SOMETIME DURING THE night, Lucas had a brief flicker of consciousness. He knew that his head hurt and his mouth tasted like garbage and that every muscle in his body ached.

He also knew something else.

He knew Jill was in bed with him.

He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her, smell her. He reached out and pulled her closer to him, wrapping both his arms around her little body.

He heard her give a soft, pretty moan as she snuggled against his chest. She was sleeping and clinging to him at the same time.

Letting out a slow breath, he relaxed again, holding her against him tightly.

It didn’t matter that he felt terrible in almost every way.

Because Jill was here. He could touch her, hold her.

She hadn’t slipped away yet.

***

WHEN LUCAS WOKE UP for real, it was with the certain knowledge that he’d been a fool.

More than a fool. An embarrassing, immature, vulnerable fool.

A fool in front of his friends.

A fool in front of Jill.

He didn’t even remember every detail, but he knew for sure that he’d blown it. Big time.

He didn’t even want to open his eyes.

If he did, the sun would be up. The morning would have come. And he’d have to face up to what had happened last night.

He didn’t want to do it.

Jill was still with him in bed. They’d moved during the night, and he wasn’t on his side anymore, holding her against his front. She’d rolled over, and he’d rolled with her, so now he was half spooning her from behind and half lying on top of her.

He was still wearing the jeans and T-shirt he’d had on last night, and he was uncomfortably hard in his pants, his erection pressed up against the zipper. His brain pounded against his skull, and he needed to pee so badly he was in serious danger of losing it.

That was the thought that prompted him to finally open his eyes, roll away from Jill’s small, sleeping body, and heave himself painfully out of bed.

The apartment was quiet as he walked across the hall to the bathroom.

After he’d gone, he splashed water on his face and returned the bedroom, where he shucked his jeans and T-shirt and dropped them onto the floor. In just his underwear, he returned to the bed and found the bottle of water on the box he was using as a nightstand.

He sat on the edge of the bed and drank down most of the bottle in several large gulps.

Jill was still sleeping, curled up on her side. Her hair was loose and falling into her face. She wore the sexy little dress she’d worn for her date with Hal the night before. She still had on her high socks.

His heart lurched, like it was literally reaching toward her, trying to get to her, trying to take hold of her.

He sat like a statue on the side of the small bed, making himself breathe slowly. He finished the last swallow of water.

Then he got up, went back to the bathroom to pee yet again, and then went to the refrigerator to grab another bottle of water.

When he returned to the room this time, Jill had turned over onto her back.

As he approached the bed, her eyes opened just a slit.

He sat down, looking at her quietly.

“You okay?” she asked hoarsely.

He opened his mouth to tell her he was fine.

Instead, he heard himself saying, “I don’t know.”

She lifted one hand, extending it toward him. He took it instinctively, automatically, letting her pull him back down onto the bed. He adjusted their bodies so she was pressed into his side, one of his arms holding her close.

“What happened last night,” Jill asked after a few minutes. He’d thought maybe she’d gone back to sleep, but she hadn’t.

“I... don’t even know.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Yeah. Enough. Too much.” He swallowed hard. “God, what a fool I am.”

She didn’t object to that sentiment. She must have known it was true as much as he did.

He couldn’t help but stroke her hair with his free hand. It was soft and messy and draping over her face and shoulder. She sighed against him, as if she liked how it felt.

“I thought...” she began after another minute or two. “I thought you didn’t want... you didn’t want anything from me. But sex.” Her words were stilted, and he could tell she was uncomfortable saying them.

She’d always been honest. Far more honest than he’d ever been.

“That’s all I was supposed to want,” he managed to say.

She lifted her head slightly so she could meet his eyes. “So you want... more?”

He heard the slight note of hope in her voice, and it wounded him.

It wounded him.

She wanted him still—no matter how much of a fool he’d always been.

There was no way in the world he deserved her.

“Yes,” he admitted since she was waiting for his answer. “Of course I do. But I don’t know...”

He didn’t finish because there was too much lurking in the remainder of that sentence.

