Calling Me Away (2 page)

“Did I tell you I got that job for the Sunday Times?” she asked. Since Haven had gone freelance, her career had taken off. I was so proud of her.

“Holy hell, really? That’s awesome.” I stood up and gave her a hug. “I knew you could do it—that’s amazing. What’s that one about? The school thing?”

She nodded. “I can’t believe it. I mean, I still want to do the independent, online stuff, but who’s going to say no to the Sunday Times?”

“What’s going on over there?” Luke shouted from the sofa. We were hugging and grinning. Maybe he thought I’d told her already.

“Haven got an article for the Sunday Times,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah, I think she said.” Luke nodded.

Haven rolled her eyes. “Brothers, hey?”

This was it. A natural break in the conversation. I needed to say it now.

“So, you know on Friday—” I began.

“I think these are done,” she interrupted, glancing at the oven. “I’ve made cheese straws so the boys don’t start whining about being hungry.” She opened the oven door and took a baking tray out. “Guys, I’ve got snacks,” she shouted across the room.

Luke bounded over, briefly rubbing my lower back as he passed me, then headed to the refrigerator. A shiver ran through my body. We should have just stayed home today. It would have been less complicated.

“What’s going on over here?” he asked, fumbling for beers.

“We’re cooking, and I’m telling Ash about the Sunday Times since you don’t seem interested at all,” Haven said.

Luke looked at me and grinned, knowing I’d chickened out so far. “So did Ash tell you we kissed on Friday night?”

“Luke!” I said. “I was meant to ease her into that. Not just blurt it out.”

Haven looked at her brother, then at me and then back at her brother. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean we kissed, and did other stuff. I have feelings. She has feelings.” He shrugged. “We’re, you know . . .”

“Very smooth, Luke,” I said.

“What?” he asked. “At least I told her.”

“I was going to tell her. I was picking my moment.”

I looked at Haven as she stirred something in a pan as if her life depended on it.

“Haven?”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to say.” To suggest she didn’t look pleased was an understatement.

“Are you upset I’ve not told you until now?” I asked. She looked as if she were about to cry.

“Why now?” she asked. Luke tried to put an arm ’round her, but she shrugged it off. “You’ve had years to get it together. What’s different?” It was a good question. What was different?

“Well, I was with Emma, and before that we were young—really young—and I didn’t realize how I felt until recently,” Luke said softly to his sister.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Haven,” I said. “Please be honest.” My stomach was churning. I hated to see her upset at the best of times, but this time I’d caused her unhappiness.

She turned off the stove and glanced between Luke and me. “I think we have a really good thing going here. We all love each other. We’re family and now you guys get pissed together and put all that in jeopardy.” She gave up stirring the pan and turned toward us. “Luke, you and Emma finished about five seconds ago and that was a serious, long-term thing. You can’t just get over it in twenty-four hours,” she said, pointing at Luke. “And you, you’ve loved this guy for forever, and I don’t want him to break your heart.” Her voice was getting higher and higher. “If you do, I’ll be forced to make a choice between which one of you I spend holidays with and stuff. It will be horrible.”

“Hey, what’s going on here?” Jake asked, as he wandered over and pulled Haven close to him.

“These fuckers.” She pointed at Luke and me.

“What’s happened?” Jake was looking at Luke.

“Ash and I. We kinda, we . . .” Luke frowned, a look of confusion on his face.

I clutched my forehead. What had I expected? That we would just slip into being the happiest couple on earth? “We haven’t even figured out what we’re doing, Luke. Maybe she’s right. You’re on the rebound. I have no judgment around you. We acted rashly—”

“No!” Luke shouted, as he strode over to me. He put his hands on either side of my face. “No,” he said, more softly. “We’ve known each other a lifetime. I would never treat your heart as anything other than the treasure it is. This is real. I’m not walking away, and I’m not letting you go anywhere.” He dropped a small kiss on my lips and rested his forehead against mine. “Be sure of me.”

I melted under his fingers. Had I always been so easily persuaded by him? Haven was right to be concerned. We should listen to her, but all I could see in Luke was the man I so desperately wanted him to be.

“Well, I think you’re just adorable,” Luke said. “Haven, this is good. This is two of your favorite people fornicating.” Jake and Luke started laughing, and I took the opportunity to take a playful swipe at Luke.

“Oh my God, have you done it?” Haven lifted her hands to her ears. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

“I don’t understand what’s taken you so long. I thought your penis had shriveled up as you’ve been around this hottie your whole life and never made a move,” Jake said to Luke.

“Jake!” Haven and I screamed in unison.

“Don’t you want them to be happy?” Jake asked Haven.

“I do, but I don’t want either of them to get hurt, and I definitely don’t want to have to take sides if they break up.”

Nausea washed over me at the thought of losing Haven or Luke from my life.

“We’re not going to break up.”

Even though my heart fluttered at Luke’s words, Haven was right. It would be hard to ever go back to how things were. If Luke went back to Emma, or found someone else, it might just kill me. I wouldn’t be able to go to Sunday night dinner and watch him with his new girlfriend. It would break up our routine, our family.

“You can’t say we’re never going to break up,” I told Luke.

“Yes, I can. I’ve known you my whole life. This is it; I’m done.” He tried to grab my hand, but I pulled away from him and shook my head. As much as I wanted it to be true, I knew it could never be that simple. Life never was.

