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He stared at me, his gaze juxtaposing the desperation in his voice. “But I’m not the only one who wants to leave broken pieces at my feet. You’re making your own mosaic too, babe, no matter which way you look at it. You’re focusing on all the things that are part of you keeping us apart. But you’ve made your own version of me, out of the broken pieces you’ve chipped off. The ones that are too shiny, too much of a mirror to show you a little piece of reality. The reality that you’ve been using excuses and your love of your family to forsake your happiness.”
I stared at him. For a long time. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been a long time; when I was dirtied, inside and out, beaten, and smelling the pungent aroma of death that circled around the room, originating from the body on the floor, it was a lifetime.
Maybe more than one of them.
Maybe it was all the lifetimes I could’ve had, that we could’ve had if we’d made different decisions, if we were different people.
But no matter how many times I changed my hair color or my wardrobe, I was always going to be the same person.
So was Luke.
And our decisions, like his to pull that trigger minutes before, they were as lasting as a scar. They were there in the flesh of our past, were obscuring the growth of something new for the future. Obscuring it altogether.
“My happiness?” I repeated. “And what would you know about that?”
Luke watched me, his face struggling with different emotions. By the way he held his chin, I knew he was frustrated, even beyond that, at the fact that we were standing there having that conversation while I was hurt. We were having that conversation before he could help me.
He couldn’t.
His face also showed something else. Tenderness, but something intense as well, a full glimpse at what he’d only hinted at through the years.
His feelings for me.
Perhaps his love for me.
The thing I’d wanted him to show my entire life. To acknowledge. You always think you want your dreams and fantasies to come true, but then when they enter the realm of reality, they’re tainted, blackened, and tarred by that reality.
It didn’t matter. I realized that. We could both want each other, but we couldn’t have each other.
He stepped forward, though he couldn’t completely, considering there was a dead body between us and all.
He frowned down at it for a beat, then stepped over it, without even blinking, so he could frame my battered and bloodied face in his hands.
“I’ll admit that I don’t know much about your happiness,” he rasped. “About being the reason for it. For making it. But I’m gonna learn, babe. I want to learn. I’ve wanted to learn my whole fuckin’ life, Rosie. I was just too fucked up.”
“I’m fucked up too,” I whispered.
He eyed me. “So let’s be fucked up together.” It was an invitation, that look, those words, the fact that he’d stepped over the body he’d created to get to me instead of stepping away from it to call it in.
It was that pivotal moment.
And I knew what I needed to do.
But I wasn’t strong enough to do it then. I was going to treat my broken and battered self to a taste of the fantasy.
“Okay,” I whispered.
He patched up all of my outward bruises, his face hard, eyes soft. His hands moving over me so lightly it was like they almost didn’t touch me at all. At the same time, his touch felt heavy, grounding, like without it I’d float away.
And I’d let him.
Do all of that.
Take care of me.
I didn’t rattle on about how I could do it, about feminism, about how strong I was, about my lineage and ability to handle such situations.
Because if I said any of those things, I would’ve lied.
I was done lying to Luke.
So I let him take care of me.
He didn’t say a word while he did so, maybe sensing that I couldn’t speak, that all of my energy was going toward trying to patch up my insides as well as my outsides. He didn’t demand answers as to how it happened, why. Didn’t order me to call it in. In fact, he very purposefully ripped off his badge and set it on my nightstand.
It was a gesture.
A big one.
Huge.
One I couldn’t do anything with, couldn’t even process.
That didn’t mean I didn’t stare at that shiny piece of metal lying against the lipsticks and body creams on my nightstand.
That didn’t mean I didn’t feel it stare back at me.
“Rosie?”
I jerked my head up.
Luke stood at the edge of my bed, white shirt stained with blood, hands stained with blood.
Soul stained with blood, a voice I didn’t recognize told me. Because of you.