He didn’t know if he could offer her more.

He didn’t know if he was capable of more.

He didn’t know if his scars had healed enough.

He didn’t know if he would ever be able to follow through on what he wanted again.

“Tell me what you don’t know, Lucas,” Jill said, her voice so incredibly gentle.

He took a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I’m... me anymore.”

He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t even know what it meant. He’d broken out in a cold sweat, and he was staring up at the ceiling blindly.

Jill pulled out of his arm, turning over as she sat up so she was leaning over him. Her blond hair slid forward over her shoulders, and the neckline of her dress drooped, exposing a pretty pink lace bra and her lovely rounded breasts.

Lucas’s body sprang to attention, but his mind and heart were too full to pay much attention to it at the moment. He was waiting to hear what she would say.

“Of course you’re you,” she murmured thickly, stroking his chest with one hand. “Lucas, why wouldn’t you be you?”

He couldn’t look away from her eyes. “Because I’ve spent all this time trying to be someone different, someone... stronger, safer. I’ve spent so much time trying to leave the man I was behind.”

“Why, Lucas? What was so wrong with the man you used to be.”

“He... got hurt.” The words were forced out of his throat in a harsh rasp.

“Everyone gets hurt. It doesn’t mean you can’t still be you. Can’t you... can’t you show me the man you were before? I want to know him too. I want to be with him too.”

His breath was coming out in ragged pants now, and he was sweating even more than he’d been before. There was a throbbing in his head that completely overwhelmed his headache. It was a throbbing he could feel against his skull and in his groin, but it was centered somewhere else.

It was centered in his heart.

He reached out for her. There was no way he could stop himself.

He pulled her over on top of him, and she came willingly.

Then he was kissing her, and her mouth was opening to his tongue, and every molecule in his body was screaming that this was right, she was his.

He was hers.

He wasn’t in fit shape to think clearly or work through the best way to please her the way he normally did. He couldn’t do anything but grope for her, hold on to her, desperately cling to her. His tongue was sliding against hers but not with any strategy or skill. His hands were moving all over her, feeling her soft flesh, lush curves, dips and edges and textures. And his erection was so hard now it was causing his whole body to pulse. He kept groaning into her mouth. Loudly. Uninhibited.

She seemed just as uncontrolled as he was. She was straddling his hips and rubbing herself against him eagerly—with her whole body. Her fingernails were gouging holes into one of his shoulders and the back of his neck from how tightly she was clutching at him. And she was making little whimpers and grunts that were driving him absolutely wild.

Before he knew what was happening, he’d dragged the dress off over her head, and she’d pulled off his underwear. One or both of them had managed to remember the condom, and she was rolling it on for him. Then he was guiding her hips over him, and she was sheathing him in the warm, wet clasp of her body.

He groaned loud and long at the sheer pleasure of it. Like a boy, like a horny teenager. She was already trying to ride him, so far gone that she was flushed red and panting out a building rhythm.

He took her hips in a firm grip and started to buck up into her.

They had no steady rhythm between them. No unified motion. Both of them were out of control, frantically clinging to the other as the sensations overwhelmed them.

“Lucas,” she was crying out. “Oh, Lucas, please. Please, please, please, please. I need... I need... you.” She kept babbling out the words as she rode him with shameless abandon.

He’d never seen anything more beautiful. More pure.

Just the sight of her, the sound of her, was enough to snap any remaining threads of his control. He moaned again—over and over again—as his hips bucked up into her helplessly. He couldn’t have held them still even if he’d wanted to.

And he didn’t want to.

He wanted to let loose completely. Just like this. He wanted to give her everything. He didn’t want to hold anything back.

She was sobbing as she came, her body clenching and shuddering as her head fell back in pleasure. Her internal muscles squeezed around him so hard that he roared with it, his climax hitting him fast and hard.

He rocked beneath her, wild and unrestrained, shaking the bed, shaking his whole world.

She collapsed down on top of him when the spasms were finally spent, and he held her close.

Just as close as he’d been holding her before.

He needed her now just as much.

