by Noelle Adams
So out of it that she was aware of nothing—nothing at all—until she felt someone’s hand on her shoulder.
It jarred her awake.
Then she became aware of someone sitting on the edge of her bed, leaning over her, touching her.
She gasped and sat up straight so quickly she knocked her forehead against the other person’s head.
She huffed at the impact, raising a hand to the bump on her temple.
“Ouch,” Lucas said, raising one of his hands in exactly the same way she was.
Lucas.
It was Lucas.
In her bedroom.
Sitting on her bed.
Lucas.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were really asleep.”
“What did you think I was doing in here?” She was dazed and not really following what was happening.
“I thought were… I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Well, you did.”
Then the reality finally caught up to her.
Lucas was here when he shouldn’t be.
He really shouldn’t be.
“Oh no, no, no, no, no.” She was still covering the painful spot on her head, but something much worse than that was hurting now too. “Lucas, you can’t be here. You were going to let me go. You were going to be a decent man.”
“I know,” he said, the strangest expression on his face. It was twisted, like he was feeling too much to hold on to with his normal composure. “I know I was going to do that. But I don’t want to be just a decent man. I want to be… better. I want to be… good.”
She gasped, still holding her head. She stared at him, trying to understand, trying to contain a surge of hope that was suddenly flooding her heart, her chest, her whole body. “What… what do you mean?”
“I mean I want to be good.” His green eyes were soft, almost tender, completely vulnerable. “I want to…” He cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
“You… you are?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry. I was so…”
“So what?” she whispered, her head and heart and vision all spinning. These weren’t just words he was saying to smooth over a conflict. She could see they were real. His face was twisting with emotion.
“So scared. Because what I have with you is so… real.”
“I thought it was too,” she admitted, wiping a stray tear from her cheek.
“I spent so long trying not to feel helpless, trying not to feel weak. But that’s what I’ve been with you. I don’t want to be that anymore.” He paused. “I’m going to go home for a few days—back to Iowa. I want to see my folks. And I need to… I need to face up to a few things.”
Her hand moved down to cover her heart. “I think that’s a good idea,” she said softly.
She still didn’t know what was happening here, but she was sure it had to be good for Lucas.
He’d been riding the tide, letting things happen to him for too long.
He needed to face what had hurt him so he could finally heal.
“Will you…” Lucas’s hoarse voice trailed off. He stared down at his hand on her covers and then slanted a look back up to her. “Would you like to go with me?”
Her breath hitched. She sat perfectly still.
“I understand if you don’t want to,” he said when she didn’t answer. “I’m going to go regardless. But I thought… I want to tell you some stuff. I should have done it earlier. I shouldn’t have kept holding back on you. I was wrong. I was scared. But I want to be… better. And I really want to be with you. For real this time.”
A single tear slid out of her eye, down her cheek, and then plopped onto the sheet. “I would love to go with you, Lucas,” she said. “I just need to ask my boss if I can take a couple of days off. Did you want to go right away?”
“I did,” Lucas said. “But I’ll wait for you if it needs to be later.”
She reached for her phone. “Let me call him and see. He was down in Tea for Two earlier.”
PATRICK WAS FINE WITH her taking a couple of days off since she was caught up on her work and didn’t currently have any pressing deadlines, so she and Lucas drove to Roanoke and got on a plane. By the evening, they were in Des Moines.
The whole thing was happening so fast that Jill could barely keep up.
She knew Lucas was serious. She knew he’d turned some kind of corner. He hadn’t promised her anything yet, but she knew it was coming.
He’d made mistakes, but he wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t selfish. And he wouldn’t be doing this with her now unless it meant something, unless he was ready to commit.
She trusted him. She didn’t have to have all the compartments of her life perfectly tidy to know this was what she wanted. Lucas was who she wanted.
So she didn’t push him. She was going to wait until he was ready.
Lucas rented a car at the airport, and she thought they would go straight to his parents’. But they were both hungry, so they stopped and got some sandwiches to eat. Then Lucas drove through downtown, stopping in front of an office building.
“What’s this?” she asked since he was staring at the building like it was significant.
“This is where I used to work.”
“Oh really?” She peered at the place, but it wasn’t anything noteworthy. Just a generic office building, like thousands of other ones. “Did you really hate it?”
“Not the work. Not all of it. But I did hate going to sit in an office every day. I just can’t do that again.”
“Well, maybe you can find another way to work.”
He nodded. “That’s what I’m going to do. I’ve already taken a bunch of jobs from friends of Steve and Michelle.”
“You have?” She knew he would hear the surprise in her voice, but there was no way to disguise it.
“Yeah. I didn’t tell anyone, but I’ve been doing that. I’ve liked working that way—just going over to people’s homes and helping them out. I can work on building up a business that way.”
“I think that’s a great idea.” She gave a little chuckle. “So all this time, you haven’t been the slacker you pretended to be.”
