All his life he'd done what was fair, what was expected of him. All his life he'd put helping other people over helping himself.
Right now, he had to try to help himself.
“Do you remember what you said? About not being able to stop yourself from loving me? No matter what?”
Even as the words came, he knew they weren't fair. He shouldn't be using her words of love against her.
Especially when he hadn't even come close to giving them back to her yet.
“Of course I remember,” she said gently, as if she knew how deeply her leaving was going to cut him and she wanted to try to soften the blow in any way she could. “I'm keeping that promise, Luke.”
He watched a tear fall down her cheek and had to touch her, had to brush it away. She turned her face into his palm for a split second and he prayed, silently begged the universe to give her back to him.
Please don't let her leave me.
But then she was pushing off the couch. Moving away.
Away from him.
Taking all of her warmth and softness with her.
“I love you, Luke. Enough to know that you don't belong with me.” She picked up her bag. “I've got to go now.”
“How can you leave when I think I'm falling in love with you?”
She went completely still, not moving at all, not even blinking. “If you ever know for sure, let me know.”
She was halfway down the stairs when he said, when he begged, “Stay.”
She'd said the same thing to him that first night.
Now she was the one leaving without a backward glance.
Chapter Twenty-one
Janica had never worked harder. It was amazing the things she could accomplish without a heart.
She finally had her collection accepted by the department store chain in Japan that she'd been wanting to get into for years. One of her hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind dresses had been selected for display at the Museum of Fashion in Paris. Teen Vogue had called about a half-page feature on up-and-coming designers.
She was getting everything she wanted for her career.
And she was miserable.
Not that anyone knew it, of course. Not even Lily. Mostly because Janica had gone out of her way to avoid her big sister. Actually, she'd gone out of her way to avoid everyone. She hadn't seen her friends, hadn't gone dancing, had barely left her studio for fourteen days and nights.
Tonight, however, she'd been unable to come up with a good enough excuse to miss a family barbecue.
“He isn't coming, Jan,” Lily had told her on the phone that morning.
“It's okay if he does.”
It wasn't, of course. Saying that was nothing but sheer bravado. But the thing was, even though it wasn't at all okay now, it was going to have to get okay.
Because at some point she was going to have to learn to deal with him.
At some point she was going to have to learn how to be in the same room with Luke and still be in love with him.
At some point she was going to have to figure out a way to watch Luke talk or drink or walk around and not replay, in excruciating detail, how it had felt when she was being touched by his hands, kissed by his mouth.
And at some point her brain was going to learn how to stop replaying his parting words.
I think I'm falling in love with you.
Obviously, though, he'd been wrong. Because she hadn't heard a word from him in the two weeks since she'd left the cabin in Big Sur.
After making a pit stop at the cupcake store, she headed over to Lily and Travis's house. The kids greeted her as if it had been a lifetime since they had seen her.
“They've missed you, Jan,” Lily said. “We all have.”
“Cupcakes.”
She held the box out between them, as if she were trying to use it as a barrier, as a way to keep Lily from trying to get her to spill out everything she was barely holding back. But when Lily took the box and put it on the counter, judging by the way her sister was looking at her, Janica had a bad feeling about the barbecue.
“He's coming,” Janica said in a flat voice.
Lily nodded. “I'm sorry. When Travis told me I could have killed him.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about. Like I said before, I'll deal.”
Not well, probably, but that was beside the point.
Violet reached a dirty hand into Janica's bag and pulled out some pretty pink ribbon and tulle. “Is this for me?”
“You bet,” Janica said, picking up the bag and heading into the backyard. “We are going to make you and Sam some special barbecue outfits.”
Lily spoke in the soothing tone that Janica remembered so well from their childhood. “He's going to come to his senses, honey. I know he is.”
But Janica was already measuring ribbon and tulle.
* * *
Fourteen sunrises. Fourteen sunsets. Three meals a day. A handful of hours of sleep every night.
Every minute, every second, he'd missed her.
On the phone with Travis that morning, his brother had mentioned a barbeque. Evidently, Lily hadn't said a word to her husband about finding Luke and Janica up at the cabin together. If she had, Luke knew he would have never heard the end of it from his twin.
Why, he'd wondered, had she kept something so big from her husband?
But it hadn't taken a brain surgeon to figure out why.
Lily was waiting for Luke to tell his brother—to tell the entire goddamned world—how he felt about Janica.
Hell, they were all waiting for that.
When he'd asked Travis if Janica was going to be there, his twin had said, “I think so. Lily said something about cupcakes. That usually means her sister is attached to them. I swear, she's a total sugar addict.”
A flash of kissing her sweet lips, sticky from s'mores, on the beach had assaulted him.
The sound of Janica's laughter floated all the way out to the sidewalk and he stumbled, nearly dropping the bottle of wine he was holding. The front door was unlocked and he let himself inside. After putting the merlot down on the kitchen counter, he walked into the living room where there was a sliding glass door that led out to a huge atrium.
Janica was dancing with the kids to a pop song he'd often heard playing at the hospital. Violet and Sam were dressed in ribbons and fabric and Janica was holding their hands and spinning in a circle.
He swore to God he'd never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his entire life.