by Bella Andre
“My colleagues were trying to tell me to get some rest, to let them take over, but I wouldn't listen. And then when we were in the OR, I—”
She leaned over and put her hand over his mouth. “Everybody makes mistakes, Luke.”
But, oh God, touching his mouth was such a bad idea. Because the only thing she could think to do next was cover it with her lips.
Taking away her hand, feeling it tremble as she put it back on her lap, she said, “Is she okay?”
“I called to check in and heard she's doing great. No thanks to me.”
“Funny,” she said, “I never pegged you for the self-pitying type.”
His eyebrows went up. “Is that what I'm doing?”
“Maybe. I wasn't there with you in the hospital, but it sounds like you've already beaten yourself up pretty bad about it. And besides,” she said with a grin that she didn't really feel, “it finally got you to my doorstep, didn't it?”
“It shouldn't have taken that, Janica.”
But it had.
She drank in his chiseled features, his all-male scent. If she stayed another sixty seconds she'd be tasting his mouth, ripping off his clothes and pulling him down over her.
It was time for her to go.
Clearly sensing her thoughts, he gripped the skirt of her dress in his fist.
“You also asked me if I like being a doctor. If I became one because of my mother. A week ago I would've told you I loved my job. Now I don't know anymore. But yes, she's the reason.”
“Don't let what happened one night when you were tired change the color of your career for you. You still love it. I know you do. Just like I know that your mother would be so proud of you. So proud of what you do. And who you are.”
“When she died,” Luke said softly, his eyes going slightly unfocused as he faded back into memories, “Travis pretty much fell apart. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I had to keep it together for both of us. And any time he acted like a dick, I needed to be even nicer. Wherever he took a risk, I made sure to play it safe. So there'd always be one of us there to fall back on.”
“Like me and Lily,” Janica said softly. “Only in reverse.”
“I guess so.”
“You've never had a chance to let loose before, have you?”
“Not until you, sweetheart.”
His sweetheart shot like an arrow straight through her heart.
He must've seen the pain in her face, because he was suddenly saying, “Sorry isn't good enough for the way I behaved in front of Lily.”
“You don't have to apologize for being honest. For feeling what you feel.” She moved her hands over his and squeezed them. “I'm really, really happy for you. I'm really glad that you're finally starting to work through everything.”
“Please don't say but.”
She had to.
“But you were right.”
His eyes flared with something that looked a hell of a lot like fear.
“No, sweetheart, I wasn't.”
“You were. You and me, we're not going to work.”
She didn't want to be the one to say goodbye. But she would.
Because she loved him that much. And he deserved to be with someone he could love wholly, without reserve.
And then, maybe, in the future, if he missed her enough, he would come ba—
No.
It wasn't just the way he'd acted around Lily. The hard truth was that she had no future with Luke in the real world. Because even if a man like him who'd always walked the straight-and-narrow could fall in love with the woman she was now, she knew with utter certainty that he could never truly let himself love the wild girl she used to be too. And that was the only way it would work...her heart came as a package deal.
All or nothing.
Which was why letting him go did not mean he was going to come back around to her.
Ever.
* * *
Luke couldn't remember the last time he'd felt pain this intense. And he couldn't remember the last time he'd been this scared. Terrified of all those empty spaces Janica was going to leave him with.
All his life he'd done what was fair, what was expected of him. All his life he'd put helping other people over helping himself.
Right now, he had to try to help himself.
“Do you remember what you said? About not being able to stop yourself from loving me? No matter what?”
Even as the words came, he knew they weren't fair. He shouldn't be using her words of love against her.
Especially when he hadn't even come close to giving them back to her yet.
“Of course I remember,” she said gently, as if she knew how deeply her leaving was going to cut him and she wanted to try to soften the blow in any way she could. “I'm keeping that promise, Luke.”
He watched a tear fall down her cheek and had to touch her, had to brush it away. She turned her face into his palm for a split second and he prayed, silently begged the universe to give her back to him.
Please don't let her leave me.
But then she was pushing off the couch. Moving away.
Away from him.
Taking all of her warmth and softness with her.
“I love you, Luke. Enough to know that you don't belong with me.” She picked up her bag. “I've got to go now.”
“How can you leave when I think I'm falling in love with you?”
She went completely still, not moving at all, not even blinking. “If you ever know for sure, let me know.”
She was halfway down the stairs when he said, when he begged, “Stay.”
She'd said the same thing to him that first night.
Now she was the one leaving without a backward glance.
Chapter Twenty-one
Janica had never worked harder. It was amazing the things she could accomplish without a heart.
She finally had her collection accepted by the department store chain in Japan that she'd been wanting to get into for years. One of her hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind dresses had been selected for display at the Museum of Fashion in Paris. Teen Vogue had called about a half-page feature on up-and-coming designers.
