“Lily, you can’t live in what-ifs. I did that. What if I hurt you in my sleep? But what if I had fought for you back then? Fought for myself? We could have been happy this whole time. I wouldn’t have missed out on years with my son. Do you want to dwell on something that might never even happen? Or do you want to make something we both want a reality?” His eyes bored into mine. I couldn’t look away from him, even if I wanted to. His voice gentled. “When you are with me, I forget about everything except you, me, and the kids. You all make me happy. I stop obsessing about the past and the struggles, and I’m just Luke again. I don’t want to lose that.”

“I don’t want to keep Dylan from you. I don’t want to not see you anymore. I just need to slow—”

He cut me off. “Do you ever miss me, Lily?” I was floored by this question. Floored, then pissed.

“How can you ask me that? You know what I went through trying to get to you. We talked about it yesterday.” I felt myself getting emotional again. I had been on a roller coaster since I got home, and it had to stop. I stood straight.

He flinched. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. I mean now, since we’ve both been back, and you have an understanding about why I did what I did. Do you ever think about us? How it was when we were together?”

I turned away and shook my head, tears welling up.

“Lily, please talk to me, look at me.”

I faced him. “Yes,” I hissed. “I can’t stop thinking about it. But I don’t want to do this now. It shouldn’t be this way, Luke.”

He had never turned away from me. “What way?” he asked gently.

“It was never supposed to be this complicated,” I blurted.

He looked stricken for a second, then controlled his expression. I kept getting the feeling that he was hiding how he really felt, that he held something back.

“I spent years angry with you, Luke—and so hurt. I know now that you didn’t deliberately abandon Dylan. But for years, it was like an open wound that never healed. I have so many feelings coming up, and it scares me. I’m not ready for this. I don’t want to need you. I don’t want to want you like I do. I didn’t want to feel this way ever again. I don’t think I can do this.” Tears filled my eyes as I turned to gaze out of the window behind his desk.

His footsteps sounded behind me as he approached. With a gentle hand, he turned me. “What are you afraid of?”