“Summer doesn’t date. She and Aggie work together, they’ve been friends for nine years, and in all that time, Summer has never dated anyone.”
Luke found that hard to believe. She was beautiful. He couldn’t imagine that she didn’t get a lot of guys asking her out. There had to be a way to convince her to say yes when he asked her to have dinner with him, and hewasgoing to ask her. He just needed a big romantic gesture, something to knock her off her feet. Nine years was a long time to be alone, she had to be lonely, and he knew she’d felt the spark when their hands had touched. Perhaps she could be persuaded to give him a chance.
Maybe he could try whatever Nick did to get Aggie to date him, his brother wasn't known for his sparkling personality, and yet somehow, he has convinced Aggie to not just date him but marry him. “How did you and Aggie meet?”
His brother’s face darkened. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Intrigued, Luke asked, “Does it have to do with why you’re not a cop anymore?”
Nick’s eyes took on that cold ice blue look he had seen so many times when they were kids. “I don’t understand why you're so obsessed with getting married.”
“You don’t understand?” he asked incredulously. Sometimes it was like he and his brother had lived completely different lives that had never intersected. “Because I have never had a real family as a kid. Because I was always alone.”
“You had more than me,” Nick said a little sullenly.
“You walked out on me just like everyone else,” he told his older brother. That betrayal had hurt more than anything else. It had been the biggest loss he had suffered, and he had suffered a lot of losses as a child.
Nick softened. “I'm sorry, Luke. I shouldn’t have walked out on you, but I couldn’t take it anymore. It was just easier to be alone than keep losing people that I loved. It was safer. I couldn’t cope with losing anyone else.”
“Until Aggie,” he said softly.
“Until Aggie,” Nick echoed. “I'm not proud of the way Aggie and I met. It was bad. I became cold and calculating, refusing to feel anything because it was just easier than feeling pain and loss. I don’t want to be that guy anymore. Aggie deserves better. She deserves the best, and I want to be the best I can be for her.”
Luke wasn't used to hearing his brother be so open about his emotions. Nick had really changed a lot since they’d last seen each other.
“Do you ever think about any of them?”
“About our parents?”
“Yes.”
“Neither of us remembers them. I was only two when they died, you were just an infant.”
Some days it felt like he remembered them. He’d looked at their photos and watched home movies so many times that those images had taken on a life of their own inside his mind. But he’d been only a few months old when they’d been killed in a car accident. He’d never had a chance to know them. “When I think of our parents, I never picture them.”
“Which parents do you think of?”
After the death of their parents, he and his brother entered the foster care system. The first family they’d lived with for three years, but after their foster father had died from a heart attack they’d been sent away. Luke had only been four and his memories of that time were hazy. The next family he and Nick had lived with for six years, and that place had been a real home. But after the death of their foster brother, they’d been sent away again. Following that, Nick had refused to be fostered out again, opting to remain in a group home, but he’d gone to live with one last family. He’d lived with them from the time he was twelve until he was eighteen.
“The last family you lived with,” Nick answered for him.
“I wish you’d come with me.” When he’d lived with that family, he’d been lucky to see Nick once a month when his brother begrudgingly agreed to spend the day with him and his foster family. As they got older, those days together got further and further apart until they stopped altogether. He’d missed his brother. Luke hadn’t wanted to grow apart, Nick was the only real family he had left, but he had been cold and distant and disinterested in him.
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t go through losing another family.”
“But they never gave me back,” he countered. “I lived with them till I graduated high school. I spent holidays with them while I was in college. We’re still close.”
“Back then, there was no way to know it would work out that way. I'm not saying it was right, Luke, I'm just saying it was what it was. Before I met Aggie, I was afraid to get close to anyone, I was afraid to have them die or walk out on me. If it wasn't for Aggie, I would still be that emotionless guy. She loves me for who I am, the good and the bad and the worst. That love, that unconditional love, changed me.”
“I want that too,” he said. “That’s why I'm obsessed—as you call it—with finding the person who loves me unconditionally, who won't send me away, who’ll always be there.”
Nick sighed. “Yeah, I get it. I’ll try to stop giving you a hard time about it. But I'm not sure Summer is the one. She doesn’t talk about her past, everyone is entitled to their secrets, and whatever Summer’s secrets are she’s keeping them for a reason, and I'm not sure that she’s ready to give them up, for anyone. Maybe you should let it go. There are plenty of other women out there. Leave Summer alone. She doesn’t want to date. If you push her, you’re going to hurt her, and that’s going to hurt Aggie, and I don’t want anything hurting my wife.”
Ignoring the veiled threat, Luke pondered what else his brother had said. So, Summer had secrets, theyallhad secrets, things that for whatever reason, they just couldn’t bring themselves to share with the world. To him that wasn't a deterrent.
Twice in one night he’d met her.
And on the night that he’d decided to let go of the hurt Nick walking out on him when they were kids had caused. The night he’d been ready to put the past behind him and move forward. The night when he’d decided to focus on the future.