He’d done it when he lost Hannah.
He’d even done it after we left Piqua.
…and now he was doing it again with Kara.
“I’ll go,” I said, only talking loud enough for him to hear me. I didn’t want to be loud and risk sounding hurt or offended, but I wanted to make sure he could hear me. “I just… I know that you wouldn’t let me sit across the hall hurting. If I needed someone, you’d be there. And… I just want you to know you can talk to me. I’m here for you, Mattie.”
Matt threw open his door, and I took a quick step backward. His blonde hair was mussed, and his lips were twisted to match his red face.
He pointed a single finger at me, started to stammer something, and then he dropped his hand.
He’d considered yelling at me, but something had stopped him.
“I’ll go,” I said, and he threw his hands up in the air.
He’d already slammed his door again by the time I turned away.
I walked slowly down the stairs and found Charlie sitting right back on the couch as he read the paper.
“That went well,” I said, rolling my eyes.
If Matt didn’t want to talk to me, fine.
It’s not like I didn’t have other things to do.
I pulled my purse off the coat rack and tucked my dream journal inside. As I headed for the front door, I half-waved to Charlie, and he set the paper aside on the coffee table.
“I’ll be home in an hour or so.”
“Julie,” he said, lowering his reading glasses. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Ha! Like he didn’t know.
I took a few deep breaths and counted.
1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10….
And then I met Charlie’s stare.
“I just….” His voice trailed off as he watched me with saddened eyes. “Where will you be?”
“At the café,” I said, dropping my shoulders. “Okay?”
His eyes softened with each heavy blink.
“Yeah,” he said, pinching the top of his nose as if he couldn’t believe he was going to let me walk out the door alone. “Tell Trigger I say hi.”
“Yeah,” I said, managing a faint smile and nodding once. “I’ll do that.”
Chapter Two
Wednesday, June 05
“That’s a third-degree misdemeanor, Julie Little,” Luke said, dropping his head above my shoulder as he snuck up behind me. “You wouldn’t want me to arrest you for littering, would you?”
I looked up from my table at the sidewalk café and stared at the pile of paper airplanes I’d thrown (and neglected to pick up). A stack of at least eight—maybe nine or ten—was piled near the edge of the sidewalk and a few had even fallen in the street. The wind had carried two of my homemade planes across the brick road and over to the gutter in front of Grace and Lonnie’s flower shop.
I twisted my lips and peered at Luke from the corner of my eye.
It went without saying, yes. But he couldn’t have been more beautiful had he tried. His brown eyes softened with a gentle smile, and I turned my head to stare at him full-on. He was freshly showered, so his hair was a little damp (and it took every ounce of restraint I had not to reach over and run my fingers through every last strand).
But then I caught a whiff of the fragrant scent lingering on his skin, and I caught a breath in my throat.
Trying to ignore the fluttering butterflies in my stomach, I shook my head and tried to remember what he’d just said.
Oh.
Right.
Littering. Misdemeanor. Arrest.
“You’d arrest me?” I asked, pouting my lip and pretending like I hadn’t been completely thrown off guard by his closeness.
“Nah,” he said, planting a small peck on my cheek. He stood taller, rounded the table, and took the seat across from mine. “But I’d write you a ticket.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, finishing up the final fold on another plane. “Charlie says hi, by the way.”
“I’m sure he does,” he said, almost laughing.
It’d become somewhat of a joke between the two of us. As much as we knew Charlie didn’t want us anywhere near one another, we’d recently noticed—and taken advantage of—how much leniency he’d given me in the Luke-department. I usually got away with seeing him once or twice a week without much of a fight, but I knew better than to push my luck. If I tried gunning for more, Charlie might get fed up and put his foot down once and for all.
Still, I didn’t know what had gotten into to him, but I wasn’t going to complain. I liked lenient-Charlie.
Luke’s smile quickly faded, and he ran his fingers back through his dark hair. He lowered his gaze and stared at me with an intensity I’d only seen from him a few times before. It wasn’t anger, disappointment, or even frustration—believe me, I’d know better than anyone. I’d had a front row seat to almost every one of Luke’s highs and lows, and this wasn’t a look I immediately recognized. This look… well, it was more of a look of concern mixed with curiosity.
“It’s fine,” I said, answering his question before he even had time to ask it.
“Hmm?”
“You were going to ask about therapy,” I said, avoiding his stare as I flicked my wrist and let go of another plane. “You were going to ask, right?”
He pulled his bottom lip inward and nodded slowly.
I sensed he wanted to ask more, press harder and get more information. He’d asked several times before, but I hadn’t given him much. I didn’t necessarily enjoy the fact that I needed therapy, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea of sharing the intimate details of those sessions.
There was a lot I hadn’t told him, things I didn’t want him to know.
What would he think if he knew the truth?
I hadn’t told him about the medication Dr. Norwood prescribed; she said the pills—something called prazosin—was regularly prescribed to treat high-blood pressure, but she suggested that a nightly dose before bed may help alleviate my stress-induced nightmares. Honestly, though, I’m not sure the medicine had done much (if anything at all). But I kept taking it nonetheless.
