Clearing my throat, I went on. “I love you, Luke. But I don’t think I can share you with the world, and I’m so sorry for that. I really am. And I would never in a million years ask you to give up what you love. It wouldn’t be fair. I refuse to do it.”
He nodded. “I know you wouldn’t ask me to give up my career, but you also can’t ask me to give up you—because that’s something I cannot, I will not do, Bree.”
My jaw ached as I fought to keep my emotions in place. “Luke,” I said as I closed my eyes. When he started speaking, I looked back at him.
“I realized that day in your office that I needed to figure out a few things before I could make you any promises. I’m sorry it took me so long, and I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you in the meantime. Maybe deep down, I was also afraid that I was too late. But I never, not once, gave up on us, Bree. I prayed every night that God would make you feel my love for you, and when I found out you left Boston, I was scared to death I might have lost you forever.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the waitress making her way to us.
“Okay, it’s burger time!” Melissa said as she set down two baskets on the table with our burgers and fries. She smiled at me, then turned and gave Luke a cold stare. She had clearly noticed me crying. Dammit all to hell.
“Thank you, Melissa,” Luke said with a smile. She ignored him and turned back to me.
“Are we all good?” she asked.
I smiled. “Yes, I’m good. Luke?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Melissa grinned, turned, and walked away, leaving us alone again.
We proceeded to eat, neither one of us saying anything. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. A few people entered the restaurant. Soon we had diners on both sides of our booth.
“Is there a place we can go and talk after we eat?” Luke asked.
I nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.”
“I can’t even tell you the last time I had an ice cream cone,” Luke said with a wide smile on his face.
“This is not ice cream, it’s custard.”
He rolled his eyes and licked the cone, sending a flood of heat straight to my core as I watched. I nearly moaned. Christ, I needed to redirect my thoughts—and fast.
“Custard, ice cream. Either way, it’s freaking good.”
Smiling, I replied, “Yeah, Sandy’s has the best custard.”
He shot me a sideways glance and smiled before he went back to the cone.
I drew in a deep breath and decided we needed to get back to the discussion we’d stopped in the middle of earlier. “What did you need to figure out?”
Luke paused his licking and looked straight ahead at the benches in the small park along Maple Street. He motioned to them. “Want to sit down?”
“Sure,” I replied and headed toward the park. There wasn’t anyone around, so we’d have the privacy we didn’t have at the restaurant. As we walked past a trash bin, I tossed my cone away. I didn’t really feel like eating it. I had barely been able to force myself to eat half my burger and fries.
Once we sat, I felt my stomach drop, suddenly worried about what Luke was going to say.
“I knew that day in your office that I couldn’t give you the things you wanted or deserved,” he said. “I also knew that I couldn’t let you go.”
“Why did you wait so long to reach out to me? I know I told you to leave, Luke. And I know it’s pure stupidity for me to think you could read my mind. I shouldn’t have ignored your attempts to talk to me after I ran away from the benefit. And I know I told you to leave, but you had to know deep down I was so angry and hurt. Seeing that woman kiss you, and then to find out you slept with her in the past—it was all so much,” I said in an almost defeated voice. “But I honestly thought deep down you’d simply give me some time. But you never even tried to reach out to me. Not once.”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck as he looked at his cone. He stood and tossed it into a trashcan.
“Why did you throw it away?” I asked.
“Lost my appetite.”
I wasn’t going to apologize. My heart had been so broken, I had hardly been able to eat for weeks. I wasn’t about to care that he threw away one damn cone.
“I fucked up, Bree, I know that. And for the last few months Hank has been reminding me of his own displeasure about how I handled things. I nearly fired him at least a dozen times.” He shook his head. “This whole thing with us is new to me. I’ve never been in love with anyone before. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I was able to love anyone. I’ve never experienced the things I felt until you showed up in my life. When you told me to get out of your office, that you couldn’t stand by and watch me pretend to be with other women, I knew what I had to do.”