I frowned and said through my pout, “Why?”
“Because everything you do is for a reason.” His thumb traveled along my lower lip, erasing that pout out of my face. “So, if you threw all my things out, I’d know it wasn’t irrational. I’d grab my coat with a smile and go salvage whatever was left.”
A kind of pressure I knew very well rushed from my chest to my face, building up behind my eyelids. “Seems pretty irrational to me.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t matter because I’d know what it meant. Why you did it. And that’s a good enough reason to smile.”
I exhaled, the burst of air leaving my mouth forcefully. “Well, I’m happy you’re happy.”
Lucas’s chuckle was low, and it made me scoff.
“Do you find this entertaining?” Taking a step back I tried to cross my arms over my chest but then Lucas leaned down, brushing his mouth over my lips and killing my intention of going anywhere that wasn’t straight back into his arms.
His kiss was slow and soft, and it made me want to cry.
When we came up for air, I struggled to make my vocal cords function. “Lucas?”
“Yeah?” he answered, the brown in his eyes simmering with a gravity that hadn’t been there before.
“I don’t think I can say goodbye to you.” Because it wasn’t just about saying goodbye. It was about seeing him slip out of my life without being able to do anything about it. It was about how unfair it was that timing hadn’t been on our side. It was about how much I wanted him not to go. “I… don’t think I can go with you to the airport and watch you leave. I—” I closed my eyes. Shook my head. “I can’t, Lucas. I just—”
I felt his mouth on my forehead, his lips pressing on my skin for a long moment.
“It’s okay, Ro,” he told me in a whisper. “You don’t have to come. I understand.”
I didn’t want him to understand, though.
I wanted him to fight me. To make me say the words I hadn’t yet uttered out loud because he needed them. To tell me that he wouldn’t leave, or that we wouldn’t become nothing but a memory. To tell me that as much as he hadn’t figured out his new life, he wanted me in it. Needed me.
But I couldn’t make him say those things. And I’d understand if he didn’t.
It broke my heart, but I wouldn’t make him put my heart before himself. “Okay,” I breathed out. And when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t ready to see what was staring back at me.
There was an emotion flooding Lucas’s face, his eyes, the way his features were arranged right this moment. As if he was in far more pain than I was. As if he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. As if he loved me.
Without a word, he clasped my hand and pulled me toward the bed.
And without a word, I went.
He guided me onto my back and braced his hands on each side of my head.
His gaze met mine, and I swore he was looking at me with this emotion I didn’t want to acknowledge out loud. That powerful, all-consuming emotion that mirrored mine.
“What do you need?” he said, placing a kiss on the corner of my mouth. “I’ll give it to you, Rosie.”
The answer was so simple, so obvious, that I didn’t even understand why he asked.
I grabbed on to him almost desperately, and told him, “You.”
Because it was only him I needed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lucas
Irested my elbows on my knees and let my head fall between my shoulders. Closing my eyes, I told myself for the hundredth time that I’d done the right thing.
The only thing I could have done.