by Janice Lynn
Emily turned to leave the room and found Lucas standing in the doorway. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been watching her and Cassie’s mother. She supposed it didn’t really matter.
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
If he’d wanted to say something, the same thing must have happened, because he just stood there, staring at her as if trying to see inside her head.
Feeling a fool, she stood next to Cassie’s bed as if paralyzed.
“Dr. Cain,” Mrs. Bellows greeted him, her face lighting up at seeing him. “You just missed Cassie being awake.”
“I’m sorry I missed her,” he answered, dragging his gaze from Emily’s.
Dear Lord, he looked good. So good her heart ached.
He’d been her husband, her lover, her best friend, and now...now she supposed he was her colleague and that would be the only link they maintained.
Sadness filled her, but she wouldn’t cry.
No, she’d focus on what she had shared with Lucas, celebrate the good, put the bad behind her and move forward with her life.
She could do this.
But at the moment, she didn’t feel so strong.
She excused herself from the room and left Lucas to talk with Mrs. Bellows and check Cassie.
It was what she needed to do.
She had another patient she needed to check.
She had a heart she had to start trying to piece back together. Again.
* * *
Lucas stood outside Emily’s apartment door, wondering if she’d let him in.
He assumed she’d gone home at the end of her shift, but maybe not. He’d seen her talking with Meghan prior to leaving the hospital. It was possible they’d gone somewhere.
If so, then what? He’d been sitting in his office, thinking about Emily, about the past, about the present, about life. He’d kept arriving at the same conclusion. The accumulation of the past made up the present and his future, and nothing in the past, present or future mattered without Emily.
He’d headed to her apartment, not sure what he was going to do, what he was going to say, just that he had to go to her.
He didn’t have time to debate within himself further because Emily opened the door and stared at him.
“What do you want?”
“You.”
She grimaced. “Let’s not do this. I can’t handle it.”
“You want me to go?” Lucas’s heart pounded in his chest. Was she sending him away before he’d even gotten started spilling his heart to her?
“If you come in, we both know what will happen.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m not here for sex.”
“But you just said...”
“You asked me what I wanted and I told you.”
The apartment door next to hers opened. A head peeked out to see who was in the hallway.
Lucas gave Emily’s neighbor a reassuring smile. “Let me come in, Emily.”
Emily sighed, then stepped aside. She walked over to her sofa and sat down. She picked up a throw pillow, put it in her lap and toyed with the tasseled fringe. “Sit down, please.”
Lucas sat on the sofa but kept a good distance between them. He didn’t want to be distracted by her nearness. He needed a clear head to tell her all the things he’d done the past couple of days.
“I checked on Cassie before I came here. She is doing great off the ventilator.”
“You could have texted to tell me that,” she said.
“I could have, but there’s a lot more I need to tell you, Emily. Things that have nothing to do with Cassie or the hospital.”
She didn’t say anything, just held on to the pillow in her lap and waited.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past couple of days,” he continued. “I stayed at my parents’ the other night after I left here, had breakfast with them and did a lot of talking.”
“You told them about our baby? Did they think I’d gotten pregnant on purpose to try to take your money?”
Lucas sighed. “I told them. Not once did either of them say anything about you getting pregnant on purpose, Emily. They couldn’t help but question you in the beginning with how quickly we met and married. There are a lot of women who marry for money.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that.” He did know that. Maybe during prideful moments he’d let his thoughts go there, but he’d never believed Emily had married him for financial reasons. She’d loved him and had simply wanted to be his life partner. “My mother was devastated by the news you’d been pregnant and miscarried, that she may have played a role in you feeling you couldn’t tell me. She wanted me to tell you how very sorry she is that the two of you never got close, that she wasn’t there when you lost our baby.”
A sob broke free from Emily and she swiped her eyes, covered her mouth as she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“You have no reason to be sorry, Emily. You didn’t do anything wrong. My mother knows that. I know that.”
“That’s not true. I did a lot of things wrong. I—”
“Emily,” he interrupted. “I need to finish telling you this while I can.”
She folded her shaking hands over the pillow. “Okay.”
“I wasn’t scheduled with patients that morning, so after I left my parents, I went to your parents.”
Her head jerked around to him. “You went to my parents?” she gasped. “Why?”
How could he not have?
“I needed to talk to them.”
“About?”
“You. Me. Them. Our baby. Our marriage. Your depression. Everything.”
“And?”
“And I’m sorry I never took the time to know your parents when we were married. They are good people.”
Emily visually searched him over, possibly looking for battle wounds. There weren’t any. At first he’d thought perhaps there would be, but Emily’s parents had sat on their sofa, sour expressions in place, and listened to what he’d had to say.
