Page 51 of Tulips and Lost Time

“To you! You’re not seeing the bigger picture here! You’re not seeing the long-term gain because you’re so fuckin’ focused on the now. You want what you want, and it’s entirely in character for someone your age to not consider anything outside of that thing.”

“Oh good! So you’re like Marcus, then? Another quasi-dad to tell me what I should think and feel?”

“Dammit, Kari! You’re not—” But I stop. I shake my head and cast a look over at the house bursting with people who love us both. We’re one family. And falling in love with someone in that tight knit group of friends is not what someone who cares about the collective should do.

It’s selfish and wrong.

Shortsighted and stupid.

“Luca,” she groans. Dragging her hand along my chest and up to rest over my heart, Kari stands on her toes and waits for me to bring my gaze back around. “You’re sending yourself crazy over this. And it doesn’t have to be so complicated.”

“It was wrong.”

“Wh—” She frowns and drops her head back to stare up at the sky. “They say the stars already know. They’re millions of years old, so they’ve already seen our past. They’ve seen our future. Whatever is coming, they already know about it.”

“We shouldn’t have kissed.” My words are like acid on my tongue. Like razor-blades in my throat. Because she’s not going to listen to the I’m trying to protect you spiel. She’s heard it her whole life from a brother who took his duties too far, smothering her in love until that love felt like a straitjacket.

Kari Macchio is not looking for a guard at her door.

She wants a white knight to slay the dragon and take her on an adventure.

A role I would love to fulfill for her. If that’s all I got to do with my life, then it would be a life well lived.

But it’s not my time yet. The knight still has to wait. Because she’s eighteen years old and still so naïve to the world.

“Luca—”

“What we did was bad, Kari.” I swallow the poison in my throat and study her lips instead of her eyes. The way the former tremble and not how the latter glitter. “It was wrong.”

“It wasn’t wrong! It can’t be wrong when there’s love.”

“It was a mistake.” Lie. Lie. Lie! “I was opportunistic and took what you were offering because it was right there for me to grab on to, and I’m the asshole who will take advantage of a girl throwing herself at me.”

“Stop it!”

“I wanted your first kiss,” I sneer. “Fuck, Kari, I’m a greedy man who likes to collect that sort of stuff.”

“You’re being a dick. You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Go to school.” I pull back and drop my hands. Because if I don’t create space between us, I’m not sure I’ll ever let go. “Go find some other dude to lust over. Because this isn’t how things are gonna end up for us.”

“You’re setting things on fire,” she moans. “You’re overreacting because you think it’s the noble thing to do. I’m not asking for a friggin’ marriage proposal! I’m not even asking for a boyfriend. I just…” She reaches up and swipes beneath her eyes. “I’m asking you to admit you want this, too.”

“No—”

“Luc!”

“I. Don’t. Want. You.” I take a step back, looking down at the woman who was a girl too few months ago. The child I practically helped raise. I try to place her back in that little sister column she’s been in for well over a decade. But she insists on jumping out. She demands to be treated the way I treat the others. “I got my taste. And now I’m done.” I bring my hand up and wipe my lips, as though I got to taste her tonight. As though I could handle this goodbye differently—better—and enjoy another before she climbs into her car and leaves.

Because that’s how things could have gone. If I was more of a man and better with my words, and if she was less interested in something more.

But I’m not. And she’s too brave for her own good.

“Be safe while you’re away, Bear.” I pause and swallow the ache in my throat, then I glance across the yard to Marc’s A-frame, lit up on the inside and illuminating all the people I’ll hurt by hurting Kari. It’s inevitable, really. She has to feel the pain; better today, when so little is on the line, than ten years down the track, twenty years, when she realizes she rushed to claim the only can of beans she ever knew. “I hope to see you when you come back for break.”

“Screw you.” She shivers against the barn wall, her hands balling into fists and her chest heaving for fresh air. “You’re making a horrible mistake, Luc. The stars already know.”

I cast a look up to the sky and curse every single star that dares give a beautiful woman false hope. Then I look down again and shrug. “There’s a saying, isn’t there? About loving somebody and setting them free.”

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