He turned his head away, unable to voice the possibilities.
He was terrified. Emily understood that now. He’d been through hell and he was making decisions based on that fear. She could understand that so well. Heck, she’d been there just a few months ago. So afraid of being hurt again that she was prepared to spend the rest of her life alone. But Luke had changed that for her. She went to him and touched his arm, pressing her cheek against his shoulder blade.
“You’re afraid. I know you think that by sacrificing yourself you’re keeping others from being hurt. I know what it is to be scared. When I left Calgary, I swore I would never fall in love again. That I would never make myself that vulnerable. The sudden loss of my marriage did a number on me. I blamed myself. I thought I wasn’t good enough. And then I met you. You don’t think I’m still scared?” She gave a little laugh. “You talked to me about dreams, but it isn’t easy to follow dreams, especially when you have a five-year-old boy depending on you to keep his world safe and happy. I felt like every time I hoped for something more I was being self-indulgent. Not putting Sam first.” She turned him around so he was facing her. “I was so scared to love you that I packed up and left. But I’m not leaving now, Luke. I’m sticking around. Nothing changed in my heart when I left except that you were here and I was there. I refuse t
o let you sacrifice your life for me.”
“You don’t know what it means,” he repeated. “Dad was early onset. We were told long ago that there is a fifty-fifty chance that we kids have the genetic mutation.”
Fifty-fifty. For a moment Emily quailed. It was difficult odds.
“And have you been tested?”
He shook his head, staring out over the lawn that was starting to brown in the late summer heat. “The girls did. Their risk is low. They married and had the children…”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “How could I marry, knowing I might pass this on to my own children? To give them a life sentence like that?”
“Then why not be tested?”
He shook his head. “And what? What if I have the gene? I’d spend every day wondering how old I’d be when I started showing symptoms. I’d question every time I forgot the smallest detail, wondering if this was the beginning. I can’t live that way, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Tears gathered in Emily’s eyes. Suddenly everything made sense. The absolute precision of the tools in the workshop, each piece hung on exactly the right peg. The list he kept on the fridge with the pay and work schedule. It had seemed obsessively organized at the time, but now she understood. It was his safeguard. An early-warning system, a way to keep him on track just in case.
He said knowing would make him question. But not knowing was doing the exact same thing.
“You already are,” she whispered. “All the things in the house, just so. Numbers and to-do lists and having everything in a specific place…”
“I knew that if something was out of place, and I couldn’t remember putting it there…”
Silence dropped like an anvil.
“You are already living the disease, Luke.” The look of utter shock that blanked his face made her smile. She grabbed his hands and squeezed them. “Don’t you understand? You are so afraid of dying that you stopped living. You’re already second-guessing everything and missing out on what might be the happiest time of your life. Love, Luke. A wife and children. Laughter and happiness. You have given your family all of yourself. What is left for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“If there wasn’t this disease hanging over your head, what would you do?”
“But there is…”
“Forget it for a minute. If you were free of it…”
Luke looked down into her glowing face and felt something he hadn’t felt in over a decade—hope. He had been so afraid. Hell, he still was. But her question penetrated the wall he’d built around himself. If there was no chance of being ill? It was an easy answer.
“I’d ask you to marry me.”
She hadn’t expected that response, he realized, as her face paled and she dropped her hands from his arms.
He glanced at his watch, knowing he didn’t have much time. Liz and Cait expected him to be there soon and this might be his only chance to say what he needed to say. He’d wanted to make her understand that his reasons went far deeper than not wanting responsibility. Her ex-husband had destroyed so much of her confidence. If he could only give her one thing, it was that he wanted her to know that this was about him. That she had so much to offer someone.
But she was making him want things he’d convinced himself he’d never have. More than want. It was so close he could see it all within his reach.
“It occurs to me that in less than an hour from now I’m going to bury my father. And if I continue the way I’m going, I’m going to bury myself right with him, aren’t I?”
She nodded ever so slightly.
“You are the strongest woman I have ever met, Emily Northcott. No woman in her right mind would choose this. You should be running right now.”
“But I’m not.”