Page 60 of Lily, Unwritten

I decided it was better to meet this head on; I looked straight into Luke’s eyes. You know how they warn you to not look directly at the sun? Yeah… Luke needed a similar style of warning.

He was even sexier than before if that was possible. Perhaps I’d managed to forget how inviting he was, but he was drawing me in right now. Was it possible that his eyes had grown bluer over the course of a year? My gaze drifted down his face to his full lips, his happy smile, his soft, smooth neck.

“Lily,” his voice was soft. My eyes bounced back to his and I couldn’t stop my heart spiralling off into random rhythms; it was why I hadn’t looked at him earlier, not properly. Before I knew what was happening I was in his arms, breathing him in, feeling the strength of him enveloping me into his safety. I felt his breath against my face and realised to my shame that stray tears were making their way down my cheeks. “It’s OK, don’t cry.” Luke whispered, which only made me sob a little louder. “It’s freezing out here. Shall we go in and talk?”

I nodded and stepped back, bereft at the loss of his embrace as I motioned him inside, clicking the door closed and shuffling around him and into the living room. This cottage was not made for someone of Luke’s size, I winced as he almost caught his head on a beam.

“Do you want a drink?” I asked, trying to sound casual, as if this wasn’t the most important conversation I could’ve imagined. As if I wasn’t wiping tears off my face that his touch had caused. “I don’t bother having wine in anymore, but I can make coffee?”

He pressed his hand to my forehead and frowned. “Is this really my Lily?” I laughed and batted his hand away but my heart had doubled in size as he called me ‘his Lily’. “Coffee’s good, thanks.”

“Take a seat,” I motioned towards the small couch that took over most of my living room as I watched him, so familiar, yet so alien in this setting. “Won’t be a minute.”

I worried incessantly as the water boiled, overthinking a hundred outcomes that this could be. I’d assumed he was here because he wanted me, but maybe he was getting married, leaving the country again, just wanted to make sure I was OK as a friend… Anxiety curdled within me as I walked through with two, full mugs, which I placed down on the coffee table. I sat on the opposite end of the couch and turned towards him, expectantly.

“You look good, really healthy, I guess Devon suits you?”

“I needed a fresh start, a change,” I replied, my nerves creating chaos within me. “It makes a little more sense to me now, why you left to go backpacking.”

“Do the last two years ever seem unreal to you?”

“Completely. I try and not think back too much, to be honest. I just see all these segments, where little decisions set me on paths that ended so badly. And I try to remember all the happy bits in between, but it’s tough, you know?”

He nodded, his forehead contemplative as he reached for his drink, those beautiful lips blowing onto the hot liquid. “Things between us, they don’t have to be weird. I don’t want them to be.”

“Do you understand why I didn’t get in touch when Zack and I broke up?”

“It took a while, to be honest. I guess I figured you’d be straight at my door, but you weren’t. But then, what should I expect when I made that choice for you.”

“After I saw you at the mediation, it sounds daft but… I was really proud of myself that I didn’t do anything silly, that I didn’t cheat on Zack, that I didn’t make the situation messier. It felt like I’d actually been a grown up for once. And things were so good for me and him, the house, the wedding, it was all coming together so beautifully. I finally knew I was in the place I wanted to be, with the man I wanted to be with. That constant exhaustion of trying to choose between the two of you was gone, and I was just a normal girl, in love. Until Anna did what she did.”

“I’ve been fearful to find you, to talk. I guess it was easier to stick to the star-crossed lovers narrative then to accept you didn’t want to see me because you didn’t feel the same about me anymore.”

“It wasn’t that simple. My whole life fell apart, my future disappeared, I had no income, no stability, and my heart was beyond broken. It was so crushed, I just drank and wallowed. I couldn’t even consider anything beyond each individual day at that point.”

“What would you have done if I’d reached out?”

“Honestly, I probably would have been horrible, pushed you away.”

“And now?” he asked.

I chewed on my bottom lip as I focused on him, my vision a little blurred with damp emotion. “I don’t know. You want to be friends again? After everything?”

“No, I never want to be just friends with you again. I want to be your soulmate, your lover, your partner. The one who kisses you goodnight, who wakes up with his arm around you. The one who brings you coffee and rubs your feet when they’re sore. Who laughs with you, dances with you, loves every single damn day with you. Lily, my feelings for you haven’t changed. Every part of me wants you. I’d go anywhere for you. Be anyone for you. We’ve been to hell and back, I know we have. But now we’re both finally in a position that we could make this real. I’m not going to waste a minute, never mind five years, being too scared to admit this to you.”

I gulped back a wave of tangled thoughts and feelings – delight, fear, love, desire, dread. “I couldn’t go through it again…” My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me, his whole being entirely focused on mine.

“It wouldn’t be like last time. There’d be no guilt, no pressure, no conflict. Just me and you, on a slow journey into us. Oblivious to what anyone else thought.”

His fingers had inched closer to mine, and I couldn’t help but reach out to touch them. “I’m scared…”

“Sometimes you have to be brave,” The left side of his mouth tilted up into a supremely sexy and cheeky little smile.

“That feels very three years ago.” I laughed, and he shuffled forwards on the sofa, his fingers stroking over my cheek like feathers.

“I would never hurt you, please know that.”

“But I live down here now, and you have the partnership and?—”

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