When he’d left, Emily’s father had shaken his hand, and her mother had reluctantly given him a hug. He could only hope this conversation went as well as that one.
“I can’t believe you went to my parents’ house.” She didn’t say because he’d never been there before. She didn’t have to. He’d been too busy to go with her to her parents’ during their marriage. He’d barely juggled visiting his own, he’d justified to himself at the time.
“Why did you go there, Lucas?”
“Because there’s no way for the air to be cleared between you and me without clearing the air with them.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Why does any of this matter now?”
“It matters a great deal.”
She stared at him with confusion and devastation burning in her green eyes. “I don’t understand.”
No, he supposed she didn’t. Neither had her parents. Not until he’d told them how he’d never gotten over Emily, had never stopped caring for her, that he hadn’t understood her depression, that he hoped to win her heart back, and wanted their blessing, that this time around he hoped to do things right. He’d told them he realized he didn’t deserve forgiveness or second chances, but he prayed they’d give them anyway, that he prayed Emily would see beyond the past and see the man he was now, the man who had learned so many life lessons. He was sure there were many more he’d learn over the years, but he wanted Emily by his side as he faced each of those challenges.
He’d told her parents all that and more. Had told his parents that. Now he’d tell the only woman who’d ever stolen his heart.
“I love you, Emily.”
* * *
Emily’s ears roared and her throat thickened to where breathi
ng felt impossible. “What did you say?”
“I love you. I always have. I always will.”
Tears prickled her eyes. Why was he telling her this now? Why had he gone to her parents? Why was her heart swelling to where she thought it might burst free from her rib cage?
“I love you, too, Lucas.” She always had, always would. Once she’d told him the truth, her anger at him had eased, had given way to so much more, to the truth. She loved Lucas.
She’d just never expected him to feel the same.
He moved next to her, tossed her pillow to the side and took her hand into his.
She trembled. Her hands. Her body. Her very being.
“I want to be a part of your life, Emily. I knew it after I took the job at Children’s and saw you again. I just didn’t understand the reasons why it was so important I be near you.”
Lucas wanted to be a part of her life. Wasn’t that what he’d been the past few weeks?
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, dreaming about you,” he continued. “I wanted a second chance with you.”
Her hand still trembled within his, but she didn’t pull it away. His was trembling, too.
“I messed up when we got married, Emily. I was immature, selfish, stressed with school, stressed by my grandmother’s death and how my mother wasn’t dealing with that. I was distracted by life, and I lost the most important thing that’s ever been mine.”
She just stared at him blankly.
“You.”
“You never owned me.”
“Sure I did. You gave yourself to me, just as I gave myself to you. Unfortunately, I was a fool who didn’t see what a prize having you was. I married you for all the wrong reasons, Emily.”
Her body tensed. “I wasn’t pregnant when we got married.”
“No, I didn’t think you were and that wasn’t what I meant. I married you for my convenience.”
Emily didn’t understand. She gazed at him in confusion, waiting for him to elaborate.
“I wanted to have you with me when it was convenient for me. I wanted to have all my old life, but to have you there when I wanted you there. I was an idiot who didn’t deserve you. I probably still don’t, but I want to be a part of your life all the same.”
Emily digested what he’d said. Their marriage hadn’t just fallen apart because of mistakes he’d made. She’d made plenty of them, too. She’d been so intimidated by his family, so hurt by their thoughts that she’d only become involved with Lucas because of money, that she’d automatically bristled at anything to do with them or money. She’d reacted similarly to his friends. She’d isolated herself from his life outside their apartment. And then, when she’d gotten pregnant, her mood swings had gotten bad, her paranoia over her lack of fitting in had grown, her ability to rationally think things through where he was concerned had failed.
“The one thing I got right, Emily, was you. I love you. I have from the beginning. That never changed. Not through the tears I never understood. Not through the fights. Not through the divorce that never should have taken place. Not through the years that have passed.” He squeezed her hand. “I resented the power you held over me.”
Ha. She’d been a leaf floating in the wind, at mercy to drift whichever direction he blew.
“I was powerless.”
“You may not have known it, but you had all the power where I was concerned. Stop and think about it. I abided by your rules, Emily. You said we had to live in your tiny apartment, so we did. You said I couldn’t use my trust fund, so I didn’t. I had a thousand demands on me from the hospital, from school, from my parents and from you. I felt as if I was going to snap. Every time we were together, all you’d do was cry, then we’d fight. The more we fought, the more I justified pulling away from you.”
She pulled her hand free and scooted away from him. “You wanted to put our marriage on hold until a more convenient time?” She shook her head. “Why are you telling me this now? Any of this?”
“Because to move forward all the past has to be dealt with.”
“Too much has happened for you and I to move forward.”
