Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(105)

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” He grit his jaw, barely managing to force out the words, “And honestly, there’s only one man who does know.”

Her head snapped up in disbelief. “You think I should go talk to him?”

Luke clenched his teeth and shoved aside the voice inside his head that had instantly yelled, “hell no,” so loud his brain hurt. “I think you should do whatever you feel you need to do to get the answers you deserve. The answers that might even help you forgive him.”

A soft gasp slipped past her lips at the prospect of forgiveness. He watched her eyes glide out of focus as she stared at the ground, or rather memories from her past that he wasn’t privy to.

“How do I do that?” she asked, genuinely mystified. “How do I even begin to forgive him for what he did?”

“The same way I forgave you,” he replied softly.

Fresh tears filled her eyes. “You forgive me?”

“Sweetheart, I think I forgave you the moment you came clean. Just as importantly, I understand why you did it. That’s why I wanted to tell you about Eric’s mom.”

With a sigh, he spoke from his heart, even though every male fiber in his being was calling him the biggest fool in the world. “Just because you forgive his reasons, doesn’t mean you dismiss his actions, honey. I’m not saying you should forgive what he did. But maybe by talking to him, you’ll be able to find the peace to forgive him—the person, not the action. And more importantly, the peace then to forgive yourself.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Seeing the lost expression in her eyes, he asked gently, “Do you forgive the reasons behind what Eric did? Or at least empathize?”

She thought about it for several long, silent seconds. “Yes.”

Hell, he did too. Honestly, Luke didn’t know how differently he’d have handled things had he been in Eric’s shoes.

“Then start there,” he offered quietly, leaning forward and pressing his lips to her forehead, wishing he could do more, wishing he could read her mind right now. “Do what you need to do to find that peace, sweetheart. Take your time.”

And then come back to me.

The last, he hoped, she could read in his mind.





CHAPTER NINETEEN


DANI SAT in the same spot long after Luke left. Questions were now jumbled in with her grief, confusion smeared into her anger and sadness. She felt ungrounded, untethered. Not just as if she’d lost the things that had been tying her to her past and all that she knew, but that she’d been released from those very things as well.

As evening turned into night, she attempted to process how her entire world had shifted so dramatically in a day’s time.

She was now an orphan.

Eric was no longer the soul-less villain she’d relegated him to be three years ago.

And Luke wanted her to forgive herself...the same way he’d forgiven her.

She looked at the blank spot on her ring finger where Eric’s engagement ring had once sat and wondered if she would’ve forgiven him back then had she known what she did now.

Probably.

She’d certainly loved him enough.

For hours, she sat and asked herself questions she’d never even considered the answers for, played out dozens of starkly varied scenarios of how her life would be right now had things been different.

And then, irony of all ironies, she compared what Eric had done to her and her business against what she’d done to Luke and his business.

It was a sobering comparison.

Picking up her cell phone, her fingers dialed the numbers out of rote memory, the voice answering on the other end slamming memories into her like a freight train.

“Hello?”

“Eric?” she said softly.

After a stark silence, his voice returned with shock, “Dani?”

Try though she did, she couldn’t separate the anger from her memories. Not yet. She simply wasn’t that evolved. Just hearing him say her name brought it all back—the good and bad—in one overwhelming wave of emotion saturated with fury more than anything else. And Eric, being Eric, just let her sit there and silently rage.

In retrospect, that’s how their fights always used to be as well.

Not nearly as satisfying as fighting with Luke, she mused then, out of the clear blue sky.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded finally, the mere thought of Luke calming her like nothing else could. “We were engaged to be married. Why didn’t you ever tell me about your mother?”

Eric sounded older, more regretful than she’d ever heard him. “Because I was ashamed.”

What? “What on earth for?”

“I’d been a crappy son. I went off to law school and got so caught up in being this big deal attorney making the big bucks, I pretty much ignored my mother. I went from calling her once a week, to once a month until I got the job in Phoenix. Then, I was lucky if I remembered to call her on her birthday and holidays.” Shame and loss of equal measure blanketed his words. “I didn’t even know she had cancer until months after she’d been diagnosed. I never checked my messages.” A self-flogging laugh escaped his lips. “Can you believe that? My mom had to tell me on my answering machine that she had cancer. And I actually screened that message, shoved it into the memory as soon as I heard her say hello.”