“Well,” he admitted, “at first I was. I thought it would be easier that way—so I didn’t have to work hard building something that might be taken away in the blink of an eye. But I guess I’m not really a slacker at heart.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back. And then he pulled the car away from the curb. He drove out of the downtown area and through several residential areas until he’d gotten to an older neighborhood with small brick houses and big yards. He took several turns until he pulled in front of a brick ranch with several big trees in the side yard and a concrete patio.
“Where are we now?” she asked.
“This was my house.”
“It was?” She leaned forward, peering at the house. It wasn’t a new build, but it was in good shape. The yard was well kept, and the overall look was comfortable and attractive. “I like it.” She turned back toward him. “It looks like a nice little house. Did you like it?”
He let out a little breath. “Yeah. I did.”
“Why did you sell it?”
“I didn’t want to be that man anymore. The man who owned this house. I wanted to be… unfettered. I didn’t want to pour myself into anything—even a house—that could be… taken away.”
The words reflected what he’d said about his job. Taken away. Something had been taken away from him in the past. She felt a familiar knot of worry in her gut. It felt like something was coming. Something big. Something hard.
Without another word, Lucas pulled back onto the street. She knew from what he’d told her in the past that his parents lived somewhere near here, but he didn’t go to their house. He drove out of the neighborhood and through a commercial area until he reached what looked like a park and community center. There was a baseball field and tennis courts in view.
Lucas parked the car and got out, s
o Jill got out with him.
She took his arm as they walked, and she could feel that he was shaking just a little.
He hadn’t said anything since he’d left his old house.
He led them to a corner where two sidewalks met—at the intersection of two roads. There was a traffic light, and several cars were waiting for it to turn green so they could go.
Jill looked up at Lucas and waited.
He was breathing unevenly now, and the color had left his face. Something haunted was evident in his eyes.
She reached out to hold on to both his hands. She was nervous, almost terrified, but she didn’t prompt him to continue. She waited until he was ready to speak.
He inhaled hoarsely and began, “I was on a baseball team for a community league. We had practice on Thursday nights. I was leaving. I was standing here. I’d been arguing with Carly, my fiancée, and I was bored with work, and I…”
When he trailed off, Jill squeezed his hands.
He went on. “I remember standing right here, thinking how I didn’t really want my life. Nothing was making me happy. And then… and then… exactly then… an SUV ran the light right there. She was texting while she was driving, and she just drove right through on the red. She hit another car and then got propelled this way. She went over the curb, and I was standing here and…”
“Bam,” Jill said, very softly.
Lucas swallowed so hard she could see it in his throat. “Bam. The SUV hit me so hard I got thrown all the way over there. There was a concrete block with a plaque on it, and a corner of it tore open my back. I almost died. I had to be resuscitated. I was in the hospital for almost a month. They say I came within a breath of dying, but I feel like I actually did. And afterward… I was terrified.”
“Of course you were. After that kind of trauma.”
“I had months of therapy afterward, and I tried to do everything I was supposed to do. Like a good boy. But I was still terrified. About everything. It felt like I had no control over anything. Like anything and everything could be taken away by something so… random.”
“I can understand that.” Her voice shook just slightly.
“So nothing I did seemed to matter. I didn’t want to be the man I’d been before, the one who worked hard and took life seriously. If life was so… fragile, so uncertain, if it could be taken away so quickly, then what was the point of… of anything I’d been doing. It just made me weak and vulnerable. It just made it hard when life got ripped away.”
Lucas was still white, still shaking slightly, and she knew just coming back here, just standing on this corner again, had been incredibly hard.
Harder than anything she could imagine.
She made a little wordless sound and pulled him into a hug.
He wrapped his arms around her tightly, holding on to her, not letting her go. She could feel emotion shuddering through him, and it was shuddering through her too.
He’d almost died.
He’d come so close.
Then she never would have met him at all.
She would have lived her entire life without touching him, seeing him, knowing him, loving him.
She’d almost lost him before he’d ever been hers.
When his arms finally loosened, he pulled back to meet her eyes. “Tell me the truth. Are you… disappointed?”
“Disappointed?” Her voice cracked on the one word.
“Because the bam wasn’t as big as you thought it would be. Didn’t you think it would be… horrific? Because I’ve spent so long making it so important.”
“It was important! It was horrific. You almost died, Lucas. I can’t even imagine what that felt like. I can understand why it changed you, even though I don’t think it changed you as much as you believed.”
He gave her a little smile, more color coming back to his face. “Maybe it didn’t.”
She went on. “I understand all of it. All of it. Except…”
“Except what?” He wiped away a stray tear from her face with his fingertips.
“Why couldn’t you tell me what happened to you?”
He shook his head very slightly. “I don’t know. It was all just… blocked. And I knew it was all irrational—how I was acting, what I’d taken from the accident. I knew it didn’t make logical sense and that it would just prove I was weak and vulnerable and… foolish. I guess I was just… embarrassed, as stupid as that sounds.”