He moved closer to her, took her hand back and gently held it within his. “I hope you don’t believe that, because I don’t. Not anymore.”
Did she?
“I was pregnant, Lucas. I was pregnant and alone and you weren’t there.” She hadn’t meant to say the words, wasn’t even sure where they came from, but from somewhere deep, dark inside the words had leaped out, revealing her innermost pain.
“I wish I had been, Emily. If I’d known, I would have been at your side.” His hand tightened around hers. “When I came home and your things were gone, I couldn’t believe you’d left me. Stupid pride kicked in. I called a lawyer and set the divorce into motion. For what it’s worth, I never thought we’d go through with it.”
“You filed for divorce. Of course we’d go through with it.”
“I thought you’d tell me where I could stick my divorce papers. It’s what I wanted you to tell me.”
“I got the papers on the day I came home from the hospital from losing our baby. I just looked at them and felt so defeated. I signed them and put them in the return envelope to your lawyer. My mother warned me to wait, that I wasn’t thinking straight and should talk to someone before I just signed them, but I didn’t have the energy to wait or fight.”
“I’m sorry, Emily. I made so many mistakes, so many things I wish I could do over, but I can’t. All I can do is make sure I learn from the past and never make those same mistakes again.”
“I’m sorry I was so adamant about not using your trust.” She bit the inside of her lip. “I was intimidated by your money. I thought if you lived within my world, we’d be okay, but that if we tried to live within yours, I’d stick out like a sore thumb and everyone would know what a fraud I was.”
His eyes softened. “You weren’t a fraud. You were my wife.”
“I was a kid who got caught up in a love affair that she wanted to believe was a fairy tale. I realized I was too idealistic a month in. By the time I discovered our birth control had failed, I knew we’d jumped too fast.”
“Emily, I don’t regret having married you. I just regret our divorce.”
“Me, too.”
“Which brings me to why I’m here. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you, cherishing you and making up to you every stupid and wrong thing I ever did.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“No?”
“I don’t want you trying to make up for the past. The past is done, over.” Her heart ached. “I won’t have you with me out of guilt.”
“Woman.” He pulled her to him on the sofa. “How many times do I have to say I love you before you’ll understand?”
“Understand what?”
“I’m not here out of guilt. I’m here out of love. Out of a need to spend my life with the woman I want to be with above all others. The woman who I want to give everything I am to now and for forever.”
He sounded like a marriage vow. The thought pinched her heart, because she knew that wasn’t the case.
Could she do it?
Could she have an affair with Lucas until he tired of her and walked away?
Would he walk away?
Staring into his eyes, she wasn’t so sure he would. But she didn’t want just an affair. She wanted everything. She wanted to believe in fairy tales and dreams come true.
She wanted to believe in Lucas.
“I’m here to beg you to consider spending your life with me, Emily.”
* * *
Was she going to refuse him? Lucas held Emily’s hand within his, held his breath, prayed she felt the way he believed she felt, that too much negative hadn’t happened between them to drown out all th
e good.
So many emotions danced across her face that he couldn’t read her thoughts.
“What are you saying, Lucas?” she asked. “That you want to have an affair with me?”
An affair. He’d poured his heart out to her and she thought he was asking for sex still?
“If that’s all you’re willing to give me, then, yes, I’ll take an affair. A lifelong one.”
She stared at him, caution and the beginnings of hope in her eyes. Hope he planned to nurture for the rest of her life.
“What is it you want me to give?”
Her question was an easy one for him to answer. One he could answer with all certainty and the knowledge that Emily was his soul mate, the other half of him, the woman he wanted to wake up next to and go to sleep next to, to have her belly swollen with his children, to grow old next to, to look back on their life together and know that each step along the way had served a purpose, to teach them what was important, what was worth fighting for, what they should hold on to with all their might and hearts.
“You,” he answered with his heart shining in his eyes. “Forever.”
“I already did that,” she reminded him, causing his heart to skip a beat. “You’ve always had me, Lucas. My heart, my body, all of me.”
“Emily...”
“I love you, Lucas. I never stopped.”
He kissed her, hard and on the mouth. “I don’t deserve you.”
“If this is going to work, then we have to forgive each other. Which means you do deserve me. You are a wonderful man. A wonderful doctor. A wonderful lover. A wonderful friend.”
“I’d like to be a wonderful husband and father, Emily.”
* * *
Emily couldn’t believe her ears. “You want to get married again?”
He gave a low, nervous laugh. “This isn’t how I had this part planned.”
“What part planned?”
“I came here to convince you that I loved you and wanted us to be together. To talk about your depression and what went wrong between us. I’d hoped with time you’d learn to trust in our love, in us, and then I planned to propose.”
Eyes wide, heart pounding, she stared at him. “You did?”
