Page 62 of My Promise To Keep

Reaching up, I wipe away the tears on my cheeks.

‘I don’t know when it happened — when I started looking at him that way. He never changed. He was always the same Leo. The same caring, funny, sweet guy. He always looked the same, but I never saw that I liked that until I did. It hit me, you know. I liked him — I liked him the way I liked you. The way I haven’t liked any of the men I have dated since, but this niggling feeling eats at me that you wouldn’t forgive us for it. That Buck won’t, even my family won’t. Bree does. She knows and wants me to go for it with him, and she thinks you’d want that, but I don’t know. I’m scared of letting him in that way and not being enough for him. He’s kind of a slut, baby.’ I laugh, but it isn’t comfortable. ‘You know that. What am I supposed to do when I want so much, and he gives so little?’

I smile weakly.

‘I’m getting old, baby. I don’t want to waste precious time on casual, even if it’s him, because I’m about to be thirty-five, and the clock is ticking.’

I lean back once more, feeling the hard stone against the back of my head. ‘Thirty-five. Can you believe it? I’m in my thirties, single, no kids, and not where I expected to be. When we got married, I thought by the time we were mid-thirties, we’d have a couple of kids who’d already be in double figures. Crazy how life goes, huh?’

Pulling up a dandelion, I start to inspect the little yellow petals.

‘Maybe we were dumb, getting married so young. Maybe we should have just waited. I don’t know what difference that would have made. I do know that I loved being your wife, Luke. God, I loved it. Having your initials on my finger meant everything to me.’

I hold out my hand to look at the LB on my ring finger. I laugh.

‘You think maybe I’m just looking for someone with the same initials so I don’t have to change this?’

Luke Bennett. Leo Bennett.

‘I wonder how Doug’s tattoo is going.’ I grin, then start to laugh. ‘He sucks at being tattooed, baby.’ I put the dandelion down on my thigh and wonder if I should have got more color tattoos. I have the perfect pale skin for color but hardly have any at all. I have a dragonfly on the back of my ankle that’s blue and green and a bee on my foot, but everything else is black and gray. ‘He’s met someone, you know — Doug.’ I think about Cara and the way she and my brother jolt every time the other one walks into the room. ‘I’ve never seen him look at someone the way he looks at Cara.’ A smile curves my lips. ‘Bree is still on the lookout for love. She dates, but she works so much that it doesn’t leave a lot of time.

‘I was so lucky to have found you and so lucky that you loved me. You were the most amazing man, Luke Bennett. You made me the happiest woman. I hope you knew that. I hope you still do. I know you can’t give me the sign I’m looking for, so I’m going to have to figure this out on my own, but I hope you know that whatever I do, whatever happens next for me, you had my heart, all of it.’

Pushing myself to my knees, I press my fingertips to my lips, then to the hard stone that stands in place of my husband.

‘I love you, Luke.’

And I walk away.

Whatever You Want To Give

Zoe

It’s been a weeksince I texted Leo in the middle of the night, and I finally have Bud back on shift to run the bar for me, so here I am, heart racing, flight mode threatening to make me run, but I’m here. I’m staying.

I managed to get a spot right outside today. I guess there really is a first time for everything. I climb out of my car and lean against it as I look up at the sleek black sign:

Lion Ink.

Pride envelops me as much now as it did the first time I laid eyes on it.

The shop is all class: custom designs and body piercing, with a cool, vintage style in the décor. Not that I’ve been inside for months, but I don’t imagine he’s changed it out in that time.

‘You just going to stand there?’ The deep voice of the man leaning against the doorway reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart.

‘Hey,’ I say on a breath, and he grins.

‘Get over here, munch.’

I don’t waste a second stepping into his arms, and he wraps me up as though he never wants to let me go. I feel his lips press to the top of my head before he steps back and, holding my hand in his, leads me into his shop.

‘Zoe,’ Fi, Leo’s apprentice artist, looks up from a tattoo she’s working on with Gus, her boyfriend and the other artist in the shop, and beams. ‘Oh my god, hey.’ I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she’s sweet, and it’s nice to see her actually tattooing now.

‘Hey, Zo,’ Gus says, and I wave a little awkwardly.

‘Do you have to work?’ I ask Leo, ‘I should have told you I was coming.’

‘You never have to tell me,’ he says as he heads around the back of the curved reception desk. ‘I have nothing in the books this afternoon. You want in, or you want to head out?’

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