He puts his hands on my chest, staring at me intently.
“But if he tries to hurt you like he hurt me,” he says firmly. “I’m more than willing to burn the world to the ground to make sure he pays for it.”
Something about the promise behind his words sets a fire in my chest, and I pull him in for a kiss, soft and deep. It’s the only way I can think to thank him—to comfort him. He melts into me like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted, and that space in my heart that already knows I’m in love with him blooms to dangerous new heights.
But now the anger I feel toward Frank for all of this burns like an inferno in my soul, and I want to make him pay somehow for the things he’s done. To make him suffer for the harm he’s caused.
The thought that Luke had to deal with this kind of burden all on his own tears at my chest. But now, come what may, Luke won’t ever have to deal with it alone again. I’ll make sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gravity
Somethingshiftsinthedynamic of our relationship after that. A fierce protectiveness ignites in my soul that I can’t fully comprehend, and there’s an even stronger pull to be near Luke as often as possible, a nagging anxiety in the pit of my stomach whenever I’m not.
In the following days, I see so much more of him that it makes me think he feels it, too.
For the time being, Frank doesn’t make a move against either of us. Outside the occasional glare from across the shop, he seems to be keeping his distance. It’s hard to say if it’s a deliberate tactic to make us sweat or if he sobered up to the idea that Luke has a bomb of a secret he’s prepared to drop should he decide to act up.
Despite the ever-present threat of exposure, Luke and I agree that it changes nothing of how we go about our lives or how we handle our relationship. We refuse to let fear dictate our experience; otherwise, Frank has already won.
Still, we keep a good distance apart at work, then sneak upstairs to our secret lunch spot, using the uninterrupted hourto curl into each other until it’s hard to tell where I end and he begins. We keep our hands to ourselves during our workouts at the gym, but then Luke comes to my house and hangs all over me while I cook dinner, distracting and delighting me.
It makes the days where I cook alone seem cold and lonely, but the joy of watching him swoon with every bite of food I make for him continues to motivate me to do my best.
One night, as Luke raves over a meal of honey-glazed salmon and roasted potatoes until I’m flushing from all the adoration, he suddenly asks where I get the urge to cook like this every day for myself—and him by proxy—and I freeze.
At first, I’m hesitant to tell him the truth. Delving into the tragic backstory of how it all started feels a little morbid after the high praise, but Luke seems eager to understand this part of me better, and after the things he’s opened up to me about, I feel like I owe him that much.
To his credit, Luke listens attentively as I go into detail about the eating disorder that nearly destroyed my early twenties. He almost doesn’t believe me when I tell him I was anorexic after my dad died until I show him some photos of myself at that time, nothing but skin and bone, gaunt face, pale skin—utterly unrecognizable from who I am today. I watch the shock give way to sadness as Luke tries to imagine what kind of pain I was in that led to such an outcome.
“It was a trauma response. From my dad’s death,” I explain softly. “One of many.”
Luke puts his hand over mine, squeezing my fingers. “I know you said things got bad. I don’t think I realized just how bad.”
I nod, staring across the room absently. “I scared a lot of people back then. Scared myself a few times, too.”
Luke is quiet, offering comfort with his presence while giving me the space to decide whether I want to leave it there or open up about the worst time of my life. It’s not as difficult as I would have expected, the words pouring out of me.
I explain how the eating disorder was a way of enacting control over something in my life when I felt like I had no control over anything else. Especially when I struggled so badly with anxiety and nightmares I couldn’t get rid of. I tell Luke how often I used to go catatonic, like my body had to physically shut down when my brain was overstimulated… How I’d wake up in the hospital without remembering how I’d got there. The look on my mom’s face whenever I came out of it and realized what had happened is forever burned into my mind.
I share how it took years of therapy and trial and error to manage my depression to the point where I felt like it no longer controlled my life, and how I discovered the unexpected joy of cooking on accident, latching onto it so thoroughly that it was almost comical. Then, after putting myself on a structured workout routine, building my body up became another form of therapy. I finally felt like I had found peace.
The one thing I don’t tell him is how—before I’d found that peace—I’d reached the point where I was so ready to die that I’d tied a noose around my neck. How the pain and anguish got so severe that I couldn’t see any reason to stay, believing the only way through it was to end it all. I don’t tell him that the path to that healing came only after I was discovered half-dead in the garage, or that I wouldn't be standing here to talk about it at all if Marcus hadn’t cut me loose exactly when he did.
It’s a crucial part of this story, but I can’t bring myself to admit the dark truth to Luke. Not when I know how the morbid history would only make him sadder. I don’t ever want to be the cause of dimming his smile. Besides, it was so long ago now that it doesn’t bear mentioning. But if he can tell there’s adeeper, darker wound hiding beneath the surface of my words, he doesn’t scratch at it. Almost like he knows some things are better left unearthed.
Later in the week, while Luke is spending the evening at my house—the two of us cuddling on the couch while I read a book and he scrolls on his phone—my phone starts ringing with a FaceTime request from my mother. I answer it without thinking.
At first, Mom chides me for being lame for staying inside on a Friday night. Then I make the fatal mistake of defending myself by turning the camera angle down to show her that I’m hanging out with myboyfriend, thank you very much. The moment she sees Luke in the frame, she loses her goddamn mind, demanding to meet him immediately in the most Elaine Carlson way possible.
Luke, much to my horror, is thrilled with the request, snatching the phone from my hand with a charming smile and a roguish glint in his eye that has me gulping in genuine fear. The two of them immediately start commiserating, and Luke paces across the living room for almost an hour while they talk about me as if I’m not sitting right here on the couch.
I’m powerless to stop them once they get going, but I can’t deny the surge of joy I feel seeing them getting along so well. I try to remember the last time Mom got this chummy with one of my previous girlfriends, but honestly, nothing comes to mind. Most of the time, they weren’t comfortable talking to her except through me, so there was never any potential for a relationship there. And yet, with Luke, it’s almost like they’ve instantly become best friends with how well their conversation is going. I can tell Mom’s genuinely happy about it, so I sit back and listen with a smile, wondering if this is meant to be my life now.
Then Mom asks Luke if he’s seen my library yet, and my heart drops into my stomach.
“Mom!” I snap, horrified that she just casually threw that out there without consulting me, but I can practically hear her roll her eyes as she tells Luke to ignore me.
