Page 36 of Dirty Ginger

She couldn’t see Beckett’s expression, but by the way Luka took a step back, she assumed he’d perfected his death glare.

Silence remained until Beckett drove down the driveway and then Luka turned her way again. He shoved his hands in his pockets, barely able to look her in the eye. “I just came by to tell you that and to thank you for the check again.” He gave her a quick look. “I wanted to tell you in person.”

It wasn’t just for that. She read what he needed in his pained eyes before he walked down the porch steps. Suddenly, everything became so clear. What felt so wrong earlier now made sense. His sadness, culpability was all wrong. “You were right, you know,” she called.

Luka froze. He glanced back over his shoulder “Right about what?”

“Us,” she explained. “There was something wrong there for a long time. It wasn’t just you who felt that way.” He turned to fully face her, color returning to his cheeks, hope slowly filling his eyes. Deep in her heart, she knew she had to do this for him, and for her too. “I think I didn’t want to believe it, or I had been blind to everything that had been going with us, but I guess what I’m saying is…” She could hardly believe what she was about to say, “…thank you for stopping the wedding. Thank you for stopping what would have been the biggest mistake of our lives.”

Luka’s shoulders sagged, an obvious heavy weight lifting from him. “You mean that?”

She nodded. “Do I think the way you ended things was right? No. But endings are hard. Emotions are messy. I just don’t want you thinking that you were the only one to blame for all of this. My fault lies there too.” Everything settled in her mind as she decided the best way forward through all of this for herself and for Luka, a man she had cared about deeply, was to tell the truth. “My heart was never yours to have.”

His brows knotted. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a long story,” she told him. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, with a soft smile.

---