Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(91)

“The woman you were engaged to before me, did you love me more than you loved her?”

Luke’ mouth fell open in surprise, but no words came out.

“Since you wanted to marry her, by your blessedly romantic Luke logic, she was ‘the one’ that you’d love through space and time, right? Well, after you two split up, I came along and then I was ‘the one’ for two happy years. So then what does that say about her? About me?”

Uncomfortable now, he avoided giving a complete answer, mostly because he didn’t have one. “The love part wasn’t, isn’t quantifiable like that. You and I were more compatible, so the future I saw with you was just different from the one I saw with her.”

“And there it is,” said Angie with a wistful headshake. “When you’re serious about a woman, you look into the future and see an entire life with her. You can’t imagine what it’s like for the other person, if they’re not there, not able to see the same future.”

He was beginning to.

“So with your husband?” he asked. “You saw...”

“Yes, I saw the same future he did. That’s why I married him and not you.”

It all settled around him like a swift, dismal cloud. “And still you two got divorced.”

Her expression turned fierce. “Nuh-uh, no way. I didn’t spend two years having you turn me into this giant romantic who believes in forever love, only to see you lose it now. It exists Luke. I think I even had it for awhile.” She rubbed over the empty spot where her wedding band had once been. “Now holding on to it is another story though.”

A bitter laugh sifted out of him. “It’s a wonder my parents ever found and kept ‘it’. The sort of love that stays the course, builds stronger and brighter without an expiration.”

“You always were searching for that type of love, weren’t you, Luke?”

Of course. Everyone knew that—it might as well be on his business card.

“So why’d you give up for the last few years?”

Startled, he looked up. “What do you mean?”

“After we split up, I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of running into Quinn a few times—you know, while she was out cruising around Tempe on her broomstick.”

Luke snickered. After she’d left, Angie had seen the true Wicked Witch in all her glory.

“Last she and I talked, she told me you’d been focusing on work and not on any lasting relationships. Friday night flings and the Saturday sleepovers, I think she called them.”

“For awhile.” He shrugged. “I guess I was just trying it out—”

“That’s not you.”

“Maybe, but with no one to ask to marry me, I stayed hurt free.”

She made a face. “No rhyming, Luke. Lord knows you never were a poet.”

His lips quirked, remembering as she probably was, the awful first few drafts of his vows.

A little bit more of the old Angie peeked out then. “Stick to your strengths, Luke. You’re not a play-the-field bachelor. You’re more like dun-dun-na-NAH Romantic Man whose superpower is hopeless romanticism. Your bat signal would be a big red heart over Gotham.”

What a god-awful, asinine description. He half-glared at her. “Gee, if that’s my superhuman power, what the hell is my kryptonite?”

“That’s you too,” she replied softly.

He stiffened.

Angie lifted one shoulder sympathetically. “The part of you that can look at something so utterly spectacular and wonder if it’s a mirage, the part of you that expects it to be. That’s your kryptonite.” She studied him carefully. “What I’ve always wondered is why it even exists.”

His eyebrows drew together bitterly. “What’s not to get? Look at my track record.”

She blinked in surprise as if finally realizing something. “Luke, you should know better than anyone that futures change. That we shouldn’t ever stop looking for ‘the one’ for us.”

“So we’re back to my failed relationships.”

She shook her head, annoyed. “No. I’m talking about your successful ones.”

The flagrant disbelief on his face quietly mocked that notion.

“I’m talking about your parents, Luke.”

He looked up sharply.

Angie put a gentle hand on his face. “Your mother loved your father with all her heart. And from what she used to tell me, he loved her with all of his. But one day, the universe decided to make his heart stop beating. Call it fate, call it life, or call it just plain cruel. Your mother and father were meant to love exactly as they did for as long as they did. Fair or not, explainable or not. As awful as that was, your mom survived and then received the amazing gift of finding love again. And you got another parent who you loved as much as the one you lost.”

She looked into his eyes. “Your mother and father didn’t get to the forever part of their love because it simply wasn’t destined in their futures. But it is there with your mother and your dad. Luke, I think you and I were similarly meant to love, but just not for forever.”

He let that sink in. “Did you think you’d found forever with your husband?”

“Yes. It took me awhile but I know now that we were also meant to love exactly as we did—deeper than what you and I had, but for no longer in length.”