We ordered our lunch when the waitress came around, and after she’d gone, I held on to a breath and watched Luke for a moment.
Though we’d never put an official title on our relationship, I considered him more than just a good friend… but I had no idea how he felt. Luke, as always, remained difficult to read in that respect.
But he’d made a point to be in my life. He’d occasionally stop by just to say ‘hello,’ and he never turned down an invitation to get together. He accompanied me to my senior prom, and he sat front and center as Matt and I accepted our diplomas last weekend.
I loved the time we spent together.
Our conversations were always easy, never forced. He always made an effort to touch my hand when we talked or to hug me before parting, but he’d never pressed the issue of ‘where things were going.’ I mean, that’s only something girls worry about, right? He probably hadn’t even thought about it. Not to mention the fact that he’d kept his lips far from mine, and he’d never once—not once—mentioned anything that he’d admitted back at the cabin last month.
We weren’t moving forward, but we weren’t drifting apart. We were staying still, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Luke was perfectly fine with remaining in the ‘friend zone.’
Maybe he was comfortable not being confined to the boyfriend-girlfriend label.
Maybe he liked his freedom.
Or maybe… well, maybe I had no idea what in the world to think anymore.
“I have to do writing exercises,” I said, and Luke perked up. “Dr. Norwood asked me to write everything down. I have to think back as far as I can to where the dreams begin, and then write as much as I can recall.” I swallowed hard as I remembered the entry I’d completed just a few hours earlier. My latest nightmare had been a doozy. “It’s supposed to be a cleansing process—stop pu
tting so much weight into something that isn’t real, you know? So instead of writing the end or the worst part of the dream, I’m supposed to create a new ending—something happier, something better. Something that makes me smile. I’m supposed to take the dream and put a spin on the outcome to make it something worth thinking about.”
“You’ve been doing that?” he asked, looking down at the journal on the table.
I clutched the notebook in one hand and nodded. “It’s supposed to help.”
“Has it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly.
Luke didn’t seem to understand. To him—maybe to everyone else—the treatment should’ve had one of two outcomes: it’d either helped, or it hadn’t. But it wasn’t that easy.
“The dreams have changed,” I said. “They were much more intense before, much more frightening. Conan was always there. Sometimes Derek… sometimes he never got back to the cabin in time to save me. Sometimes—most of the time—I watched myself die in that shower. That was the dream I kept having for weeks after we got home.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I was surprised to see that Luke had suffered the same reaction. His eyes had moistened, but he managed to keep from shedding a single tear.
“But then I started writing,” I said, tapping my fingers across the front of the journal. “Changing the outcome of the dreams, I guess. And… it didn’t really change the nightmares themselves. I suppose the goal was for me to fall back asleep and experience the dream all over again, but with the happier ending I’d come up with. That never happened. I’d just fall asleep and have a whole new nightmare, something completely different.”
“But they’re not as intense?” Luke asked.
“Yes and no. I mean, it’s a different kind of intensity,” I said, crinkling my nose. “That’s vague, I know.” I sighed, wishing I had a way to explain it to him. But the words weren’t there; how could I make someone understand something they had no way of understanding? “I’m sorry….”
“No, hey,” he said, reaching forward and taking my hand. “You have nothing to apologize for—”
“Well, I do,” I said, rolling my eyes to ward off the tears. “You asked me to meet you for lunch, and I’ve treated this like a therapy session.”
“I asked you to come to lunch because I wanted to see you,” he said. “And I’m open to hearing anything you have to say. Always. Okay? I don’t care if it’s about Charlie, Matt, Derek, or the fact that you think you’re losing your mind.” He smiled and shook his head. “You’re not, by the way.”
I smiled and nodded once.
“I know you say that, but you asked me here for a reason,” I said, watching one of my paper airplanes drift about twenty feet down the block. “What’s your angle?”
“Nothing,” he said, taking a drink of water. “No angle.”
“Except?”
“Except that I’ve been curious about something.”
“Ah, there it is,” I said, sitting straighter. “What are you up to, Reibeck?”
“Well,” he said, matching my posture. “There’s a pretty big day coming up for next week,” he said. “And you still haven’t asked me to join you.”
“Join me?” I asked, shaking my head. “Join me for what?”
“Your admissions meeting at the college.”
“Oh,” I said, shaking my head. “No. You’re not going to that.”
“Really?” he asked, wide-eyed and grinning. “And why not?”
“Because I’m not sure I’m even going,” I said, picking up my water to avoid meeting his stare.
I braced myself for his argument. I knew he was about to complain, argue, and throw his hands in the air—not for his sake, but for mine. I had every reason to doubt that he actually wanted to go himself, but I had every reason to believe he wanted me to.
No doubt that he (like Charlie and Matt) would lecture me about the importance of higher education. No doubt he’d tell me that I’d regret not going.
I knew Luke.
I knew exactly what he’d say.
