Page 22 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

This was all his fault. He hadn’t had Stevie a whole month yet and look where he’d ended up. It reminded him of the last time he’d run into Ben Rushford in this same ER—Lukas himself lay on a gurney, strapped to a backboard and angry at the whole world. Without a single person to care for him.

Except Samantha. She’d stepped up to the plate despite the cruel way he’d cut her out of his life the summer before.

“Does he have any allergies?” Ben asked.

“I—I don’t think so. But I’m allergic to penicillin. Does that matter?”

Ben spoke kindly and professionally. Lukas had to give the man credit. Whatever personal feelings he harbored toward Lukas (and Lukas felt pretty confident they were not warm and fuzzy ones), he managed to disguise them pretty well. Lukas had to remind himself he wasn’t that same lost kid, with the piercings and the bad haircut and the awful attitude. He’d come a long way since then. Had made something of himself that he was proud of. Not that Ben would be impressed. It was likely he still wanted him to stay the hell away from his sister.

Ben left, promising to check back in. It wasn’t until after the third aerosol, when Stevie had begun to breathe normally again, that Lukas felt the tightness in his own chest ease up a little. Stevie sat sleeping on his lap, IV snaking from his arm, skinny legs with Minion tennies dangling against Lukas’s calves. There was something about the boy, the sleeping weight of him, warm and smelling of sunshine and sweat and having cherry Popsicle drips on his shirt, that tugged at some raw place in Lukas’s chest. He’d put this child in danger without even knowing it. The hiss of the aerosol machine seemed to incriminate him.

That thought superseded everything else.His fault. He should have known better. Like the countless things he’d done wrong that had earned him the belt when he was younger. Unpredictable things that a young child couldn’t possibly know, like how to iron a man’s shirt perfectly or how to make coffee when your father was rip-roaring drunk and ready to beat the shit out of your mother.

“We’ve got to stop meeting in hospitals like this,” Sam said, breaking into his morose thoughts.

He looked up and saw her smiling, her bright yellow dress a warm contrast to the sterile-looking room. Had she sensed his struggle and was trying to pull him out of that dark place? Nah, he doubted it.

Or maybe so. She’d always sensed his moods in an uncanny way.

“Yeah, the bright fluorescent lighting and all this white tile really sets my blood to pumping,” he said. Actually,shewas the one who set his blood to pumping. Like someone humming a song quietly in the background, his awareness of her was always present, even amid his worry over Stevie. This hospital—hell, any hospital—only brought back bad memories but frankly, he could be in the middle of a snowstorm in Antarctica and still want her.

“Remember the first time?” she asked. He could swear she’d said it teasingly, like she was remembering an entirely other kind of first time.

That brought back images of his tiny one-room apartment over the garage, the two of them tangled up together on his futon, doing things to one another in the glow of the solitary streetlamp as darkness wrapped around them like a soft warm blanket.

Even then she’d been water slipping through his fingers. She would always be impossible to hold on to. There had never been a right time for them, and there never would be.

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Spikonos,” Sam said, snapping him back to reality. “Did I ever tell you I saw you when they first brought you into this very same ER? You were strapped on to that backboard, and that pretty face of yours was all messed up.”

He’d suffered a concussion and a broken arm from being thrown off his motorcycle over the inlet bridge and was lucky as hell he didn’t drown in the lake because some astute fisherman had fished his sorry ass out of the water.

“Not sure I ever thanked you for that,” he said.

She raised an elegant brow. “You’re welcome. You are lucky to be alive. Not everyone who nearly slams into a chicken truck and then careens off the bridge survives.”

Maybe it was the simple act of holding this helpless child that made his brain go mushy, that made him confess, “Martha Ellis had just died the week before. I jumped on my bike and took off. I was careless.”

“You never told me that. I mean, I knew she’d died, but I didn’t realize ...” She looked surprised. Why had he said that? He didn’t want her pity.

He shrugged. “It was still a stupid-ass thing to do.” Yet she’d sat by his side even so, when he didn’t have a single soul to claim as friend or family.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me that? I mean, I sat with you for a week.”

“I didn’t want to get you involved.”

“That’s what friends are for, Lukas.”

“I was lucky to have you there. You ... took care of me.” She’d done more than that. She didn’t leave his side for the entire time he was in the hospital.

She flapped a hand dismissively. “You would’ve done fine without me.”

Their gazes locked. Her eyes looked a little glassy. His heart pumped strongly in his chest, and words formed in his throat, compelling him to tell her she had no idea how her sitting there night and day had urged on his recovery, had made him want to heal. Her presence had given him a reason to go on even when the only two people who’d ever loved him were both gone too soon. He opened his mouth, but the words tangled in his throat. His time to say that had expired by about six years. No point in starting now, when she was practically engaged.

The door opened, and Ben walked back in.

Sam sat upright and greeted the tall doctor. “It’s about time you came back.”

He sent her a brotherly glare, then set about listening to Stevie’s lungs through his stethoscope. “He’s a lot more comfortable now.” Yes, Lukas could see it. Stevie was still sleeping, breathing calmly. Ben sat back on a nearby stool and unhooked his stethoscope.

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