She was getting everything she wanted for her career.
And she was miserable.
Not that anyone knew it, of course. Not even Lily. Mostly because Janica had gone out of her way to avoid her big sister. Actually, she'd gone out of her way to avoid everyone. She hadn't seen her friends, hadn't gone dancing, had barely left her studio for fourteen days and nights.
Tonight, however, she'd been unable to come up with a good enough excuse to miss a family barbecue.
“He isn't coming, Jan,” Lily had told her on the phone that morning.
“It's okay if he does.”
It wasn't, of course. Saying that was nothing but sheer bravado. But the thing was, even though it wasn't at all okay now, it was going to have to get okay.
Because at some point she was going to have to learn to deal with him.
At some point she was going to have to learn how to be in the same room with Luke and still be in love with him.
At some point she was going to have to figure out a way to watch Luke talk or drink or walk around and not replay, in excruciating detail, how it had felt when she was being touched by his hands, kissed by his mouth.
And at some point her brain was going to learn how to stop replaying his parting words.
I think I'm falling in love with you.
Obviously, though, he'd been wrong. Because she hadn't heard a word from him in the two weeks since she'd left the cabin in Big Sur.
After making a pit stop at the cupcake store, she headed over to Lily and Travis's house. The kids greeted her as if it had been a lifetime since they had seen her.
“They've missed you, Jan,” Lily said. “We all have.”
“Cupcakes.”
She held the box out between them, as if she were trying to use it as a barrier, as a way to keep Lily from trying to get her to spill
out everything she was barely holding back. But when Lily took the box and put it on the counter, judging by the way her sister was looking at her, Janica had a bad feeling about the barbecue.
“He's coming,” Janica said in a flat voice.
Lily nodded. “I'm sorry. When Travis told me I could have killed him.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about. Like I said before, I'll deal.”
Not well, probably, but that was beside the point.
Violet reached a dirty hand into Janica's bag and pulled out some pretty pink ribbon and tulle. “Is this for me?”
“You bet,” Janica said, picking up the bag and heading into the backyard. “We are going to make you and Sam some special barbecue outfits.”
Lily spoke in the soothing tone that Janica remembered so well from their childhood. “He's going to come to his senses, honey. I know he is.”
But Janica was already measuring ribbon and tulle.
* * *
Fourteen sunrises. Fourteen sunsets. Three meals a day. A handful of hours of sleep every night.
Every minute, every second, he'd missed her.
On the phone with Travis that morning, his brother had mentioned a barbeque. Evidently, Lily hadn't said a word to her husband about finding Luke and Janica up at the cabin together. If she had, Luke knew he would have never heard the end of it from his twin.
Why, he'd wondered, had she kept something so big from her husband?
But it hadn't taken a brain surgeon to figure out why.
Lily was waiting for Luke to tell his brother—to tell the entire goddamned world—how he felt about Janica.
Hell, they were all waiting for that.
When he'd asked Travis if Janica was going to be there, his twin had said, “I think so. Lily said something about cupcakes. That usually means her sister is attached to them. I swear, she's a total sugar addict.”
A flash of kissing her sweet lips, sticky from s'mores, on the beach had assaulted him.
The sound of Janica's laughter floated all the way out to the sidewalk and he stumbled, nearly dropping the bottle of wine he was holding. The front door was unlocked and he let himself inside. After putting the merlot down on the kitchen counter, he walked into the living room where there was a sliding glass door that led out to a huge atrium.
Janica was dancing with the kids to a pop song he'd often heard playing at the hospital. Violet and Sam were dressed in ribbons and fabric and Janica was holding their hands and spinning in a circle.
He swore to God he'd never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his entire life.
He loved her.
Nothing had ever been so perfectly, blatantly obvious.
All these years he'd tried to tell himself she was all about taking. But he'd been blindly, stupidly wrong about her.
She'd given and given to him, never once asking anything for herself. And looking at her with her niece and nephew, seeing, knowing how completely open and joyous she was with them, the truth hit him like a ton of bricks.
He'd lied to himself all those years—wasting each and every one of them—to try and keep himself safe. Safe from losing someone he loved again.
When it turned out that the only true safety he'd known since he was ten years old was with Janica.
It didn't make any sense. He wasn't at all sure how—or if—she would fit into his world, but none of that seemed to matter anymore. If the two of them had to go live on a remote island to make it work, that's what they'd do.
Travis came around the corner just then, clapping him on the shoulder. “Hey bro. Just in time for the grilling to begin.”
That was when Janica looked up and finally saw him, her eyes going wide, her face flushing an even deeper shade of rose.
He didn't answer his brother. Instead, he walked straight over to the woman who meant everything to him. The woman who had given him her heart again and again.
“I—”
The part of him that still couldn't believe he was going to say it—to Janica of all people!—made him pause.