“Well,” he said, creasing his brow. “If that’s really what you want.”
My eyes shot up from the table and met his stare.
“What do you mean if that’s really what I want?”
He half-laughed and settled back in his chair. “If that’s really what you want, then okay.”
“Simple as that?”
“Simple as that, kid,” he said. “It’s your life; you need to do what’s best for you.”
I watched Luke for a moment. Something about him had changed in recent weeks… something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
I mean, we’d all changed.
I’d had chronic nightmares triggered by post-traumatic stress.
Kara had distanced herself, turned a little colder.
Charlie had become less protective and more accepting of what I wanted.
And Luke… well, he’d become agreeable.
But then there was Derek….
I pushed Derek’s recent behavior aside and focused on the man across the table. Our lunch came out about five minutes later, and we both enjoyed our meals in near silence. Every now and then he’d mention something about work or his family, and I barely brushed over Matt and Kara’s argument; I didn’t want to give him a lot of details when I didn’t have many for myself.
“Listen,” I said after we’d finished eating. I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Thanks for lunch, but I’m going to cut this short if that’s okay? I’m exhausted. I just need to go home and rest for a little bit.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding once. He cleaned the corners of his mouth with a napkin and then set it aside. “Not a problem.”
We stood in unison, and he stepped forward to wrap me in a tight hug. My tense muscles relaxed inside his embrace, and I rested my ear against his chest. Listening to his heartbeat steady, I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.
Something about standing so close to him, being underneath his protective hold… something about Luke… it just made everything so right.
“I’ll call later,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Get some rest.”
“I will,” I said, finally pulling away.
As I took a step away from the table—my dream journal clutched in my right hand—Luke reached forward and took my wrist. I turned back and met his stare, and he quirked an eyebrow as he glared down at me.
“Thirteen,” he said, and his tone was suddenly very serious.
“Thirteen?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Thirteen paper airplanes, Julie,” he said, looking down at the sidewalk, over at Grace’s shop, and then down the street. “Thirteen counts of littering. You know that merits a ticket, right? That’s one offense after another.”
I shook my head when I saw the corner of his lip quirk upward.
“Of course,” he said, bringing his stare back to mine. “If you were my girlfriend, I might be able to overlook it just this once.”
I watched Luke’s brown eyes soften as he squeezed my hand tighter.
“Wow,” I said, blinking a few times too many. “That sounds an awful lot like extortion.” I twisted my lips to the side with a playful smirk. “That’s a crime, too, right?”
Luke laughed and dropped his head. “Okay. Forget the airplanes. I don’t care.”
“Sounds good.”
“But I still want you to be my girlfriend,” he said quickly, and his smile faded into a soft grin. “I wasn’t joking about that part.”
My jaw dropped a couple of inches, and Luke took a step forward.
“Jules?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hear me?”
I nodded slowly and looked down at the ground.
“So….” He let a long breath pass through his slightly parted lips, and his breath tickled my skin. “Is that a yes or a no?”
Chapter Three
Wednesday, June 0
5
I’d dismissed myself from the table with every intention of going straight home and climbing into bed. Of course, the last thing I really wanted was to close my eyes, fall asleep, and wake up drenched in buckets of sweat, but I needed rest.
But after Luke surprised me with his question, or inquiry—one I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear—everything changed. I gave him a quick, sheepish answer and found myself walking away from him, clutching the key-shaped necklace I wore around my neck.
I wandered the streets slowly, not really in any kind of hurry to get home.
My mind kept replaying the nights I’d shared with Luke at the cabin. Things had been so rough at first; he’d seemed to have wanted nothing to do with me; his focus was firmly fixed on one thing—sticking to his orders and keeping me safe.
But as days went by, Luke opened up. We talked. We communicated. For the first time in… well, probably ever, we’d found a way to get through to one another. He’d expressed himself, and I’d listened. And vice versa.
We’d had moments, little moments here and there that gave me hope—the way he’d nurtured my wound after I cut my hand… the drive-in theatre… learning that he’d trusted me enough to give me something that had belonged to his mother.
I clutched the necklace even tighter as I continued through the center of town.
As much as I’d wanted to believe everything he’d said and done back at the cabin, I hadn’t been sure what to believe. I thought his honesty had only been something he’d offered up to relieve the boredom or to keep us both from going insane. I’d truly wondered if Luke would go back to his normal, distant self the moment we arrived back in Oakland.
But he hadn’t.
Again, I clutched the necklace.
What a gesture.
I recognized what it meant for him to hand the necklace to me, to trust me with something that meant everything to him. But even though I knew I’d recognized the magnitude of his gesture, I hadn’t told him so.
And I knew there was only one way I could ever repay him, to really show him that I loved and trusted him as much as he loved and trusted me.
My thoughts came to an abrupt halt as I turned the corner of Winston and Barkley and saw Kara coming out of the dry-cleaners. She carried a plastic garment bag over her shoulder, and I could only assume that the overstuffed bag was filled with the red, strapless, sequin gown she’d worn to prom a couple weeks earlier.
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