CHAPTER NINETEEN
SHE HADN’T MEANT to say it. She had been overwhelmed by her feelings, completely swept away on a tide of pleasure and something so much deeper. She hadn’t been able to hold it inside. Not anymore. She loved him. Really, and truly. The kind that made her not care if there was heartbreak on the other side. The kind that made her reckless.
She hadn’t gone skinny-dipping with her sister and her friends, because it hadn’t mattered to her. That had seemed silly. Certainly not worth risking her pride, worth risking getting caught, being humiliated. But this was worth that. It was worth all that and more. Luke was. He was everything. And if she didn’t have him she was going to break apart. If she didn’t have him, then the rest of it didn’t matter. Whether or not she was good, whether she was bad.
She wouldn’t have him. And that was the only thing that mattered right now.
She had insulated herself with Bennett. Had sought to use him as this thing to keep her in line, to complete her life. An asset to all of her good behavior. To give herself the life her parents wanted her to have.
The cottage, not the farmhouse.
She didn’t want it anymore.
She didn’t want an asset. She didn’t want a life that looked like that perfect image that had lived in her head for so long. Didn’t want that golden retriever. Not if she didn’t also have Luke. Everything but Luke was negotiable.
It hit her then, for the very first time, that everything was negotiable but love.
The rest... Well, the rest would have to cover itself.
“I love you,” she said again.
“Olivia,” he said, that firm, decisive tone that he was using just because he was about to explain to her how things work. That was what Luke did. He teased her, and then he took on that tone that told her he was going to tell her all about how the world worked.
She didn’t want to hear how Luke Hollister thought the world worked. Didn’t want to hear how he thought love might work, not when she had a feeling that the two of them were going to disagree.
“Don’t tell me that I can’t,” she said. “Don’t tell me that I don’t. Luke...” She stood up, naked, and really not caring. Not for the first time. She was naked, and she wasn’t embarrassed. Naked, and not ashamed. “I... Made a lot of mistakes in my relationship with my sister. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe what I did was the nicest thing I could have done. I don’t know the answer to that. But I did what I did because I loved her. I loved her, and I wanted her to be safe. So I made the best decision that I could. But everything went to hell after that. And I have spent so many years since trying to make up for that. Trying to be the daughter my parents needed. Or that I thought they needed.” She swallowed hard. “I was keeping myself safe that way. So many excuses that I used as armor. And I don’t know what the future holds now. I don’t know if all this is going to crumble around me or if it will upset my parents. I don’t have a lot of answers. And I know that I love you. And that I might get hurt because of it. But I wouldn’t change it. Because loving you...”
She looked down at her fingers, locked them together, twisted them. “Loving you wrenched me open.” She looked up at him. “I was closed off for so many years. I had this one thing in mind. To be good. And that would make me happy. And it would make everyone around me happy. I don’t feel... I don’t feel happy right now. I’m terrified. I’m terrified and my chest hurts and everything feels impossible. But it’s me. It’s me unafraid. Of making mistakes. It’s me learning to look outside of myself. That’s the funniest thing I’ve realized. In my effort to be everything my parents wanted me to be, I used other people. I used Bennett. And I didn’t mean to. I wanted him to make my dreams come true. I wanted him to make me the person that I saw myself being. I didn’t care what he wanted. Not really. It was all about me. At the heart of it. But last night I wanted to argue with you when you sent me home, because I wanted to be with you. But I wanted to give you what you needed more. I’ve never experienced anything like that. Because I’ve never been in love before. I told you that. I don’t love Bennett. I never did. I realized last night that I love you. And... Oh, I ran from that hard for so long, Luke.”
He was staring at her, not saying anything, a muscle in his jaw jumping, his entire demeanor tense. He was naked, lying there on her bed, that impossibly feminine bed that was made of lace and frills, with that hard, muscular man lying across it, all angles and lines and delectable masculinity. He didn’t fit. And yet he fit. Wonderfully, and possibly perfectly. And he was worth this. Worth this risk. Worth this moment where everything might fall to pieces. Where she reached inside of herself, inside those new, recently invigorated places that wanted and needed more.