She hugged him again. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Thank you for waiting until I could.”
WHEN THEY FINALLY GOT to Lucas’s parents’ house, Jill was exhausted and emotional. It felt like she’d lived several lifetimes since yesterday, and she met Lucas’s parents and then the rest of his family, who all came over for dinner, in a daze.
A good daze, but definitely a daze.
His parents had a huge dining room table, and they added an extra leaf so everyone could squeeze around it as they ate barbecue pork, macaroni and cheese, cole slaw, and homemade rolls. The conversation was loud and excited, and there were too many people involved to have deep discussion.
Which was just as well.
If Jill had to have another deep discussion today, she would just burst into tears.
Lucas had been slightly awkward at first, slightly sheepish, as if he was embarrassed by how he’d been acting for the past two years.
She’d never seen him embarrassed about anything before, but she kind of liked that he was now.
It meant he loved his family.
It meant he cared about what they thought about him.
Everyone was obviously curious about her, but no one asked rude or intrusive questions, which she appreciated. They did act like she and Lucas were in a serious relationship, but she didn’t actually mind that.
It made something inside her shudder in excitement.
When dinner was over, she helped with the dishes. She was standing at the sink, rinsing off plates before she loaded them into the dishwasher, when Lucas’s sister came to stand beside her with several used glasses.
Jill smiled at the other woman, whose name was Laura. She was a few years older than Lucas, and she had his beautiful green eyes and was several months pregnant.
“You really don’t have to help with all this,” Laura said.
“I don’t mind. I like to tidy things up.”
Laura opened her mouth to reply, but something strange happened to her face. It contorted dramatically, and she closed her eyes and turned her head away from Jill.
“Are you all right?” Jill asked, immediately concerned.
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. Sorry. I’m just… just so happy.” Laura’s expression cleared, and she gave a wobbly smile. “My husband keeps telling me not to start bawling, but I’m just so happy. Lucas is back, and he seems… so much better.”
Jill immediately understood how the other woman felt. “He’s really great.”
“I know he is. We all know he is. He’s always been so… warm and generous and funny and… sweet. Everyone has always loved him. He always had so many friends, and he worked so hard at his job and on his house. I know he wanted to be a husband and father, and then…” Her voice broke, and she trailed off. She had to clear her throat before she continued, “He came so close to dying. I still have nightmares about it. And even then, he worked so hard at getting better. I thought he would be able to go back to… But as soon as he was better, he just left. I know he thought we were disappointed in him, that we didn’t understand why he felt the need to be someone else. We wouldn’t have cared if something else made him happy, except it seemed like he was just… running away.”
Jill was listening intently, soaking in every word. “I don’t think he is anymore.”
“I know. That’s why I’m so happy that my pregnant self can’t stop blubbering about it. I haven’t seen him like this—so genuine and so happy—in years.” Then her tone changed, and she shot Jill a mischievous look. “And I’ve never seen him so in love. Not ever
.”
Jill sucked in a breath, although she couldn’t help but like the sound of that. “I don’t know—”
“I know. I’ve known Lucas for twenty-seven years. I’ve never seen him like this with any other woman. Ever.”
Jill’s cheeks were flushed, but there was no way she could help it. She felt ridiculously like giggling.
Before she could think of an appropriate response, a new voice came from the entrance to the kitchen. “You’re not saying something embarrassing about me, are you?”
Both women turned to look at Lucas, who was half smiling but also arching his eyebrows questioningly.
“Well, I’m your big sister,” Laura said. “I’m supposed to embarrass you.”
Lucas came over, wrapping an arm around Jill and pulling her against him. The gesture felt natural, as did the way she put a hand on his shirt.
“What were you saying?” Lucas asked.
“I was about to tell her how you were that school play in seventh grade and fainted on stage.” Laura’s voice was light, and it was clear she wasn’t going to admit what she’d really been talking about the moment before.
Jill said, “You really fainted?”
Lucas groaned, but he kept his arm around her.
LATE THAT NIGHT, LUCAS was so exhausted he could barely stay on his feet.
After dinner, his mom and dad insisted he and Jill stay in a guest room. Lucas wasn’t sure whether Jill would be comfortable with that, but she hadn’t seemed to mind.
It was almost eleven at night, and he was finally getting into bed. He’d taken a shower first, so Jill was already under the covers, waiting for him.
Lucas was so tired and emotionally drained he could barely speak.
But he wanted to make sure Jill was all right.
A lot had happened today.
And they still hadn’t talked about some of the things they needed to say.
He rolled onto his side so he was facing her. He’d turned off the light as he came to bed, but there was light from the bedside clock and light from the crack under the door from the hallway, so he could just barely see Jill’s face and the outline of her body.
“Are you okay?” Jill asked, reaching out to touch his chest.
