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Chapter 27
Luke's voice jolts me back to attention. “You're going to have to take off those pants. Not that I mind.”
I roll up and pull my soaked legs from the pool, pressing my knees into my chest. Fuck, I'm not wearing anything but a bra. I pull my shirt back over my head, but it's wet from the concrete.
Luke hands me a takeout cup and I sip it. It's some kind of black tea. I shake my head. He offers the other cup. A latte, strong and bitter. He sits on the concrete next to me and drops a stack of honey packets between us. We stir them into our drinks with our fingers. He says nothing about my wet clothes. I say nothing about Samantha.
“Why do you stay in the condo?”
“Too many memories here,” he says.
“The place is full of Samantha's things.”
“It's going to be hers,” he says.
“You loved her more than anything, didn't you?”
“Yes,” he says, and takes a long sip. He sticks out his tongue. “Okay, I put way too much honey in this.”
“Are the memories really that bad?”
“It hurts too much. I can never sleep when I'm here. I can never get anything done.”
“Do you sleep in your apartment?”
“A little.”
I suck the last bit of honey from a packet and drink my latte. Maybe the caffeine will make this all feel easier.
“Have you been visiting her?” I ask.
He nods. “She needs company, someone to keep her occupied.”
“What do you mean ‘occupied’?”
“I told you. It was over long before she swallowed that bottle of sleeping pills. She needs a friend. Just a friend.”
Or maybe she needs someone who will spend the night lying next to her on the couch watching Law and Order. Someone who will fetch her coffee and breakfast. Someone who will beg her to leave her asshole fiancé.
Or something like that.
“She'll go back to my father's firm,” he says. “But I don't know if she should. It's too much stress.”
“You're still taking care of her,” I say.
“It's not like that.”
“You still love her.”
“Not like that,” he says.
“But, still, you love her.”
“She's better, but she needs someone to watch over her. She needs someone to hold her hand so she doesn't slip back into that dark fog.”
“I bet Ryan would say the same thing about me,” I say.
“I thought we weren't talking about him.”
