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“Callie.” Luke’s voice sounds again. Deep. Commanding.
I find his eyes. “I was just thinking about Jolene. And the fact she probably decorated this room. And that this was her bed.” My cheeks heat as I try to explain myself. Nothing is coming out right, because although those were my exact thoughts, the deeper meaning of my thoughts is something else.
How will we ever get past his wife?
How long will it take?
Will I be enough for him to heal?
He stares at me for a long time, taking all that in. I want to say more, but I can’t bring myself to. This feels like a pivotal moment for us, and my heart beats so hard in my chest I can hear the rush of it in my ears.
“Fuck,” he mutters as he shoves his fingers through his hair. “I never wanted this for you, Callie. I wanted to be clear of this…” His voice drifts off, and I’m pretty sure Luke’s struggling with his words just as much as I am.
I’m feeling exposed standing in front of him naked while we discuss this, so I bend to retrieve my clothes from the floor.
He frowns as I straighten. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation naked.”
“You’re not getting dressed, Callie,” he mutters as he stalks to his closet. When he returns, he has one of his T-shirts in his hands that he passes me. “You can wear this, but no fucking way are you putting your clothes back on. We’ll talk this out before I’m letting you leave.”
“I’m not leaving, Luke. That wasn’t why I was getting dressed.” I shrug his shirt over my head.
We stand in silence for another couple of minutes. The time feels endless to me, though. There’s no clock in this room, but I hear the ticking loud and clear while I wait for Luke to speak. Just when I’m beginning to think he’s not going to say anything, he begins.
“I never gave much thought to what marriage actually was before I got married. The ups, the downs, the never-ending daily grind it can turn into. The woman I married was not the woman I ended up spending most of my marriage with. It only took her six months to change. We fought all the time—about money, my mother, Sean, my work and the fact I had to work two jobs to support us, about this house that my mother gave us and the car she also gave us so we had something safe to drive Sean in. Fuck, Callie, my marriage almost killed me; it sure as fuck killed my soul. Jolene was never happy with anything, but she particularly held a grudge against my mother. After years of me studying and then taking on a job that didn’t pay much, we never had spare cash, and I refused to allow Mum to pay our bills. So Mum gave us things instead of money and Jolene felt like she was always interferi
ng. I ended up taking on a night job in a bar to supplement our income, and Jolene never let me forget that she was raising Sean all by herself.”
He takes a breath as he paces the room. I stay quiet. I want to give him the space to say what he needs to.
“Instead of spending what little time we had together, Jolene chose to shut me out. She was either fighting with me or giving me the silent treatment. Then she began refusing to have sex with me. In public, though, she projected this happy image. Anyone would have thought we were the happiest couple out there.” He stops pacing and his eyes find mine. I suck in a breath at what I see there. His memories are killing him. “I thought I loved her. I spent every day trying to get through to her, trying to fix our marriage. Trying to figure out what the hell she needed to see or hear to know that I loved her. But you know what? You get to a point where you don’t know how you feel anymore so you just keep feeling the way you think you should be. I always swore I’d give my child two parents. I know now that’s what I was fighting for. I wasn’t fighting for Jolene, because how can a man who’s fallen out of love fight for a woman who doesn’t even know how to love?”
I have no answer to that.
I remain silent, waiting to see if he has any more to say.
He does.
“My mother decorated this house. Jolene wasn’t interested because it came from Mum. And I had no desire or time. I was too damn busy just surviving. Work, fatherhood and marriage were enough for me to deal with. Mum and Jolene fought as much as Jolene and I did. And in the end, I let them go for it. I stopped trying to get the two women in my life to even be able to fucking agree on what colour the sky was.” He takes hold of my arms. “This is not the bed I slept next to Jolene in. The week I discovered the truth, I went out and bought a new bed.”
“That’s not what this was about, Luke,” I say softly.
“I know.”
He’s given me more than I thought he would. And if I thought my heart hurt for him before, it hurts more now. I reach up to touch his face. “You’re a strong man. Thank you for telling me all that when I know you don’t want to revisit the past.”
“I just want us to move forward, Callie. I’m willing to do whatever it takes for that to happen.”
I move into his arms and pull his face down to mine. Brushing my lips across his, I say, “It’s happening, Luke. I want this as much as you do.”
“Thank fuck,” he says, lifting me into his arms.
I cling to him while he carries me to the bed. When he places me down, I sit and watch as he rips his shirt off and then removes the rest of his clothes. The mood between us has shifted from fun to intense. We need each other more now than earlier; we need this to continue moving forward.
He sits on the bed in front of me and strips his shirt off me. He then repositions me so I’m sitting on his lap with my legs wrapped around him.
Skin to skin.
