“Oh my god, Lucas,” I whisper, imagining my own baby out in the woods, living in a boxcar and tears sting my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
As he glances down at the table, he shakes his head. “It’s okay. I mean, it all worked out, right?”
“Still, no kid should have to go through something like that. How did you end up there?”
“I think that’s enough sadness for one day, don’t you?” he replies, lifting his head and the pain in his eyes breaks my heart. There’s so much depth to this man as well as pain and tragedy that I haven’t discovered yet and what I already know makes me want to pull him into my arms and fix it for him. “There’s something that I wanted to ask you, though.”
“What?”
“Your ex fiancé… what happened with him?”
I sigh and pick at my sandwich. “Nothing really, which I guess was the problem. I met Danny just before the start of my sophomore year of college and he was the kind of guy that everyone expected me to end up with. Like if you saw us, you would just assume we were together because we looked like we fit but in every other area of our relationship, it was just… boring, expected.”
“So you ended it?”
I nod. “Yeah. I just wanted something… more. Besides, if I had to listen to one more golf story, I would have blown my brains out.”
“No golf stories, got it,” he murmurs with a grin and I laugh, playfully scowling at him.
“I’ll believe the movie thing but there’s no way you have golf stories.”
“Okay, you’ve got me on that one. So, if you don’t want golf stories and the expected, what is it that you do want?”
“I want to be someone’s whole world. I want to be loved so fiercely that it takes my breath away sometimes and I want to build a beautiful family on the basis of that love.”
His brows shoot up. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I answer with a smile as I drop my gaze for a second before peeking back up at him. “What about you? What do you want?”
“I want to get my brother clean.”
I shake my head. “No, what do you want? When you reach the end of your life, what is going to be the thing that you look back on and say “I did good”?”
He opens his mouth to respond before snapping it shut again as a scowl takes over his features.
“What?” I ask and he shakes his head.
“Honestly, I don’t know. My whole life for the last six years has been Clay and I think I’ve completely forgotten about me.”
“You need to figure out what is going to make you happy.”
He nods. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
Watching him, my heart breaks. It’s clear to me that Lucas has one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever encountered but he hides it behind jokes and charm while he silently suffers through so much pain that I’m not even sure how he’s standing. In some ways, he and I are so alike and but it feels like he’s given up hope at ever having a normal life, which is something I still desperately cling to.
“I hope this doesn’t upset you but your brother is his own person and he’s going to do whatever he wants to do. It’s clear to me that you carry around an immense amount of pain from your past but you can’t carry his, too. The reason he turns to drugs is because he doesn’t know how else to deal with that pain in a healthy way but that’s what he has to learn if he’s ever going to get clean.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t help him?” he asks, his jaw ticking and I shake my head as I reach across the table and grab his hand.
“No, not at all, but just like your brother uses drugs to bury his pain, you use him to avoid yours and you’ll never be happy or free until you let him go enough to become your own person and have your own life.”
He clears his throat and stands abruptly, knocking the chair back a little. It scrapes against the floor and I feel like every eye on the street turns to look at us. “I’ve… uh, I’ve got to go.”
I watch him as he walks back into the deli and stomps out the front door without ever looking back at me. Once he’s out of sight, I lean back in my chair and release a heavy breath. “Shit.”
* * * *
“You got any plans tonight?” Alice asks as she plops down next to me on the couch. I glance down at the jeans and nice shirt I changed into after work on the off chance that Lucas shows up to take Brooklyn and me to dinner tonight.
“Not sure.”
She arches a brow as her gaze dips to my outfit. “How are you not sure?”
“Well… Lucas invited Brooklyn and me over for dinner but then I’m pretty sure I put my foot in my mouth.”
“Did you text him?”
I nod. “Yeah, and I tried calling him today.”
“I’ll get the wine,” she replies, patting my leg as she jumps off the couch and I sigh. The doorbell rings before she makes it into the kitchen and she stops in the hallway before slowly turning to me.
“You want me to get that?”
I peek over the back of the couch to the front door. “Maybe just go see who it is first.”
“Okay, ‘cause that won’t make you look like a crazy person. You know we don’t have a peephole.”
“I told you we should have bought that video doorbell thing,” I grumble as I get off the couch and meet her in the hallway.
“You gonna go answer it?” she asks as the bell rings again.
“I don’t know. What if he’s just here to break up with me?”
She shakes her head, giving me a little shove toward the door. “Guys don’t break up in person anymore. If that’s what he was doing, he would have texted you or just ghosted you.”
“Good to know.”
He knocks on the door and I sigh before dragging myself across the foyer, my heart racing as I silently plead to the heavens to not let him dump me. I know we’ve only gone on one real date, but boy do I like him. As I wrap my hand around the doorknob, I suck in a breath and count to three before yanking it open. Lucas glances up at me and surprises me as he flashes me a smile that makes my knees a little weak.
“Hey, you ready?”
I narrow my eyes. “Uh, maybe?”
“Maybe?”
“Um,” I mutter, glancing over my shoulder to where Alice is standing, listening to our every word. “Do you think we could talk outside?”
“Sure.”
We step outside and I shut the door behind me as butterflies flap around in my belly.
“What’s up?” he asks.
“I, uh… I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I didn’t mean to upset you…”
He presses his finger to my lips, silencing me as he takes a step forward, closing the space between us. “Please don’t apologize for what you said. It was essentially what my brothers in the club have been saying to me for years but the way you said it, it stuck with me. I was up all night thinking about it and meeting you has made me realize that I do want a life. Not that I know what I want in that life yet but I do want it.”
“So…” I say, studying him. “We’re good?”