She and Travis couldn't make the decision for them.
Luke and Janica needed to choose love for themselves.
All she could do was pray that they did. Because Luke and Janica meant everything to her.
And they both deserved the kind of forever love that she and Travis shared.
Chapter Twenty-three
As soon as Janica touched down in Italy, she knew she should get right back on the plane.
She always loved Italy. The architecture. The passionate natives. The food. The fashion. And as soon as Travis had left her office, she'd booked the next flight out to Milan to deal with some accounts that she'd recently picked up and to get a feel for the new fabrics and styles coming out of fashion's center of business.
But neither of those were the real reasons she'd gotten on the plane.
She'd had to leave. Had to get away from any and everything that reminded her of Luke.
Only, how could she have forgotten that she'd been here, in Italy with him, when they'd been trying to help Lily and Travis with their own roller-coaster relationship?
I love you, he'd said. It shouldn't have taken me this long to figure it out.
Okay, so he'd finally owned up to his feelings. But how long would it take him to accept them? To embrace them? To not be embarrassed by his feelings for her or to wish he didn't feel them? And if she had to tell him, if she had to give him step-by-step instructions on how to really and truly love her, then how could it possibly be real? And in the end, she couldn't force him to feel anything other than what he really, truly felt.
Only, it was one thing to try and resist Luke from 5,000 miles away. It was another entirely to think that she'd be able to do it when they were both back in San Francisco, meeting regularly at family events.
One touch, the slightest stroke of his fingers against her skin, and she knew she was going to be lost.
She'd loved him too deep, for too long.
Janica had never settled for anything her whole life. But if Luke could only love her part of the way, maybe settling for whatever he could give her was something she'd need to learn to live with.
Not even bothering to pick up her luggage, she stepped up to the ticket counter and got herself on the return flight out to San Francisco. A dozen hours later as she got off the airplane, knowing she couldn't go another second without seeing Luke, she told the taxi driver to take her straight to the hospital.
And then, from out of nowhere, she felt the truck in the lane beside them clip the back bumper, spinning the taxi off into the center divider on the freeway. Everything went black.
*
"Taxi crash. Twenty-nine-year-old woman. Head wound. Possible internal bleeding."
Luke was heading into his tenth hour for the day and had just downed his fifth cup of coffee. He'd worked much longer hours in the past, but now the days seemed longer than they ever had. Coming off his four-week leave, he still felt tired, like he was dragging all the time.
And yet, at the same time, his hours in the ER were the only time he even felt remotely alive.
Somehow, none of the things that used to give him a rush, not even a car accident victim who would need every ounce of his concentration, set off a spark inside of him. Whereas Janica, with nothing more than a wicked little smile, had made him feel like it was the Fourth of July every single day.
Every single moment.
He was still amazed to realize that in less than a week she'd taught him how to have fun. How to appreciate everything around him. And how incredible it was to share his life with someone else.
How had he screwed everything up so badly? And how the hell could he possibly win her back?
The first time she said "I love you" he should have been right there with her, showering her with everything he'd felt for her for so long--and had so stupidly held back. He'd been scared to love and lose again. But he'd had no idea just how much it would really hurt. Especially when the losing part was entirely his fault.
Grabbing the chart from the paramedic, he moved to the quickly moving gurney and finally looked at his patient.
Oh God.
No.
Please, let this be a nightmare.
Please, God, please let this not be real.
But the blood across Janica's forehead and cheek, dried in clumps in her soft hair was real. Her pale skin, her closed, bruised eyelids were real. Her small body, so still and lifeless beneath the thin white sheet--so completely different from the way she normally was, the woman who didn't know how to stop moving--was real.
All of the patients he had ever worked on throughout his years in the ER came down to this moment.
The moment when he needed to save the woman who meant everything to him.
One of the first things he'd learned as a doctor had been that emotions had a time and place, but not in the operating room. He'd always known how to segment the surgeon from the flesh-and-blood man.
He called out instructions one after the other, held out his hands for the nurse to put on his gown and surgical gloves, while his brain worked methodically to assess the damage to Janica's body.
Sweetheart, please hold on. I'm going to save you. I promise.
But before he could lay even a finger on Janica, he felt a hand on his arm.
Luke looked at Robert, frowned as his colleague said, "You're crying."
Without thinking, Luke reached up to touch his face. He couldn't feel any wetness through the latex of his glove. And yet, he knew Robert was right about his tears.
Because no matter how hard he tried to push his emotions into the appropriate box, it just wasn't possible. Not this time.
Not with Janica up on the operating table.
"Do you know her?"
"She's the woman I love."
It was as easy as that.
They all watched him carefully, the operating room nurses, the doctor he'd worked with and socialized with for so many years. No one said anything. No one made the suggestion that he should step away. No one told him he wasn't equipped to do this job right now. No one tried to make him see that Janica would be better off in somebody else's hands.
