Page 81 of Walking Wounded

“Hey,” Luke says, sitting forward, catching her eye. “That guy issuch a fucking loser.” When she starts to protest, he says, “So he’s had lots of sex and he has stupid hair, and he opened some lame-ass club once. Big fucking deal. You’re not a loser, Tara. He isn’t cooler, or better, or moreanythingthan you. Except for maybe stupid. He’s way more stupid than you. Okay? I feel really bad that someone like me has to be the one to tell you that. Only, not really…I never get to give the pep talks. Kinda always on the receiving end.”

A tiny smile graces one corner of her mouth. “Maybe that’s why you’re not very good at it.”

Luke feigns affronted, grabbing at his heart dramatically. Tara’s smile widens. And Hal…Hal’s grin is soft, and sweet, and grateful, and utterly devastating, even just a glimpse of it.

~*~

“I’m gonna go in first and explain it to them,” Hal says when they park out in front of the Maddox townhouse. “Give me about five minutes.”

“Okay.” Tara looks relieved when Luke catches her reflection in the rearview mirror.

Lights shine in the townhouse’s windows, warm and buttery. Under the porch lamp, Hal looks both strong and gentle. A large man, and a contrite child, head bowing as Matt answers the door and waves him in with a smile.

“Damn,” Tara says in the backseat. “He really is Prince Charming, you know?”

“Trust me. I know.” Has always known, his whole life.

“You don’t see it, do you?”

He unbuckles his seatbelt so he can twist around and look at her, something in her tone raising gooseflesh down the back of his neck. “See what?”

As the overhead dome light fades and then winks out, he catches the decades’ older look that’s come across her face. The melancholy introspection. Gone is the crying girl from outside the club; she’s all woman again, scrubbed clean, purged of her own stupidity.

“Every one of my friends would give their entire college fund to have a guy look at them the way Hal looks at you.”

Luke doesn’t breathe, doesn’t allow himself to think, to hope.No. Just a continuous loop of denial.

She looks down at her lap, and her hair falls across her face, a shadow obscured by a darker shadow. “I don’t know what it’s like: being in love with someone and knowing he’s a good person. Knowing he’s my best friend. Maybe it’s not as good as I think it is.”

It’s not, Luke wants to tell her.It’s horrible. It’s the sweetest thing in the whole world, to know someone like that, and love them too.

She shakes her hair back, and he can just see the wet shine of her eyes. “If you kissed him, he’d kiss back,” she says, firmly, like she knows it to be true. Then she pops her door and slides out of the Jeep.

Luke watches her go up the front steps, spine set, head lifted, hands shaking down along her thighs. She is young and stupid, but she is also sharp, and intuitive. The stunning contradiction that is every person trying to find a place in this ugly, wonderful world. He finds he doesn’t feel sorry for her, even if her parents are about to ground her for a month. He admires her; wishes for a little piece of her courage.

She enters the house and about five minutes later Hal comes back out, shutting the door soundly behind him and walking down the steps with a heaviness across his shoulders.

Luke swallows the lump in his throat, schools his features as the driver door opens and Hal slides in. “How’d they take it?”

“Gracefully,” Hal says with a sigh. “They’re not really yellers. And I don’t think they were even mad. Worried, sure. But…” He shrugs. “She’ll be okay.”

“Yeah.”

Hal sends him a tired grin. “Let’s go home.”

Luke swallows again, pulse fluttering in his throat.If you kissed him, he’d kiss back.“Yeah.”

~*~

When they step into the lobby of Hal’s building, Luke spots a familiar, skirt-clad figure waiting at the elevator bay, and the last clinging fog of alcohol-consumption clears. He grabs at Hal’s arm, protest forming, because he really doesn’t want to have whatever kind of confrontation this has the potential to be right now.

But Kate must see them over her shoulder, because she turns and gives them a smile.

“Oh shit,” Luke mutters. “Your ex.”

He feels Hal shrug, the movement travelling through his arm that Luke is still holding. “It’s okay, she’s nice,” he whispers, and then they’re standing right in front of her.

Her smile widens, touched with a coyness that makes Luke want to squirm. “Hello, boys.” Her eyes move between them, down them, taking in their outfits. “Night out on the town?”

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