It had been well established that I wasn’t sane.
Therefore, the first words spoken from my mouth after some of the most beautiful hours of my entire life showed me and the world—the world being Luke—how fucking off the reservation I was.
“This was a mistake.”
Luke’s hand, which had been lazily drawing circles on the underside of my breast, froze. His head, which had been very intently inspecting the underside of my breast, moved too.
His expression was unreadable as his glacial stare locked with mine. “Say again?”
I pushed him off me. Or at least tried to. Luke was on top of me, much stronger and therefore in control. He did not let me push him off me. The old Luke would have. No matter how much it pissed him off, my small gesture would’ve been taken as an order to his morals to get off the woman he was using his strength against.
This was not the old Luke.
“Get off me,” I ordered.
His stare remained cold. “No fucking way.”
“Luke.”
“Rosie.”
I glared at him. He glared right back at me.
“You’re really going to keep me here for the rest of my life, Luke?” I snapped.
He didn’t move. “No, just for however long it takes to talk, or fuck, some sense into you.”
The extremely sensitive part between my legs jumped at the pure sex in his tone. Who was I kidding—all of me jumped at the pure sex in his tone.
But I couldn’t waver.
I knew I couldn’t.
“Newsflash, Luke. People have been trying my whole life to talk some sense into me. Hasn’t worked,” I replied. “Different people have also tried to fuck some sense into me too. That didn’t work either.” That was a low blow, and I almost regretted it the moment it came out of my mouth. Almost. I was fighting for my life here. And, more importantly, his. I’d ruined it enough. That motivation was enough to have me fighting dirty.
He flinched at my words, jaw turning to stone. His hand moved to circle my neck, not loosely, but only dancing with the point of pain. I could still breathe, but he was making his point.
And it was turning me on even more.
“I’m not most people,” he growled. His hand squeezed. “We’re not most people.” His eyes searched mine. “And I’m not tryin’ to change you, Rosie. I’ve fucked up enough thinking that’s something that I needed to do. Somethin’ you needed. I ain’t fuckin’ up again. The only shred of sense I’m going to make you see regards you and me. Everything else in your life, in you, can stay as beautifully and chaotically senseless as it is.” His hand moved, stroking the column of my neck that he’d just been squeezing, and his fingertips moved upward to trail along the sides of my face. “That’s what made me fall in love with you. All that exquisite senselessness.”
I froze. Even my heart stopped beating. Every inch of me was suspended in time, in the moment following those words. The ones I’d thought maybe could’ve been true when I’d had too much pink wine and watched too many Julia Roberts movies. The ones I taunted myself with, with their impossibility of coming out of Luke’s mouth.
Sure, whatever we’d had, whatever Fuck-Up that was us that hinted at feelings—I wasn’t that much of an idiot. I knew he felt something crazy and intense for me in order to explain everything over the years. But I hadn’t dared to let myself actually believe it was the ultimate crazy and intense thing.
Love.
“What did you just say?” I choked out.
He held my eyes, continuing to stroke my face. “You know what I said, Rosie. You know what it is between us. We’ve been tangled up in each other for two decades, coiled into the core parts of each other. I can’t get you out. Sometimes, I’ve wanted to. Not for me, but for you. Because I was convinced that all there was for us was pain. And I didn’t want more pain for you. Nothing more than life had already dealt you. But now I’m convinced of another thing. We have more than pain. And I sure as fuck don’t want you out of me. Not in this lifetime or the next.”
I blinked at him. At his words. The freedom with which he said them. Though, by the sounds of it, they’d been caged for twenty years, so maybe freedom wasn’t the right word.
I didn’t feel free right then. I’d imagined I would. When what had been unspoken between us all this time was finally uttered. I thought it’d be some kind of release of all of this pressure. It wasn’t. It somehow created more of it, tightened the chains around me so I could hardly breathe.
Fear almost paralyzed me.
The only thing worse than loving someone you couldn’t have was having someone you were scared to love. Scared because of what you knew it would do.
Destroy everything.
“I know you love me too,” Luke demanded my attention. “Get yourself the fuck out of your head. Stop trying to create reasons why this isn’t going to work. We’ve had enough of them. We can do this, babe. After this long, we have to do this.”
“No,” I whispered. “We can’t. After this long, after everything, it’s too much. There’s too much pain.” I sucked in a harsh breath. “Loving you has been pain, ever since the start. Since I was five years old. Don’t you get that?”
His eyes danced with regret. “Yeah, babe, I get that. I’ve been livin’ that pain too. The only thing worse than that is living another fuckin’ second of what I had to get through this year. And the years before it.”
That was it. The words that I was thinking, but with more shape and definition and sense. That’s what we were—pain, together and apart. But all we’d known was apart, and that was the worst kind of pain. So why was I fighting for more of that? I’d tried my entire adult life to get rid of him from under my skin.
I’d failed.
The pain didn’t lessen over time, as so many fucking inspirational idiots liked to preach. It was worse. Every year, every moment I wasn’t with Luke, it was worse. My life was bursting with chaos, with love, with life, with death. It was happy. But it wasn’t full.
And I’d been stopping myself.
For what?
A reel of everything in the past played on a rewind. The dead bodies Luke created and buried for me. The ones I created, stamped on his soul and conscience.
“We were bad,” I whispered. To my horror, my voice was shaking like the rest of me. I never even trembled when facing rapists, human traffickers, drug lords. But there I was in front of the man I loved, and I was terrified.
“Yeah,” he rasped back, never letting my eyes go. It was only fair, I guessed, since he’d never let my heart go either. “But I’m no good anymore. I’m ready for bad now. I’ve been ready my whole life, just pretending to be good, trying to fit into a life that never quite fit. It took me a long time to realize that. So we’ve got a lot of making up to do. Half a lifetime, to be exact.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” I said, instead of doing what I wanted and sinking into him and letting us take care of each other. “There’s still so much shit. So much fight.”
He stroked my face. “You’re so eager for it, the battle. It’s your default,” he murmured, his thumb tracing the outline of my lips. It was strange and beautiful, the ease with which he was touching me, like he’d been doing it forever, not four hours. “You’re fighting right now.”