She squirmed a few times on top of him, as if her body were still reveling in her orgasm. Then she lifted up her head and smiled down at him.

He knew he was smiling too.

Like a fool.

“I knew I would like him,” she whispered, pressing a little kiss against his lips.

“Who?” He really had no idea what she was talking about.

“The old you. The man you used to be. I knew I would like him too.”

The words saturated him with pleasure. Warm, bone-deep pleasure. But they also made an ache in his chest tighten until he could hardly breathe around it. He gently pried her loose from his body and rolled her over onto her side. He made a bit of a mess with the condom, but he managed to tie it off.

Then he stood up.

He knew Jill was watching him. He knew that what he did right now mattered.

He knew it mattered more than anything.

He couldn’t look at her. He grabbed his underwear and walked across the hall to the bathroom.

It was still early on a Sunday morning. Michelle and Steve weren’t up yet.

Jill was waiting in his bedroom, in his bed.

And what happened next would change everything.

He was terrified.

He was so terrified he was breathing in loud, uneven gasps.

He threw away the condom. Cleaned himself up. Splashed water on his face. Stared at himself in the mirror.

He looked the way he always did. He needed to shave. He needed a haircut. He needed to put a shirt on.

He had a long, ugly scar down his back.

He wasn’t the man he used to think he was.

He wasn’t a man who had it all together.

He was going to make a mess of this and hurt Jill unforgivably in the process.

The man she wanted was a man who had never really existed.

He had no idea how long he stood there, staring into the mirror, but eventually he heard a light tap on the bathroom door.

Making himself turn away from the mirror, he reached to open the door.

It was Jill, wearing nothing but one of his T-shirts. She gazed up at him with huge blue eyes. Wary eyes. Like she knew something bad was coming.

It was coming.

It would slam into them without warning. The way it had slammed into Lucas two years ago.

Knocking him off his feet.

Ripping his body apart.

Proving he had no power over anything that mattered.

It was going to slam into him again. In exactly the same way.

Jill didn’t say anything. She just took his arm and pulled him back into the bedroom. She closed the door behind them and led Lucas back to the bed.

He sat down when his legs buckled.

She sat down next to him.

He stared at the old hardwood floors, worn into warm, rich color from age and use and craftsmanship. From years of supporting the weight of human lives.

Some things were like that.

Some things could stand the test of time and grow stronger and more beautiful because of it.

Some things didn’t break.

“Lucas,” Jill said, folding her legs up underneath her and leaning against him. “You need to talk to me.”

He took a hoarse breath, and to his dismay, it sounded almost like a sob.

Jill made a soft, little whimper. She reached an arm around his back and let her fingers trace along the line of his scar.

It was like she was trying to make it better.

But it couldn’t be made better.

It would never go away. Not even when he took his final breath.

“Lucas,” she whispered. “Please, honey. Tell me.”

He knew he needed to do it.

He’d spent so long telling himself that no one would really understand, but he somehow knew she would.

She would understand.

The truth wouldn’t change what she felt for him.

But he didn’t know why she felt that way in the first place.

He made another choked sound in his throat with the effort to get something—anything—said.

After a minute, Jill drooped beside him. She was still leaning against him, still had her arm around him. But she seemed to have accepted the inevitable.

She was crying, he realized with another slash of pain through his heart.

“Lucas,” she said at last, wiping some of the tears away. “I know you’re going through a lot of really hard stuff. I don’t know what it is, but I think I can understand. You don’t have to tell me everything right now. You really don’t.”

The words should have relieved the crippling burden he was carrying, but they didn’t.

They made him feel worse, more guilty, more completely helpless.

He reached behind him to take the arm she’d been stroking him with, pulling it back around to the front of his body so she was no longer touching his scar.

“But...” Jill cleared her throat. “I do need to know... I need to know if there’s any hope for us. If you could ever... ever want to be in a real relationship with me. I don’t mean to give you an ultimatum or anything like that. I promise I don’t. But it feels like I’m pouring myself out here. I keep pouring myself out. And I still don’t know... I still don’t know if it’s even something you... you want.”