Damn it. What was wrong with him?
She needs to know how you feel. And then maybe, if you're the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet, she'll take you back. Just spit it out already. You might not have picked her, but that doesn't matter anymore. It wasn't your choice to love her, but that doesn't change the fact that you do.
It isn't going to kill you to say it, to admit the way you really feel. Maybe it will even save you.
“I love you.”
The kids continued to dance around her as the song played on, but Janica just stood there and stared at him.
Why wasn't she throwing herself in his arms? Why wasn't she saying the words back to him.
“I love you,” he said again. “I can't help myself. I've tried for so hard, for so long to stop feeling what I feel for you, but the truth is I've never been able to help myself, Janica. It shouldn't have taken me this long to figure out that I love you. So much, sweetheart.”
The tension between them grew so palpable that even the kids stopped dancing. Lily, Travis, and both kids stood in silence, all of them waiting for what came next.
Finally, Janica dropped the children's hands and moved toward him. His heart had just started to beat again when she said, “Thank you for letting me know.”
And then, instead of walking into his arms, she walked past them.
All the way out the door.
And out of his life.
* * *
He heard Travis say, “Take the kids, Lily,” and then his brother was right there in his face.
“What the fuck was that?” His twin was incredulous.
“I love her.”
And he'd lost her.
Travis shook his head, looking more confused than he ever had. “I don't get it. You and Janica? How? When? Where?”
“A few weeks ago. I went to her apartment.”
He'd been in pain and she'd been the person he'd turned to. The only person who could give him what he must have known he desperately needed.
Not just her body.
But her heart too.
“She's right, you know. I don't deserve her.”
“Look, Luke. I don't know what the hell is going on with the two of you, but you've got to see that it could never have worked between the two of you. I mean, Janica is—”
He had his brother's shirt in his hands so quickly neither of them saw it coming. “Janica is what?”
After thirty-five years of Travis playing the tough guy and Luke playing the nice guy, everything switched in an instant.
“Say it,” Luke dared his twin, wanting nothing more than to pound his brother's face into the pavement.
Clearly seeing the raw violence pounding through Luke's veins, Travis backed down. “I'm sorry, man. I like her. You know I do. I'm just surprised by your coming here and saying that to her.”
Luke forced himself to drop his brother's shirt. “Tell Lily I'm sorry I can't stay.”
Chapter Twenty-two
An hour later Travis walked into Janica's studio as if he owned the place. She purposefully ignored him. Which wasn't easy to do when he was hunkering over her, huge and angry.
“Hey sis. How's it going? Since you missed dinner, I brought you a burger.”
She didn't buy the greeting. There was nothing easy, nothing nice about it apart from the actual words.
“I'm busy. What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
Still not bothering to look up from her computer where she was double-checking orders for the month, she said, “Fine. Talk.”
“What the fuck kind of game are you playing with my brother?”
Knowing her own eyes were blazing now, she shot back, “You want me to draw you some dirty pictures?”
His mouth tightened, the mouth that was so like his twin's and, yet, so completely different. Of course she saw the surface similarities between Luke and Travis, but to her, that's all they were. Surface stu
ff.
She wasn't in love with Travis. She would never, ever be in love with Travis.
But she loved Luke with every goddamned cell of her body.
She watched Travis take a step back from her desk, walk to the window to look at the crowded city streets below.
“You know I've always thought you were a little bit crazy, right?”
He wasn't trying to be mean, and the truth was she didn't take offense. It was just the way she and Travis talked to each other.
“Yup,” she agreed. “And you know I've always thought you were a little bit of an asshole, right?”
Finally, the hint of a grin.
“But here's the thing—I never thought you were stupid, Janica. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met. Both you and my brother have big, huge brains.”
Her stupid heart skipped a beat at the mention of Luke, damn it.
“So then why the hell are you acting so stupid now?”
It killed her not to combat his awful words with worse words of her own. But, really, what was the point? Nothing Travis did or said was going to change the truth of the matter.
Luke didn't want to love her. And she couldn't do a damn thing to change that.
Except for stupidly, foolishly hoping that maybe, at some point in the future, he'd look at her and see everything he wasn't seeing now. Because didn't he see that loving her despite himself wasn't enough?
“I've got a lot of work to catch up on,” she said by way of a get-the-hell-out.
But Travis didn't get the picture. Or, maybe he did, but he didn't give a fuck what she wanted him to do.
“We all know you're in love with him.”
She met Luke's twin's gaze with clear, direct eyes.
“I am. So ridiculously, pathetically in love with your brother that I can hardly believe it.” A muscle in Travis's jaw twitched in what she figured was shock and she continued with, “And trust me, he knows it.”
After all, she'd only told him about a hundred times.
Clearly caught off guard by her sensationally straightforward admission, Travis stopped, stared, then sat down hard on her leather couch.