Page 161 of Just One Look

So, no, she didn’t want to admit this, or to say that she might have been completely wrong. That she had to find out if she’d been wrong, because if Luka felt the same way she did, that he’d known all along that he’d be left again and now it was happening, and all he wanted to do was curl around the pain and try to protect himself … if it was that, she had to know. And wasn’t that the problem, that they bothdidcurl themselves around their pain like that?

She’d always thought she was honest, because everything she shared was true. How much had she shared, though? Almost nothing. How honest was that? Howbravewas that?

Sometimes, you had to roller blade, even though the concrete was cracked. Even though there was a hill. Even though you might fall, and you might bleed. Because if you never skated down a hill, never felt the dangerous exhilaration of almost-out-of-control, had you even been alive at all?

She said, “I need to talk to Luka before I go. I need to see if he …” Her head was hot, and she had to stop and breathe.

“If he still loves you,” Nyree said. “That’s it, isn’t it? If he still loves you.”

Some talking on the other end. Marko’s voice, she thought, which meant everybody was hearing this. Everybody was seeing her in her weakness. She said, “Yes,” and shook all over.

It was laying herself on the line. It was going to be getting cut open, on the table with no anesthesia, if she was wrong. It was going to hurt so much, she didn’t know how she would ever recover.

But she had to know, didn’t she? Before she threw this away, she had to know. Or no matter where she got in her career, no matter how many journal articles she authored and how many pioneering surgeries she did, she was going to have a hollow place inside. The place that was loving Luka and having him love her. The place that was having a life,herlife, the life she was meant to live.

She didn’t believe in soulmates. She didn’t believe in destiny. She didn’t believe in magic.

But she believed in Luka. He’d gone into the flood. He’d nearly been washed away, but he’d come back. He’d come back twice, because he’d always come back. Wouldn’t he? She thought it was true, and she needed to know for sure.

A man of honor.She’d heard the phrase. She’d never believed it, not really. It was old-fashioned, probably. Idealistic. Unattainable.

Honorable didn’t mean perfect, though, did it? Honorable meant you tried. You tried, and you told the truth.

She needed to tell the truth, and see if he would, too. Even if it hurt. Even if she failed. She needed totry.

She said, “I’m waiting outside his house. I’ve been waiting for almost an hour and a half, and he hasn’t come. But I’m going to …”

She hauled in her breath. She gripped the steering wheel hard. She tried to make her hands stop shaking. “I’m going to wait anyway,” she said. “Until I can tell him how I feel. You have to skate down the hill sometime, or you’ll be in the rink forever, going in circles. I’m going to skate down the hill.”