He did want it.

Desperately.

Never in his life had he ever wanted something so much.

But that didn’t mean it would be right to take it.

He was still holding on to her forearm, his fingers wrapped around her delicate bones. She seemed so small. He could hurt her.

Maybe he already had.

He couldn’t loosen his grip.

“Lucas,” Jill prompted when he still didn’t answer. “You can’t do this to me. It’s not... it’s not right. You don’t have to tell me everything right now. We don’t have to work everything out right away. But you need to tell me this at least. Is there even a chance?”

He managed to turn his head and look at her instead of at the floor. She was still crying. And he was still holding her forearm in an inexorable grip.

They stared at each other for a long time, and then he saw something change on her face.

Resignation.

An aching kind of acceptance.

“Okay,” she whispered at last. “Okay. If there’s no chance, then you need to... you need to let me go. We can’t do this anymore. Not any of it. Because it’s... it’s breaking me.”

Of course it was breaking her. It had already broken him.

“It’s breaking my heart,” she said. “And I can’t just let it keep happening. You’ve always been a decent guy with me. You really have. You’ve treated me like a human being. You’ve respected my choices. You’ve cared about how I was feeling. You’ve been decent, Lucas. So you need to be decent one more time. You need to let me go now.” She gave a brief, helpless sob before she added, “Everything is what I want. I want a... a real home, a man who will love me forever. So if you know you’ll never be able to give me everything, then you need to let me go.”

An aching, needy voice deep inside Lucas was screaming, howling, begging for this not to happen. But Jill was weeping now—small and hurt and so incredibly sad—and it was all because of Lucas.

So he used every last thread of strength he possessed, and he managed to loosen his fingers, break the grip he had on her forearm.

He strangled on a wordless sound as his hand finally let her go.

Jill sobbed as she pulled her arm toward her chest. She sat for a minute, gazing at Lucas with tear-filled eyes. Then she jumped up and ran out of the room.

Lucas let her.

That little voice inside him was still wailing its outrage to the heavens, but his body didn’t move.

Jill was right.

He couldn’t be the man she needed him to be.

So he couldn’t be her man at all.

***

JILL CRIED IN HER BEDROOM for more than an hour, and then she finally fell asleep in an exhausted heap. The night had been too long, and the emotional toll had been too heavy.

This was really the end, and she knew it.

It was almost ten in the morning when she woke up again. Her eyes ached, and she was sick to her stomach. She got up, used the bathroom, washed her face, and put a sweatshirt on over Lucas’s T-shirt, which she was still wearing.

Then she steeled her nerve and walked out into the common room of the apartment.

She had no idea what she would say when she saw Lucas again.

She had no idea about anything.

She went first for the coffee, but she recognized that the vibes in the apartment were strange, different. Michelle was working on her laptop at the counter, and Steve was lounging on the couch with a newspaper. But something was different.

Really different.

Really wrong.

She met Michelle’s eyes over her coffee cup.

Michelle’s face twisted strangely. “Are you all right?”

Jill tried to answer, but couldn’t.

Steve had sat up now. Both he and Michelle were watching her with heavy, anxious expressions.

Finally Jill shrugged, trying to clear her throat so she could answer for real.

Then something suddenly occurred to her.

It hit her with a flash of painful insight.

She put her coffee cup down on the counter and walked out of the kitchen. Through the main room to the hallway. Then down two doors to Lucas’s room.

His door was open.

She stood in the doorway.

She saw what was inside.

Nothing.

The bedroom was empty—nothing but a bare mattress on a cheap twin frame. All of Lucas’s possessions were gone.

Lucas was gone.

She stared blindly at the empty room, and it somehow embodied exactly how her heart felt right now.

Just... empty.

“I’m so sorry, Jill,” Michelle said softly from behind her. “He was almost entirely packed when we woke up this morning. Then he just... he just left.”

Jill managed to give her head a stiff nod.

Of course he had.

He was trying to be decent.

He was trying to do as she’d asked.

He was trying to let her go.