” I said.