Out of the Clear Blue Sky, Part Seven
Reid swiped his scrub cap off his head and wadded it in his fists.
He was able to keep his hands still during surgery, but the concentration it required drained him. Removing a simple clot felt like a marathon. Reid often questioned his decision to reenter the operating room, but there was no turning back now. Same with Luke. More effort was all it required. He just didn’t have the strength to put forth the effort tonight.
He unlocked his office, fully prepared to strip and sleep on the worn couch in the corner. When he flicked on the light, Reid jumped a foot in the air. It would appear that he would have to find different accommodations. Luke was occupying the sofa.
Luke pointed to the chair he had moved from behind Reid’s desk. It was facing Luke now, and from the look souring his soft features, the only thing missing was a lamp to shine in Reid’s face as he grilled him. “Sit.”
“What’s my crime?” Reid joked. He slowly lowered himself into the hot seat. “Overdue library book?”
Luke swallowed hard, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “What is going on with us, Reid?”
Watching his thumbs as they twiddled between his laced fingers, Reid shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean. Aren’t you happy?”
“I have dreamed about being with you for the last four years. There were days that I couldn’t think of anything else and, now that I’ve got it, no…No, I’m not happy and I know you’re not either.”
Reid looked up then. Gone was the stern expression Luke had been wearing, replaced by only sadness. “I’m trying.”
Luke sighed. He dropped from the couch on his knees and inched closer to Reid. The arms of the chair were gripped tightly in Luke’s hands. “But why? Why do you have to try so hard? If you’d tell me, maybe I could-“
“Could what, Luke? Erase your marriage?” Reid scrubbed his palms over his face before rubbing them together. His fingers had numbed, all the blood rushing to his brain in a panic. “You’ve already dissolved it. What else can you do? It’s just going to take some time.”
Sitting back on his heels, Luke realized Katie was correct. It wasn’t the sex. It was so much more than that. “You’re right. I can’t do anything to make my marriage disappear and you know something? I wouldn’t want to.”
Reid had been expecting this. Luke had done some soul searching and all he could do now was sit back and wait for the verdict. This reunion of theirs hadn’t been as blissful as either anticipated. Reid took it as a sign; Luke had come to the conclusion that they just weren’t meant to be. “You loved him.”
“I did.” Luke nodded. “But the thing about a love built on lies is that it never lasts. Knox crushed me, Reid. I didn’t want him to have that power, but he did. He gave me hope, gave me what he thought was love. More importantly, he gave me a child and that is the one reason I can’t apologize. I know you want me to.”
Huffing loudly, Reid’s head rolled back. “I don’t. I don’t want you to do anything. I want to be okay with all of this. I want- I need to feel like I fit somewhere in this new life you have, not like Knox 2.0.”
“Oh, Reid.” Luke cupped Reid’s cheek. Relief washed over him when Reid didn’t pull away. “Is that what you think?”
It was hard for Reid to think anything else. As soon as Knox was out of the picture, Reid had eased right into his spot. He filled Luke’s bed. He tucked Kenna in at night. Reid almost expected a call from Knox’s producer asking if he had any interest in private investigation. “He replaced me. I replaced him. That’s the Circle of Life here in Oakdale.”
Luke’s hand dropped from Reid’s face into his lap. He stared at Reid quietly for a moment before standing and walking towards the door. Reid jumped from his chair. He wanted to tell Luke he could do it. He could be the new Knox because the alternative meant being the old Reid. Old Reid didn’t have Luke and that was unacceptable.
Instead of leaving as Reid thought, Luke unhooked a bag hanging on the back of the office door. He clutched it tightly in his hands and motioned to the couch. Neither man moved, staying rooted in their spots. “I lost your smell first. The week after the plane went down, I stayed in your room at Katie’s apartment. I didn’t eat or shower. All I could do was bury my face in your pillow and cry or sleep.” A weak smile crossed Luke’s lips. “Sometimes both.”
“Luke, you don’t have to-“
“I do.” Luke’s eyes were surprisingly clear. “More to the point, you need to hear it. We’ve spent a lot of time pretending that the last few years didn’t happen and it’s gotten us nowhere. We need to talk, Reid. So, I’m going to tell you my story.”
Reid cleared his throat and nodded.
“Have a seat.” Luke waited for Reid to sit. He made a conscious effort to leave some space between them. “They showed up on a Sunday morning. I think Katie called them. She had tried and failed to make me move, so she brought in reinforcements. Grandmother threatened to have me committed, so I let them guilt me into going to Emma’s for lunch. I didn’t say a word to anyone.
“After two hours, they let me go, but when I got back to your place, a cleaning crew had been there. All of your things were boxed up and they had washed the sheets. I was so angry that I punched a hole in the wall. I took the keys to your car, but eventually, your scent started to fade there, too.”
Luke felt Reid swipe beneath his eye. He didn’t know he was crying until he saw the tears glistening on the pad of Reid’s thumb. He took a deep breath, wiped his nose and continued. “Your voice was next.”
Rummaging through the bag, Luke pulled out a handheld recorder. “I didn’t have any old voicemails and I had filled up your box by calling so many times to hear the outgoing message that I started getting that automated voice instead of you. I thought I had lost it completely when out of the blue, Bob showed up with the stuff they had cleared from your locker.”