Thank god, this time they didn't need to say it.
Walking away from the operating room with Janica on the table bleeding and hurting, trusting someone else to heal her and make her whole, was going to be the hardest thing he ever did.
But he had to do it.
For her.
"Please," he began, but Robert just shook his head, letting him know he didn't have to say anything more.
"We'll take good care of her, Luke. Don't you worry for even one second about that. You're going to have a long life with her. I promise you that."
Luke's feet felt like lead as he left the operating room. He couldn't go to the waiting room. But his legs wouldn't hold him either. Slowly, he slipped down against the wall until he was sitting on the floor. His head was in his hands and his heart, well, his heart was barely beating.
As the minutes slowly ticked down, he could feel himself alternating between numb and scared.
Scared shitless.
But although he had been crying in the operating room, he wasn't crying now. He didn't even have the relief of tears.
If anything happened to her, anything more than the crash, if something went wrong on the operating table, Luke knew he'd never feel anything again.
He simply couldn't live without her.
Somewhere in the back of his brain he knew he should call Lily, that she needed to know her sister was in the hospital, but he couldn't do it. Not until he knew more.
And all the while, the urge to bust into the OR and take over was so strong it took every ounce of control he possessed not to storm back in there and yank the instruments out of Robert's hands.
"Luke? What are you doing here? On the floor?"
He lifted his head, as heavy as a bowling bowl, and saw Dr. Jones, the woman who'd sent him off on leave, standing in front of him.
"Waiting."
He was surprised when she joined him on the floor. "Waiting for who?"
"Janica."
He didn't say anything more. He didn't say that she was his sister-in-law. He didn't say that he had been in love with her for so many years, there was no pinpointing the exact date or time when his feelings had become clear. He didn't tell her that Janica had offered to give him everything he'd ever wanted, even when he was giving her nearly nothing in return. He didn't tell her that he'd screwed everything up.
The psychiatrist's voice was gentler than he'd ever heard it. "I don't know what the situation is here, but you've got to know that she's going to be okay, Luke. Every doctor in the hospital is the best at what he or she does." When he didn't say anything, just let his head fall back to his knees, she squeezed his hand and said, "Let me know if you need anything. I'll be in my office."
Intellectually, Luke knew she was right. His colleagues were the best in the business. But deep inside, he wouldn't believe it until he heard Janica laugh again.
He wouldn't believe it until he saw her dance again.
He wouldn't believe it until he saw her twirl Violet and Sam, dressed in pink lace, around in Lily and Travis's living room.
Then, and only then, would he believe it.
And he'd never stop telling her he loved her.
He'd never stop trying to get her to see that she could love him back without fear. Because he'd never be so stupid again.
After what felt like hours, the operating room door opened. His colleagues walked out and were clearly surprised to find him on the floor.
For nearly two decades people in the waiting room had tried to read his face, post-operation. Now, he was the one looking for clues. For anything that would tell him if she was going to be all right. Or if she had--
"How is she?" The words came out harsh. Raw.
"She's young and healthy and things couldn't have gone better," Robert said with a reassuring smile.
They were the same words Luke had said to strangers a thousand times before, but this time, each one was his own nugget of gold. Relief hit him so hard that if he hadn't already been on the floor, that's exactly where he would've ended up.
"Thank you."
Those two whispered words held every ounce of his gratitude.
"Just like I told you," Robert said softly, "we wouldn't have let anything happen to her, Luke."
With Robert's help, Luke got up off the floor and followed Janica into the recovery room. Doctors didn't stay with patients, obviously. And usually, loved ones didn't either immediately post-surgery. Luke had never broken protocol like this before.
But nothing would stop him from breaking the rules this time.
He was not going to leave her side. And as he watched her sleep, needles in her arm, bandages on her head, her vital signs moving across the digital screen above her bed, he heard her voice in his head from that night out on the beach in front of the bonfire.
I knew I'd regret it forever if I didn't go for what I wanted.
She'd been so right.
And that was when another bomb hit him: He already knew he loved her.
But he hadn't realized until this very moment that she was his entire soul.
Chapter Twenty-four
Janica felt like crap.
Hangovers like this always made her want to roll over and go right back to sleep. Unfortunately, she knew from painful experience that she'd only end up feeling worse when she woke up again in a few hours unless she made herself get out of bed and take a couple of aspirin.
But when she tried to shift beneath the sheets, excruciating pain knocked the breath out of her.
"Don't move, sweetheart."
She immediately recognized Luke's voice. She would know it anywhere. Warm and sexy as hell. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt like she'd been walking through a sandstorm.
Fear hit her, then. What was wrong with her?
She tried to fight the pain, tried to surface all the way from her sleepiness. And then she felt his lips on her forehead, heard him softly say, "Shh," and his voice, his presence, was just what she needed to calm her down and lull her back to sleep.
