“How can you leave when I think I'm falling in love with you?”
She went completely still, not moving at all, not even blinking. “If you ever know for sure, let me know.”
She was halfway down the stairs when he said, when he begged, “Stay.”
She'd said the same thing to him that first night.
Now she was the one leaving without a backward glance.
Chapter Twenty-one
Janica had never worked harder. It was amazing the things she could accomplish without a heart.
She finally had her collection accepted by the department store chain in Japan that she'd been wanting to get into for years. One of her hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind dresses had been selected for display at the Museum of Fashion in Paris. Teen Vogue had called about a half-page feature on up-and-coming designers.
She was getting everything she wanted for her career.
And she was miserable.
Not that anyone knew it, of course. Not even Lily. Mostly because Janica had gone out of her way to avoid her big sister. Actually, she'd gone out of her way to avoid everyone. She hadn't seen her friends, hadn't gone dancing, had barely left her studio for fourteen days and nights.
Tonight, however, she'd been unable to come up with a good enough excuse to miss a family barbecue.
“He isn't coming, Jan,” Lily had told her on the phone that morning.
“It's okay if he does.”
It wasn't, of course. Saying that was nothing but sheer bravado. But the thing was, even though it wasn't at all okay now, it was going to have to get okay.
Because at some point she was going to have to learn to deal with him.
At some point she was going to have to learn how to be in the same room with Luke and still be in love with him.
At some point she was going to have to figure out a way to watch Luke talk or drink or walk around and not replay, in excruciating detail, how it had felt when she was being touched by his hands, kissed by his mouth.
And at some point her brain was going to learn how to stop replaying his parting words.
I think I'm falling in love with you.
Obviously, though, he'd been wrong. Because she hadn't heard a word from him in the two weeks since she'd left the cabin in Big Sur.
After making a pit stop at the cupcake store, she headed over to Lily and Travis's house. The kids greeted her as if it had been a lifetime since they had seen her.
“They've missed you, Jan,” Lily said. “We all have.”
“Cupcakes.”
She held the box out between them, as if she were trying to use it as a barrier, as a way to keep Lily from trying to get her to spill out everything she was barely holding back. But when Lily took the box and put it on the counter, judging by the way her sister was looking at her, Janica had a bad feeling about the barbecue.
“He's coming,” Janica said in a flat voice.
Lily nodded. “I'm sorry. When Travis told me I could have killed him.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about. Like I said before, I'll deal.”
Not well, probably, but that was beside the point.
Violet reached a dirty hand into Janica's bag and pulled out some pretty pink ribbon and tulle. “Is this for me?”
“You bet,” Janica said, picking up the bag and heading into the backyard. “We are going to make you and Sam some special barbecue outfits.”
Lily spoke in the soothing tone that Janica remembered so well from their childhood. “He's going to come to his senses, honey. I know he is.”
But Janica was already measuring ribbon and tulle.
* * *
Fourteen sunrises. Fourteen sunsets. Three meals a day. A handful of hours of sleep every night.
Every minute, every second, he'd missed her.
On the phone with Travis that morning, his brother had mentioned a barbeque. Evidently, Lily hadn't said a word to her husband about finding Luke and Janica up at the cabin together. If she had, Luke knew he would have never heard the end of it from his twin.
Why, he'd wondered, had she kept something so big from her husband?
But it hadn't taken a brain surgeon to figure out why.
Lily was waiting for Luke to tell his brother—to tell the entire goddamned world—how he felt about Janica.
Hell, they were all waiting for that.
When he'd asked Travis if Janica was going to be there, his twin had said, “I think so. Lily said something about cupcakes. That usually means her sister is attached to them. I swear, she's a total sugar addict.”
A flash of kissing her sweet lips, sticky from s'mores, on the beach had assaulted him.
The sound of Janica's laughter floated all the way out to the sidewalk and he stumbled, nearly dropping the bottle of wine he was holding. The front door was unlocked and he let himself inside. After putting the merlot down on the kitchen counter, he walked into the living room where there was a sliding glass door that led out to a huge atrium.
Janica was dancing with the kids to a pop song he'd often heard playing at the hospital. Violet and Sam were dressed in ribbons and fabric and Janica was holding their hands and spinning in a circle.
He swore to God he'd never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his entire life.
He loved her.
Nothing had ever been so perfectly, blatantly obvious.
All these years he'd tried to tell himself she was all about taking. But he'd been blindly, stupidly wrong about her.
She'd given and given to him, never once asking anything for herself. And looking at her with her niece and nephew, seeing, knowing how completely open and joyous she was with them, the truth hit him like a ton of bricks.
He'd lied to himself all those years—wasting each and every one of them—to try and keep himself safe. Safe from losing someone he loved again.
When it turned out that the only true safety he'd known since he was ten years old was with Janica.
It didn't make any sense. He wasn't at all sure how—or if—she would fit into his world, but none of that seemed to matter anymore. If the two of them had to go live on a remote island to make it work, that's what they'd do.
Travis came around the corner just then, clapping him on the shoulder. “Hey bro. Just in time for the grilling to begin.”
That was when Janica looked up and finally saw him, her eyes going wide, her face flushing an even deeper shade of rose.
He didn't answer his brother. Instead, he walked straight over to the woman who meant everything to him. The woman who had given him her heart again and again.
“I—”
The part of him that still couldn't believe he was going to say it—to Janica of all people!—made him pause.
Damn it. What was wrong with him?
She needs to know how you feel. And then maybe, if you're the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet, she'll take you back. Just spit it out already. You might not have picked her, but that doesn't matter anymore. It wasn't your choice to love her, but that doesn't change the fact that you do.