Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(103)

She tilted her head and looked into Luke’s eyes. “Do you see now why I couldn’t see Valentine’s Day the way you saw it until you showed it to me? All I’ve been able to see for the last three years was my father start to die in front of my eyes, just hours after having felt my own heart get ripped from my body from the one man who’d sworn he’d love and protect it above all else when he’d proposed to me the month before.”

Tears filled her eyes and anger beyond understanding filled her trembling voice. “I let myself believe in the fairytale, only to have it turn into all of my worst nightmares. And everyone I loved paid for my mistakes.” She slid the inside of her wrist over her eyes to wipe away her tears, her hands balled into fists so tight her knuckles were white. “Eric will no doubt go straight to hell for what he did, but until the day he does, I’m the one living here on earth with what I’ve done. Dad was able to overcome every hardship flung his way by the universe, heal after losing the love of his life; and in the end, it was my actions that killed his heart.” The last she raged at herself in a whisper as deafening as the most blood curdling shout.

She crumbled right there before him when she brought her gaze up to clash with his. “The worst part of it all? I turned around and did the same thing to you.” Her hand started to reach for him before she pulled back. “I don’t blame you for not being able to forgive me, Luke. What I did was unforgiveable. And I’ll spend my whole life living with those regrets as well. I know my apologies mean as much as Eric’s did, so I won’t even insult you with them.”

Refusing to meet Luke’s eyes a second longer, she turned to head back to the double doors before Luke could even formulate a response that could break through the lonely despair trembling out of her in waves.

He went to follow her, with every intention of dragging her back to listen to him until she could finally hear him.

But her next words stopped him in his tracks.

Uttered so quietly Luke could barely hear them, the words were directed to Derek, “I’m sorry I’ve been holding onto dad so selfishly all these years. His life insurance was always supposed to go to you, to your dreams. I know you saw his living will too.” Tears filled her voice. “I never meant to keep you from your dreams all this time, Derek. I just…couldn’t let him go.”

Hand on the door, she whispered brokenly, “But I signed the forms five minutes ago. They’re waiting for us to come back in so they can shut off his life support.”

And with that she walked away from them both.

A near stranger to Luke now.



*



LUKE FELT rabidly helpless.

He’d watched as Derek and Jonathan all but carried Dani back to their car so she could stay at their house. At her request. She hadn’t been able to look at him once.

Not wanting to be the selfish jackass that pushed her on the night her father died, he let her go. He watched the woman he loved drive away from him, broken-hearted and just plain broken.

He rammed his fist into the wall. Dammit, he wanted to kill that Eric guy. Make him suffer the way he had made Dani suffer. Drag the * out from whatever hole he’d crawled into and—

And what?

Nothing could undo what had happened to Dani; nothing could return all she’d lost.

Thankfully, before another frustrating wall of despair could slam into him, however, a Hail Mary thought hit him first. Grabbing his cell phone, he dialed his friend Connor’s number.

“H’lo?”

Shit. It sounded like Connor had been dead asleep. Luke glanced at the clock. Well, no wonder. It was five in the morning.

Hearing Connor’s wife in the background—her voice filled with soft concern right next to the receiver—had Luke’s jagged emotions spinning even further out of control.

He wanted what Connor had found.

He wanted Dani’s voice murmuring right at his side, ready to face anything life threw their way together. He wanted to be the one Dani turned to, not the one she drove away from when life seemed cruel and impossible.

“Hey, sorry to wake you. I didn’t realize how early it was,” he apologized. “I’ll call again later.”

Connor said something reassuringly to his wife in the background before coming back onto the phone line. “It’s fine. I need to get up soon anyway. What’s up? Everything okay?”

Where to begin?

Might as well start from his first suspicion. “Tell me the truth. Do you know the guy that Dani dated a few years ago? The one that screwed her and her dad over?”

Silence.

And then a slow, weary, “Yeah. I know him.”

He thought as much.

“Luke, listen man. It wasn’t my history to tell. I would have told you if…shit, if it all hadn’t played out as badly as it had. But the way things went down—?

“No, I get it,” Luke said tiredly. And he did. It pissed him off to no end that everyone had kept so much from him, but he understood the difficult situation they’d all been in.

What he didn’t understand, however, was how his friend had allowed the f*cker to get away without jail time at the least. Connor didn’t have many friends, and the few he did, he protected almost ruthlessly if it came down to it.

“The fact that you haven’t had him arrested tells me there’s more to the story,” guessed Luke, unsure whether he even wanted to be right about this.