Luke pushed a button and Reid’s voice, sounding bored and clinical, spouted notes on a new technique he had been using for laminectomies. “It’s no ‘I love you’, but I was so grateful to have it. I listened to it probably forty times the day I found it.” His cheeks burned with embarrassment, noticing how pathetic that sounded. “I wish that was an exaggeration.”
When Reid woke up in that hospital in Pennsylvania, after finally coming to terms with what the staff had told him of his accident and lack of identity, his first thought had been of Luke. Reid had imagined how frightened and lost Luke must have felt. Then, Reid showed up in Oakdale and he had an entirely new set of issues to deal with. He was only realizing now that he hadn’t spared another minute since to think of Luke’s struggle. Reid’s self-pity had made it easy to miss what Luke had really been going through.
“The first time the batteries went dead, I lost it.” Luke could feel his palms sweat, that familiar fear that he had lost another part of Reid still so fresh in his mind. “I wasn’t going to risk losing your face, so, I collected it.”
Reid chuckled, his eyebrows rising comically. “You collected my face?”
“Not just your face.” Luke lifted a scrapbook from the bag and shook the canvas free. The spine cracked, falling open to one of the more viewed sections. There was an article about the groundbreaking for the new wing. Luke, Reid and Bob, in ridiculous white hard hats, were digging their shiny shovels into soft earth. “Everything I could find that mentioned your name.”
Reid scooted closer and examined the pages. He glanced at Luke’s face. Reid noticed how his eyes would light as he explained how he found each item and pressed it lovingly to the thick paper. The light was extinguished when Luke turned to an article written about Knox’s search for Reid. Luke closed the book then, placing his hand neatly over the leather cover.
“The night that I went on my first date with Knox, I wore the tie you had on at Dad and Molly’s wedding.” Luke could feel Reid pulling away, but it was important that he finish. “He asked me to marry him three times before I said yes. I was having these dreams that you were telling me not to.”
“Telepathy during coma? That’s a study someone should do.” Reid cocked his head to the side. His eyes narrowed for a split second as he took in Luke’s expression. “This is all very fascinating, but if we could skip the part about your husband-“
“We can’t, Reid.” Luke turned his knees towards Reid and grabbed his hands. “That’s the point. I know that you think when I fell in love with Knox that I stopped loving you. I’m trying to show you that you’re wrong.”
Reid wanted to believe, but he couldn’t. “So, you’re saying on your wedding day, you were thinking of me?”
“I wasn’t just thinking of you. I was wearing your ring.”
“I don’t wear rings.”
“Don’t you remember?” Luke smiled as he searched for the only thing left in the bag. “You had knocked back a few beers at this point. I can’t say I’m surprised your memory is a little foggy.”
Reid shook his head and sighed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was mid-October. You had to do a consult in Chicago. The White Sox were in the playoffs and-“
“And you showed up at my hotel with tickets right behind the plate.”
“Yep.” Luke beamed. He held out the small tin trinket Reid had given him as a memento. “This was in your box of Cracker Jacks.”
Reid took the ring from Luke’s palm and examined the tarnished band with the gaudy hunk of red plastic sitting on top. “I couldn’t convince you to take it off until your whole finger had turned green.”
“Of course not. You said once the asshats that ran this state stopped being petrified of their prostates, you’d buy me a real one. Do you remember what happened next?”
“I kissed you.” The memory was coming back to Reid vividly now. He felt like a fool for ever forgetting. “We were on TV.”
“The morning of my wedding, I put this on the pinky of my right hand.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t forget the man I promised myself to first.” Luke moved the book from his lap to the floor. He leaned in slowly enough that Reid could stop it if he wanted, but was glad when Reid accepted his kiss. Luke pulled back just as slowly and placed Reid’s hand over his chest. “You were always here, Reid. When it got harder to remember how you smelled or how your voice sounded when you woke up, you were always in my heart. I could never lose you.”
Reid was the one to move this time. He dragged Luke into his lap and kissed his forehead. His lips traveled lightly over Luke’s eyes, his nose, both cheeks. Reid’s thumb padded across Luke’s mouth before he whispered. “I don’t want to talk about the accident or what happened after, but I will if you need to hear it.”
Luke shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me now. I just want to be there for you when you’re ready. Will you let me, Reid? Will you let me be there for you?”
It finally clicked. Luke had always been there with Reid and, by some miracle, he wasn’t going anywhere now. “I’m counting on it.”
Their hands roamed as Luke laid his head on Reid’s shoulder. They had been intimate countless times in the last few days, but they hadn’t felt closer than they did in this moment.
“Reid, what happens now?”
Clutching the Cracker Jack ring in his palm, Reid thought about how to move forward. “We can’t pick up where we left off.”
Luke’s brow knotted. A part of him knew that too, but it was hard to hear. “So, we start at the beginning?”
Reid’s arms tightened around Luke’s back. “We’ve got a lot to learn about each other.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Don’t sound so sad.” Reid slipped the tarnished bauble back onto Luke’s finger. “I, for one, am looking forward to falling in love with you all over again.”