Love Me (Take Me 2)

It isn't going to kill you to say it, to admit the way you really feel. Maybe it will even save you.

“I love you.”

The kids continued to dance around her as the song played on, but Janica just stood there and stared at him.

Why wasn't she throwing herself in his arms? Why wasn't she saying the words back to him.

“I love you,” he said again. “I can't help myself. I've tried for so hard, for so long to stop feeling what I feel for you, but the truth is I've never been able to help myself, Janica. It shouldn't have taken me this long to figure out that I love you. So much, sweetheart.”

The tension between them grew so palpable that even the kids stopped dancing. Lily, Travis, and both kids stood in silence, all of them waiting for what came next.

Finally, Janica dropped the children's hands and moved toward him. His heart had just started to beat again when she said, “Thank you for letting me know.”

And then, instead of walking into his arms, she walked past them.

All the way out the door.

And out of his life.

* * *

He heard Travis say, “Take the kids, Lily,” and then his brother was right there in his face.

“What the fuck was that?” His twin was incredulous.

“I love her.”

And he'd lost her.

Travis shook his head, looking more confused than he ever had. “I don't get it. You and Janica? How? When? Where?”

“A few weeks ago. I went to her apartment.”

He'd been in pain and she'd been the person he'd turned to. The only person who could give him what he must have known he desperately needed.

Not just her body.

But her heart too.

“She's right, you know. I don't deserve her.”

“Look, Luke. I don't know what the hell is going on with the two of you, but you've got to see that it could never have worked between the two of you. I mean, Janica is—”

He had his brother's shirt in his hands so quickly neither of them saw it coming. “Janica is what?”

After thirty-five years of Travis playing the tough guy and Luke playing the nice guy, everything switched in an instant.

“Say it,” Luke dared his twin, wanting nothing more than to pound his brother's face into the pavement.

Clearly seeing the raw violence pounding through Luke's veins, Travis backed down. “I'm sorry, man. I like her. You know I do. I'm just surprised by your coming here and saying that to her.”

Luke forced himself to drop his brother's shirt. “Tell Lily I'm sorry I can't stay.”

Chapter Twenty-two

An hour later Travis walked into Janica's studio as if he owned the place. She purposefully ignored him. Which wasn't easy to do when he was hunkering over her, huge and angry.

“Hey sis. How's it going? Since you missed dinner, I brought you a burger.”

She didn't buy the greeting. There was nothing easy, nothing nice about it apart from the actual words.

“I'm busy. What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

Still not bothering to look up from her computer where she was double-checking orders for the month, she said, “Fine. Talk.”

“What the fuck kind of game are you playing with my brother?”

Knowing her own eyes were blazing now, she shot back, “You want me to draw you some dirty pictures?”

His mouth tightened, the mouth that was so like his twin's and, yet, so completely different. Of course she saw the surface similarities between Luke and Travis, but to her, that's all they were. Surface stuff.

She wasn't in love with Travis. She would never, ever be in love with Travis.

But she loved Luke with every goddamned cell of her body.

She watched Travis take a step back from her desk, walk to the window to look at the crowded city streets below.

“You know I've always thought you were a little bit crazy, right?”

He wasn't trying to be mean, and the truth was she didn't take offense. It was just the way she and Travis talked to each other.

“Yup,” she agreed. “And you know I've always thought you were a little bit of an asshole, right?”

Finally, the hint of a grin.

“But here's the thing—I never thought you were stupid, Janica. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met. Both you and my brother have big, huge brains.”

Her stupid heart skipped a beat at the mention of Luke, damn it.

“So then why the hell are you acting so stupid now?”

It killed her not to combat his awful words with worse words of her own. But, really, what was the point? Nothing Travis did or said was going to change the truth of the matter.

Luke didn't want to love her. And she couldn't do a damn thing to change that.

Except for stupidly, foolishly hoping that maybe, at some point in the future, he'd look at her and see everything he wasn't seeing now. Because didn't he see that loving her despite himself wasn't enough?

“I've got a lot of work to catch up on,” she said by way of a get-the-hell-out.

But Travis didn't get the picture. Or, maybe he did, but he didn't give a fuck what she wanted him to do.

“We all know you're in love with him.”

She met Luke's twin's gaze with clear, direct eyes.

“I am. So ridiculously, pathetically in love with your brother that I can hardly believe it.” A muscle in Travis's jaw twitched in what she figured was shock and she continued with, “And trust me, he knows it.”

After all, she'd only told him about a hundred times.

Clearly caught off guard by her sensationally straightforward admission, Travis stopped, stared, then sat down hard on her leather couch.

“Fuck.”

It was, quite possibly, the biggest moment of solidarity she'd ever had with her sister's husband.

“I feel exactly the same way.”

He shook his head, confusion taking over his face. “So then why won't you take him back?”

It was easiest to say, “Because I'm a bitch.”

His eyes softened. Just slightly. “You're not a bitch.”

“But it would be easier if you thought that was the reason.”

Not just for him, but for her too.

“You're right,” Travis agreed. “It probably would be. But I'd rather hear the real reason.”

She thought about it for a second. “I really don't want to have to say the words aloud to you, Travis.”

He nodded and she thought that maybe, just maybe, he was going to go now and she would be left alone in her abject misery. Instead, he said, “All my life, until Lily came along, Luke was the most important person in the world to me. He was the only one who really knew me. Who saw through all my bullshit. But the thing is, I don't think I've ever been able to see all the way through his. I've seen him work himself into the ground, I've seen him date women who are so cold you wouldn't want to touch them with your tongue because it would stick. But I've never seen him like this, Janica. Help me help him.”