Ashleigh

The dull light pushing through the curtains told me it was sometime around five. Five was an acceptable time to get up for some people. Runners, rowers, workaholics, new mothers—there was surely a world awake at this time of the morning. I reached across to the bed stand and found my phone. 5:12 AM.

My doubt about our immediate coupledom, about Luke’s feelings for me and his motivations around what we were doing, had been circling me for the last twenty-four hours. Haven’s words of caution at our Sunday night dinner last night had ignited a sense of fear. Luke’s insistence that I was just “freaking out” as he described it and his assurances that everything would be okay had temporarily placated me. And with his hands on my face, the reassurance just free of his lips, I’d believed him.

So, we were good, right?

Having spent another sleepless night, his words dueling with my doubts, I knew we were not good. I was not good. It was all too easy, too convenient, too sudden. I couldn’t trust that he was ready. Only a few days ago, he and Emma had been talking about marriage. Whatever he felt now was almost certainly a reaction to suddenly finding himself single. Luke never dealt with change well, even in small ways, and in the last week his life had turned upside down. I couldn’t help thinking that clinging to me—I was familiar, after all—was a consequence of that. And although I’d waited a lifetime for Luke and I to be an us, I wasn’t ready to have my heart trampled on if he changed his mind again in few days.

Whatever there was between us felt thin and temporary and vulnerable. Risky. I couldn’t handle that, not when I’d loved him for so long. This was not going to happen, not now. There was too much that could go wrong. Too much to lose.

If I ended things now, I might miss out on the love of my life, but there was still a chance that I wouldn’t destroy my family, or my heart.

Perhaps when he was over Emma, and if he still felt the same way, maybe then I could let myself be with him, want him, love him. For now, we needed to end it for both our sakes. We needed time to make sure we were doing the right thing.

It would be better to be showered and dressed before I woke Luke to talk. I didn’t want to capitulate under his touch again. If I was ready, I could leave for work while he left my flat. It would be easier, for me anyway, if I didn’t have to be normal with him straight away.

On autopilot, I showered, dried my hair and dressed. Luke never moved an inch. Anyone else would have suspected he’d died in his sleep. Having known him for most of my life, I knew this was just how he was. As teenagers, and even until recently, Haven and I’d had little consideration for those around us when we woke early, desperate to giggle about boys, parties and alcohol-induced shame from the night before. Until Haven married Jake, we’d regularly stayed over at each other’s houses after nights out. Sometimes we’d even ended up in Luke’s guest room. Unless you were an alarm clock, it was impossible to wake Luke. He insisted his body was tuned into some frequency that meant he never slept through alarms. Sounded like weird, boy logic to me. But whatever.

Ready to leave—and ready to talk—I programmed the clock next to him and sat at the end of the bed, close but not touching, and waited for him to wake. My heart was hammering through my chest. I knew ending this, or at least pressing pause on whatever there was between us, was the right thing to do. But I needed to get it over with before I had second thoughts. I was giving up the thing I had wanted desperately, longed for even. Luke. And even though it was the right thing to do, it wasn’t going to be easy.

Luke’s body immediately came awake as the alarm clock began to blare. It was almost cartoon-like, how quickly it happened. As if someone had plugged him in and suddenly, he was working.

“Hey,” he said, turning as he caught sight of me from the corner of his eye. He started to grin and then, taking me in, the corners of his mouth settled back where they’d been. He knew me so well. Twisting, he sat upright, scrubbed his hands across his face and took a deep breath. He was so fucking beautiful, and right then it just didn’t seem fair that he got to wake up, roll over and floor me with his bed hair, stubbly jaw and golden skin that I knew felt as smooth and warm as it looked.

Damn him.

“You want to talk.” It wasn’t a question. He knew me better than that.

My focus sharpened and I nodded.

“We got this, Ashleigh. Please trust me.”

The sound of my full name curled around me. I didn’t hear it often. And only twice from Luke before whatever was between us started. Once, when my parents moved to Hong Kong, and he and Haven came with me to the airport to see them off, and then again at the awards dinner a few evenings ago.

I blinked and filled my lungs. “I need you to listen. Not reassure me, not try to convince me I’m wrong, that I actually feel differently. I need you to hear what I’m going to say.” I flicked my gaze toward him when he didn’t answer. He was staring right at me, his eyes tight, his brows pulled together in anxiety. His face held all his effort to stay silent, to give me what I wanted.

“We’ve moved too fast, Luke. You are literally hours out of a long-term relationship that looked like it was heading toward forever. I have been in love with you my whole life—I want this too much. I want you so much that, for the past few days, I’ve been content to be carried away with this.” I swirled my hand between us. The fear of what I was doing climbed up my spine and snatched my breath. I just had to get through the next few minutes and then it would be done.

“I need to be either nothing to you—”

“Ashleigh, you could never—”

I raised my hand at him, stopping him speaking.

“Nothing . . . or everything. And right now, I don’t think you’re in a position to be making decisions about what or who is everything to you. I need to know this isn’t about you holding on to me because you need something to hold on to. That it isn’t about you being uneasy about all the changes going on in your life right now.” I sank my thumbnail into my finger in the hope that it would distract me from the pain in my heart. “I know you, Luke, and you like things to be ordered and predictable. And I don’t want to be a security blanket for you. I want to be your lover, your partner, your best friend—the woman you can’t live without. Not because it’s easy, but because life would be less exciting without me, less joyous, less sweet. Not because you’re used to me; not because you know me and it’s comfortable.”