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“I don’t need saving,” I interrupted, voice harsher than I intended.
Luke eyed me. “You didn’t need to come home in a body bag,” he countered. “You have family. People who love you. What the fuck do you think they would’ve done if you hadn’t come back at all? If you’d just dropped off the face of the earth, tossed in some shallow grave? How the fuck were they… how the fuck would I be able to go on with a big fuckin’ chasm in my life?”
I flinched. “You never gave me the space to take up any of your life, remember?” That time I did intend to sound harsh.
He moved forward, cupping my face. “No, Rosie. I gave you all the fucking space. That wasn’t the problem. I didn’t tell you that. That was my fucking mistake, and I’m gonna learn from it,” he promised, and I couldn’t help but think the promise was more to himself than to me. “I’m gonna learn from it and I’m gonna make sure you know just how much space you take up in my life. How without you in it, there’s nothing.”
I blinked at him. “How can we go from all we’ve ever known to this? How are nevers suddenly being turned into forevers?” I whispered.
He searched my eyes. “You know why, Rosie.”
I shook my head. “No, it can’t have been from before….” I couldn’t say it. That’s how weak I really was. I couldn’t even utter the description of the day that changed everything. I swallowed. “I loved you the wrong way, before,” I whispered instead.
His hands flexed, and his eye twitched. “There’s no wrong way to love someone.”
I blinked at him. “Yes there is. There’s blood, murder, pain, lies. To everyone we know, we care about. Lies to ourselves. To each other.”
“No, babe. I’ll admit it, that I lied to myself, but never to you. Even when I tried with my words. You knew better. I fuckin’ know you did.”
I pursed my lips. “Maybe.”
“Definitely,” he corrected.
“I can’t go from zero to a hundred, Luke.” I went for a different route. The truth. Or maybe it was another lie. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“Yes you can,” he argued. “Your life is zero to a hundred.”
I stared at him. “And my life has been a consistent series of Fuck-Ups.”
He frowned. “Don’t do that. Don’t belittle everything you’ve done, everything you’ve become. It’s the furthest thing from a fuck-up I’ve ever seen.”
I chewed my lip. “It’s all about perception, Luke. You might see it differently, but it doesn’t matter. What does that I don’t want this, us, if we really do this, to be another Fuck-Up.”
“It won’t be. We won’t be,” he promised.
I swallowed, deciding to say something else, to him, to myself, instead of answering properly. “Ever since I can remember, I was a nomad,” I whispered. “Not in the sense that I didn’t have a home. The Sons of Templar have been and always will be my home, of a sort. But spiritually, I’m a nomad. Since birth, maybe. Definitely since my dad died and I was put in a world where I was in without a patch. Where I would always belong but also didn’t. Then I met you, and my spirit found a home. Or it wanted one. But it couldn’t reside there or in me, so that’s what this, my whole life, has been about after that. Trying to find a home in someone else and trying to find a home in myself.” I stepped forward so my body pressed into Luke, so my body found its home. “I’ve never, not once in my life, felt like I was exactly, precisely where I needed to be. Where I belonged. Not completely. Because I was fighting. Because I knew it was right here that I needed to be.” I stroked Luke’s chest. “And I knew I could never be here. Thought I couldn’t, at least. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
He stroked my head. “What, precisely?”
“Peace,” I whispered. “I’ve never felt it. It’s like a pair of shoes that fit exactly perfectly but you’re suspicious because no pair of shoes is that perfect.”
Luke chuckled. “I’m the pair of shoes in this analogy?”
I smirked. “We’re the pair of shoes. A pair.”
He leaned down and kissed my head. “I knew there wasn’t a lot of things in life I could give you, not when I’ve taken years from you because I was running from this for all the wrong reasons—”
“We both were.”
He took that with a hard chin. I knew he wanted to disagree, but he kept going. “Whatever it was. If there was one gift I could give my beautifully wild, wonderfully chaotic woman, it would be peace.” He gave me a look that held the whole universe. “Even if it’s fleeting, because I know my wild woman can’t entertain peace for too long and stay sane. I can be happy, content, knowing I’ve given you that.”
