delicate bite of pleasure that you barely blinked.
I swallowed convulsively as the next text came.
EmmaMine: It was art. It was love. You never admitted it, but I knew in that moment that you loved making people happy through your food. And I never told you how cared for I felt when eating your creations. How alive I felt. You woke me up, Lucian. Made me see that life was in the moment, not some distant dream.
The screen wavered in front of me, and I blinked hard, my chest aching so badly I couldn’t breathe. She was right; it was love. But not just for the food. It was a labor of love. For her.
EmmaMine: Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this in a text. Maybe I’m just feeling melancholy. The days are long here, and work is . . . work.
Her texts stopped, and my heart thrummed, my fingers itching to respond. I couldn’t move. Inside, I was splitting in two. I needed . . .
Another text pinged.
EmmaMine: I just wanted to say, whatever may come, knowing you, just as you were at Rosemont, was the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are a good man, Lucian. You always were.
My body went icy cold, then flushed burning hot.
When I thought of Emma now, it wasn’t in visuals but in feeling. The satin softness of her skin, how I loved to stroke her, touch her just so I could assure myself she was real. I thought of the way she would kiss the spot at the crook of my neck and breathe me in like she was memorizing my scent. I heard the husky sound of her laugh in my ears and the way it always made me smile and sent hot lust licking over my skin. I thought of the way we could talk for hours and never run out of things to say. Of how she felt curled up against me in the smallest hours of the night, resting her hand over my heart like she’d protect it even in her dreams. And I’d pull her closer, aching with tenderness, knowing that I’d been given a gift.
Emma Mine. But she wasn’t anymore.
I tried to hold it down, but I couldn’t. My legs gave out from under me, and I crumpled. Curled up against the hard edge of the lockers, I cried as I hadn’t done since I was a child. Every ugly, fearful feeling poured out of me in choking sobs, leaving me empty and alone on the damp floor.
Brommy found me a while later. “Aw, hell, Luc.”
“Please don’t say ‘I told you so.’” I rested my head in my hands as he took a seat next to me.
“I won’t say that.” His shoulder pressed into mine. “All right, Oz?”
“Fuck you.”
“So . . . no?”
A weak laugh escaped, and I ground the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. My head throbbed, a low-level pulse that I knew would grow into a full-on flare-up soon enough. “I’m so fucking stupid.”
“Told you that weeks ago.”
I glared at him balefully out of one eye. “I thought you weren’t going to say ‘I told you so’?”
“I don’t believe I used those words.” He grinned, but his gaze was sympathetic. “Talk to me, Oz.”
“All this time, I thought if I just had hockey again . . .” I trailed off with a slight shake of my head.
Brommy nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“I thought it defined me.”
“I hope to God that the whole of my existence isn’t reliant on hockey,” Brommy said darkly but with a tinge of humor that made me smile tightly.
A wave of loneliness and longing rushed through me. “Emma tried to make me see it. She told me I was worthy without hockey. But I clung so tightly to this fucking illusion . . .” I ducked my head. “Fuck, Brom. I hurt her. I killed something good between us. And she . . .”
“She loves you.”
The word struck through my heart and had me flinching.
We’d never said we loved each other. There were times I thought she might love me the way I loved her—all-encompassing, with my whole soul. But she’d never uttered the words. Then again, I hadn’t either; it had been too raw, the wrong time, given that I was leaving her.
I left her. And she let me go, let me slip away. Because that was the choice I made. Not realizing that without her, life was nothing more