Take Your Time (Boston Love #4)(85)
And love.
Most of all, love.
It scares the shit out of me.
“Delilah?”
“I— I— I’ll be right back. I need some air,” I gasp, hyperventilating. I spin out of Luca’s arms and race from the room, cutting a path past my friends, who are all wearing identical bewildered expressions. I don’t know where I’m going; I can hardly see straight, through the tears suddenly glossing over my eyes.
I run and run and run on my high heels, until I round a corner and find myself alone in a dark exhibit, breathing hard. Tanks loom overhead on both sides, creating a tunnel of aqua water lit with fluorescent lights. Purple-veined jellyfish pulse electrically all around me. Their tentacles trail through the water like deadly translucent fingers.
And it’s the strangest thing — as I watch them pulsating, a sort of calm comes over me. Alone, without the crush of people, without the pressure of Luca’s eyes on me, awaiting an answer I’m not sure I can give him, I’m finally able to hear myself think.
Luca Buchanan loves me.
His words from yesterday echo in my head. Before the attack, before the night we spent together, before the fight this morning. Before Phoebe got married, before Colton warned me away, before we danced together.
Feeling hopeless, I’d asked what the point of finding your soulmate was, if they were just going to be snatched from you. I didn’t expect the answer he gave me. I didn’t even understand it, in that moment. Not really. But I do now.
Life is a beautiful, broken mess. Closer to a Shakespearean tragedy than a Hollywood happy ending, in my experience. I don’t have an easy answer to your question about the point of it all.
I think the only person who can give you that answer is you. It’s not something anyone can tell you, and it’s not something you can learn from an instruction manual. It’s something you have to discover on your own. Something inside yourself.
I get it now. That thing he was talking about? That answer I was seeking, about the point of it all?
It’s love.
The point is love.
Whether it lasts five minutes or fifty years. Fleeting or forever. Any time you get with your soul mate is something to be treasured, not feared. Not pushed aside or avoided out of a misguided attempt at self-preservation.
Luca was right. You can’t refuse to live because you’re so afraid of history repeating. You have to look into the future with wide eyes and a full heart. Like he once told me…
Visualize the outcome you desire.
My outcome?
It looks a lot like him.
I wouldn’t trade these past few days for anything. And even if the universe conspires against us… even if we don’t last forever…
It can’t negate my feelings, or eliminate my memories. It can’t erase the love.
I am in love with Luca Buchanan.
I’ve been in love with him for months. And I don’t need more time or more space. I don’t need anything except him. Us. Together.
I seize the realization with both hands. Suddenly, I can breathe again. The panic has faded from my bloodstream. The fear and the worry are still there, but they’re crushed under so much hope and happiness, I can barely feel them anymore.
I have to tell him.
Now. This very minute.
Hearing footsteps, I turn with a smile already on my face. I half expect to see my handsome fighter coming around the corner, seeking me out…
Instead, my heart flails inside my chest.
The smile falls off my lips.
Because it’s not Luca.
The man standing there in a crappy ill-fitting suit, wiping blood from his knuckles, has a mottled birthmark on his face and is staring at me with revenge in his eyes.
Shit.
Chapter Fifteen
Some people think feminism is a movement to crush men’s spirits.
I like to think of it as more of a personal hobby.
Delilah Sinclair, describing her extracurricular activities.
I try my best to get away. I really do.
It doesn’t go well.
The last thing I see is a flash of purple, the instant before my head is slammed against the jellyfish tank. The blow knocks me out cold. I’m not sure how long I’m unconscious but when I come to, ears still ringing from the impact, I’m hanging facedown, being dragged by the wrists and ankles through a dirty hallway with all the gentleness of a field hand hauling hay bales.
Wherever they’ve taken me has a cave-like feel — high-ceilinged, dark, dank. There’s a wet, stale smell permeating the air. Mildew and stagnant water. The walls drip with moisture, the floor below me is damp with puddles.
I turn my head a tiny bit to the left, not wanting to reveal I’m awake, and see several old scuba tanks and a few bait bins, the kinds trainers use to pass out mackerel to the penguins and sea lions at feeding time.
I’m still in the aquarium.
My heart pounds erratically. I try to hear their murmured conversation over the roaring pulse between my ears.
“I told you to bring her out the side door, the basement wasn’t part of the plan,” Cueball’s saying. “Now we’ll have to go around and get the car. We can’t exactly drag her across the main parking lot.”
Eggplant sounds exasperated. “No choice. There were two guards stationed at the side door. Couldn’t get out that way.”