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22
Natalie
“Okay.”
“Just like that, okay?
“Yeah, just like that.”
“You don’t have anything to say?”
“Oh, I have plenty, but is there anything I say that would change your mind about any of what you just laid down?
“No”
“Exactly. So my answer is okay. If that’s what it takes to be with you, then okay. I’m in.”
“You’re not just saying that, then are going to fuck it all up on the first day?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that, and refer you to the fact that I’ve already been doing most of that shit for weeks, anyway. You said you trust me, so trust.”
“Okay. I do, and I will.” I both loved and hated his smarts—there was no arguing with that logic.
It wasn’t the achingly pompous intellectual bullshit I’d gotten from Doug, who had the biggest superiority complex of just about anybody on the planet. With Luke it was more street smarts, or common sense, though he was also clearly rocking a decent IQ. He’d told me that his father had died when he was fifteen, and even before that, his mother was raising him and his three brothers single-handedly, while working full-time. I guessed that would make someone sharp and pragmatic the way he was.
He really was the polar opposite of Doug, who could recite every word Chaucer ever wrote in the original Middle English, but who had more than once filled our diesel car with unleaded fuel, and hadn’t even realized his mistake until he’d tried to drive away from the gas station, pretty much ruining the engine as a result. He was intelligent, but didn’t have a practical bone in his middle-aged professor body. That was another way they were totally different. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Luke’s perfectly toned young body wasn’t a huge turn on for me. It really was.
“My turn.” He grinned impishly.
“Your turn for what?”
“This is a negotiation, isn’t it? We’re making a deal, right?”
“Yeah…” I spoke slowly, drawing the word out, while my brain raced ahead trying to pre-empt what he was about to say.
“Well, then it’s only fair that I get to lay down my terms of the deal, just like you have.” Much to my disappointment, I came up blank. I was just going to have to wait for his bombshell.
“Okay…so?”
“So my terms are a lot simpler than yours. I guess that’s because I’m a simple kind of a guy.”
That was the biggest pile of bull crap I’d heard since Douglas had told me that I’d driven him to cheat on me, so I knew I was about to be sucker-punched. Luke was one of those people who liked to play down his intellect.
Actually, he played down every aspect of himself, including it would seem, his musical talent. His identical twin brother Arlo was the front man, lead singer, lead guitarist and main songwriter for their band—which I could tell was on the precipice of making big waves in the music world, and beyond. However, the more time I spent with Luke, the more I suspected that he was as good, if not better at those things than his arrogant, difficult, and supremely confident twin. Yet he hung back and let Arlo take center stage—figuratively and literally—and bask in the glory that went with that.
“And there are a lot less of them. Actually, come to think of it, there’s just one.”
“Huh?” I’d been reduced to a monosyllabic bag of nerves, and he hadn’t even dropped the curveball I knew was coming, yet.
“I have just one condition. I want you to stop fighting.”
“What?”
“Stop fighting. Me, us, what I’m feeling, what you’re feeling, where this thing between us is headed. Just stop fighting it.”
“I’m not—”
“Really? Are you about to sit there and deny you’ve been fighting this from day one? You lied to me about your name and profession, for Christ’s sake. That’s how hard you were battling against it from the get-go. You felt the instant connection we had, and your instinct was to run for the hills. The fact was that unless I’d hired a private dick, or just happened to be enrolled in your classes, we would never have seen each other again after that night, which was clearly your intention. If that’s not fighting it, I don’t know what is.”