*
"So thirsty."
She felt the rim of a plastic cup being held to her mouth and as she tried to gulp it down, she heard Luke say, "Not too much, sweetheart. Not yet."
She vividly remembered him saying nearly the exact thing when they were in bed together, when she was desperate to take all of him inside of her as fast as she could. But while she was presently in bed, they obviously weren't making love.
Everything hurt, especially her abdomen where it felt like someone had cut into her with a saw. Suddenly, it all came back to her, a series of flashbacks. The plane. The taxi. The truck hitting them. And then nothing but pain and darkness.
And a bone deep longing to be back in Luke's arms, safe and warm.
Her eyelids felt heavy, but she forced herself to open them anyway.
Just as she'd intended, she'd made it to Luke's hospital. Just not the way she'd planned to do it.
"I love you, sweetheart."
His sweet words had her shifting her somewhat blurry focus to Luke's face. Which was when she finally saw the tears streaking down his face.
"I love you," he said again, his voice thick with emotion.
And even in her fog, even as pain moved through her, she could see that everything was different.
This love Luke spoke of wasn't the same kind of love that he'd felt before.
"I love you too," she said, but the act of speaking had her grimacing.
"Just breathe, sweetheart. I'm not going to leave you. I promise."
And even when a nurse came in and gave her more pain medication, Luke not only never let go of her hand the whole time...he didn't try to hide his tears.
Or his love for her.
She saw it, saw what she'd wanted more than anything, but even as the power of his love for her settled in, she suddenly realized that she couldn't believe it.
Now it was her turn to ask, "How can you?"
"How can I what, sweetheart?"
"How can you love me?"
She was surprised to see a small smile on his lips, his hand brushing a wisp of hair off of her forehead. "I love you because you're good."
She knew what he was doing. He was repeating all of the things she'd said to him back to her. But she knew it wasn't enough.
"You know I'm not good, Luke," she made herself say through the fog of pain, of exhaustion.
"Yes, you are."
"But I wasn't."
"I loved you even then." His eyes sparkled with something slightly wicked. "Even when you were bad. I wanted to be bad with you."
She didn't know what to say to that and in her silence he hit her with, "I love you because you're honest."
But even though she never lied, she had to say, "There are things you don't know about me. About my past. About what I've done. Things you won't like."
Her words all came out in a rush and she only stopped when he put a finger to her lips. "I love who you are now. And I promise you, sweetheart, I love who you used to be too."
"You couldn't."
"I do, sweetheart. I love you for everything you do and everything you are. No exceptions. Past, present, and future."
She'd never thought to hear him say this to her. Never dreamed he could accept her all the way through. And then she realized why that was.
"I never thought I'd find someone to love me for who I really am," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"You don't have any idea how loveable you are, do you?"
She shook her head and pain shot through her. But that was wasn't why she was wincing. It was because he was right. In her heart of hearts, she hadn't thought anyone could ever really love her. Because she hadn't truly loved - or accepted - herself.
"No," she whispered.
"I love you because you're kind. I love you because you're swee
t. I love the softness you keep hidden from everyone but me. I love you because you're the most loving person I've ever known."
He shifted his face so close to hers that his breath feathered across her lips.
"I love you because you're you."
And then, as he gently kissed her, Janica felt a true, deep warmth spread through her, starting deep in her heart.
Finally, amazingly, she'd found real love.
Chapter Twenty-five
Later, when she woke up in the dark, Luke was still holding her hand. His chair was pulled up to the side of her bed and his head was resting on the mattress in what had to be a distinctly uncomfortable position.
Even though she still felt like crap on the outside, on the inside, in the place where her heart had started to shrivel up and die, she felt great.
Amazing.
Fantastic.
Because she knew, without even a shadow of a doubt, just how much Luke loved her.
Sensing that she was awake, Luke lifted his head and smiled at her. He looked gorgeously rumpled, a world apart from the tightly wound doctor he'd been for so long.
Her love for him had been the last thing she'd thought of before everything went black after the crash.
"You saved me."
His smiled fell away, but he didn't let go of her hand. "No, I didn't. I didn't want anyone else to touch you, I didn't trust anyone else to save you, but I couldn't operate. Not when cutting into you would have been like slicing open my own heart."
Her insides warmed, her heart beating even stronger, steadier with every word he spoke.
"You stepped aside?"
"I'm sorry, Janica. I should have been stronger. I should have been the one--"
She didn't have the strength to throw her arms around him. Instead, she squeezed his hand and said, "Don't you see? You did save me. Because you made sure I got exactly what I needed." She paused as a tear slipped down her cheek. "You made sure I would be here to keep loving you, Luke. Forever."
*
He knew how weak she was, how tired, and yet he had to kiss her again. Gently, he pressed his lips to hers, only a little surprised when she kissed him right back much harder.
Janica Ellis was one tough chick.
His tough chick.