“When Bennett asked to have me back, he said that he didn’t love me. And that was when I realized that the life in my head wasn’t enough. It was my wake-up call. I thought that it could be. I thought it would be. I thought I could love that idea enough that I could love Bennett, too. That he could love me. But it doesn’t work like that. I’m learning... And all I keep thinking is that... I was right to be afraid of this. Luke, this is bigger than I could have ever imagined. It’s tearing me up inside. I was right to be afraid of you. I was. I was protecting myself with Bennett, protecting myself from another loss, another potential heartbreak. Hiding behind this idea that I needed to be good, because what good really means is safe.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want to be safe anymore. At least, not above all else. I can’t be. Not when I know that none of it matters if I don’t have you. If I don’t have your love.”
He wasn’t saying anything. He was just staring at her. There was no smart-ass smile. There was no easy grin. There was nothing. Nothing but a hard stare that she couldn’t decode. An expression that looked nothing like the Luke that she knew. And nothing like the vulnerable boy she had imagined him being twenty years ago.
This was hard. It was merciless. It was blank and cold.
And it terrified her.
“Olivia... I told you what this was.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Because we both lied to each other for years. Do you think that you like picking on me because you’re an overgrown child? I don’t believe that. I just don’t. I think that you pick on me because you care about me. Because you love me. Because you’ve always wanted me, no matter what either of us think. It’s bigger than us. And our plans. I’m pretty sure it always has been.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“You can’t or you won’t?” she insisted.
“It doesn’t matter which,” he said.
“Yes it does. If you can’t love me... If this is just sex and years of the two of us wanting sex with each other, and then us finally having it the minute that we got close enough for it to happen... I could walk away from that. I walked away from Bennett when he said he didn’t love me. I could walk away from you, too. But I think you do love me. And I think you could give a life with me a chance. I think we could love each other. Real, serious love. Maybe not safe love. But real love. And that... That matters. That’s everything.”
He swallowed hard, a muscle in his throat working. And she could see that he was deciding what to say. Luke, who prided himself on his honesty. Who said nothing when he couldn’t say the truth, who fell back on sarcasm when the truth was too heavy.
He got up off the bed and began to collect his clothes.
“Luke,” she said. “You have to say something.”
He looked over at her, his eyes holding a deep resolve she didn’t recognize. “I don’t, kiddo,” he said.
He continued to collect his clothes, and got dressed. She was too numb to take all that in. To register what was happening exactly. It was surreal. It was painful.
It was like the world was falling apart in front of her with each new piece of clothing Luke Hollister put on his body. He pulled his jeans up and a piece of her was stripped away. His shirt. Socks and boots. And that hat. That cowboy hat that made her feel so fluttery inside. Until he looked just as he had when he’d walked into the saloon tonight. Until he was put back together, and she was left ragged and destroyed. Naked in every way that counted.
“Luke,” she said, “tell me that you don’t love me.”
He just looked at her with those green eyes. So flat and desolate and unreadable. Then he walked out of her bedroom.
Olivia sat there for a moment, stunned. Then she rallied. Scrambling up and moving after him, into the living room. She caught him just as he put his hand on the front door.
“Luke Hollister,” she said, the words coming out as frayed and shaky as she felt. “As I live and breathe, if you don’t give me an answer right now then you’re nothing but a coward.”
“The answer doesn’t matter,” he said. “Because it wouldn’t be enough either way.”
He opened the front door and started to walk out.
“Answer me,” she screamed, past the point of caring about pride, past the point of caring about anything but this. But him. “You owe me a fucking explanation.”
She had never said that word in her entire life. But she would scream it a thousand times now if it would make him stop.
Then his eyes connected with hers, and she felt it like a blow. “I don’t love you.” Then he walked out the door and closed it behind him.
And Olivia Logan, who had once suffered a horrible breakup on a public street on Christmas Eve and hadn’t let it destroy her, fell to her knees in the dark quiet of her house and wept as if she would never stop.