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I glance below his belt and sniff. “No, thanks.”
A different glint flares in his eyes, his smile changing in a way that makes my breath hitch. I shouldn’t have said that.
His gaze flickers down my body. “Take off your clothes, Celeste.”
An electric bolt of sensation zigzags from my stomach to my core. My face immediately heats.
“What?”
Lucas blinks, then laughs and releases the shower door handle. “Not that I’d object to you naked, but that’s not what I meant.” He grabs a fluffy towel from a cabinet. I open the door and catch it as it sails toward me. “I’ll grab you some clothes.”
He strolls into the bedroom, leaving me embarrassed, bemused, and wet in more ways than one.
15
Not that I’d object to you naked.
“Asshole,” I mutter as I peel off my wet clothes and towel dry with rough strokes.
The cobwebs in my vagina are to blame for my flirty words and the insane thoughts in my head right now. There just isn’t another rational explanation for why I provoked him. Why I want to tackle him naked and release all this frustration, this humming awareness and energy. Why I shiver as I pull on one of his spare T-shirts and a pair of athletic shorts and his scent surrounds me.
Obviously, my sex-starved body recognizes that he can give me what I want. He’s objectively gorgeous: the strength and grace in his body, the jawline, the tousled hair, that sexy smirk and those arresting eyes. If this were a random date, I’d one-hundred percent be rubbing myself all over him. But it’s not.
He’s Lucas.
So damn him and his stupid smile and my stupid body that doesn’t know any better.
Armed with enough logic to quell my libido, I finish in the bathroom and collect my wet clothes. I find Lucas in the kitchen doing dishes. He’s whistling a nameless tune, a dishrag thrown over one shoulder. Oblivious to my presence. The sight throws me off. Wipes away rational thought.
For a second, I’m flattened by how much I’ve missed him. Then a bigger wave of emotion hits and wipes the smile from my face before it’s fully formed. It’s not one of those crippling surges of grief that marked the first few years after Jeremy passed, but softer, gentler. And yet no less potent.
Images assault my mind—Jeremy washing dishes. Jeremy singing off-key as he wipes the counters in our apartment. Jeremy as he kisses my rounded belly. As he kisses me goodbye for the last time.
“Peapod? What’s wrong?”
Lucas is in front of me, his expression twisted with concern. He lifts a hand toward me and I flinch back.
“I’m fine.” But my voice is weak, my mind spiraling.
“It’s me, isn’t it. Being near me.”
It’s not a question, but I nod anyway because he’s right and I don’t feel like shielding him from the truth. Loss doesn’t care about the rules of time. Its roots expand from the past into the future, and we never quite know when we’ll step on one.
He sighs, eyes closing. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about him a lot, too.”
I don’t even feel the growing wet spot on my chest from hugging my sodden clothes. My eyes burn as I blink back tears. Of course he’s been thinking about Jeremy. We are each other’s mirrors in this, Jeremy the ghost just out of sight.
I ache in a different way now. A gnawing, lonely ache—echoes of nights sobbing into my pillow, feeling Jeremy’s absence to my bones and wishing more than anything Lucas was there to hold me, to cry with me. Because no one else could possibly understand the emptiness but him.
“Is that why you stayed away?” I ask. Because you couldn’t look at me without seeing him?
His gaze meets mine. “I was young and stupid. I didn’t know how to be present for it.” He pauses, inhaling swiftly. “It was too big. Too much. So I tucked it away and ignored it. I’m sorry, Celeste. More than I can ever say.”
I swallow hard. “What changed?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Time, I guess. Life. There came a point when I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
I can’t help asking, “When was that?”
