Chapter 22: Luka

We climbed the four flights without talking.

At his door he fumbled the key twice, and I put my hand over his to steady it.

Inside, the apartment smelled like coffee and old books, and the radiator knocked.

I took off my coat and didn't know where to put it.

"Cadence," Luka said. "You said once you'd tell me someday."

"I know."

"You don't have to tonight."

"I want to."

I sat on the arm of the couch, the way I had the night Colton came.

Then I told him, in plain sentences, with my hands in my lap.

When I got to the overpass, his hands closed into fists on his knees.

I told him I'd opened my eyes in my own bed the day before the dinner.

I told him that in the first life he had texted me the night they threw me out.

My phone was dead, and I never saw it.

I said, "In that one, we'd barely met."

He didn't laugh and he didn't say I was out of my mind.

He sat on the coffee table in front of me with his elbows on his knees and listened to every word.

When I finished, the radiator knocked again.

"The text," he said. "What did it say?"

"I never read it."

His voice was rough. "Whoever I was there, I'd have said something."

"Then guess what it said," I told him.

He looked at the floor, and then at me.

"'Are you okay? Call me whenever. I'll pick up.'"

I almost smiled.

"That sounds like you," I said.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"You weren't there because I didn't have a phone."

"I'm sorry anyway."

I put both hands on his face and kissed him.

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