Jill Shalvis - Luke

"Did you eat breakfast?"

"I've told you, I can handle this thing."

"You need a snack?"

"I have a bagel on my desk. I'm going to get to it, I-"

"Get to it now." His thumb rasped over her lower lip, setting off a whole set of reactions in her body.

"You're pale."

"Fine." Tossing the schedule down, she picked up the bagel and stuffed a bite in her month. "Happy?"

"I will be." He waited until she'd swallowed. "More." He looked at his watch. After sixty seconds, he lifted his head. "Feel better?"

"Yes," she admitted, and found her throat tight.

"Faith, sometimes you'll be off just because. It's not your fault."

At the sympathy in his gaze, she nearly burst into tears.

"I want you to go on insulin."

That dried her up. "No." She was standing her ground on this. "Insulin isn't the answer for me."

"Because it's conventional?"

"I'm going to overlook that sarcastic and uncalled-for comment because I can see you're worried about me, but-"

"Damn-A-straight I'm worried about you." He pulled her close. "I think about you all the time."

"Really?" Because she couldn't handle the heat, the concern, the devastating affection in his gaze, she turned her back to him and crossed her arms over her chest. "Because you didn't come over last night. Or the night before." Or the night before, but who was counting?

"Faith-"

"Forget it." She covered her eyes with her fingers. "I didn't mean to say that, didn't mean to sound like a nagging wife. We talked about this, it's a casual sex thing, nothing else-" She gasped when he whipped her around.

She expected anger, or more frustration, not the sadness. "I stayed away from you," he said, "because yes, we agreed this was a casual thing, a weekend thing, an over-in-a-few months thing, and while I said it, agreed to it, I found myself…" He grimaced. "Look, just know that you're not the only one having trouble with this, okay? But it's all I have to offer you for now." His eyes were devastatingly regretful.

She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. "I knew that up front."

"I don't do hard-core relationships, I-"

"I understand, Luke."

"I give everything to my work, which leaves nothing else-"

"I said I understand," she repeated softly.

He stared at her, then winced and closed his eyes. "But how can you, when I don't?"

"I just do. We're really very much the same. I give everything to my work, too, and often." She lifted a shoulder. "There's nothing left. In the long run, you and I would burn out, I know that much. We wouldn't give enough to each other, we couldn't give it, that's just a fact."

Eyes solemn, mouth grim, he reached out and stroked her jaw. "Only a few weeks left," he whispered.

Unable to talk, she turned her cheek into his palm and sighed. "So maybe we should make the most of it."

"Yeah." His mouth came down on hers, and because her eyes were still closed, it made her dizzy, a good dizzy this time, so she flung her arms around his neck and let it take her.

"Tonight?" she gasped when they came up for air.

His hair was wild from her fingers, his eyes, hot, hot, hot. "Tonight." Lowering his mouth, he feasted on her throat, her shoulder.

At a knock on her office door, they breathlessly broke apart.

"Faith?" called Shelby. "Is Dr. Walker in there with you? We could use him in room three."

Faith looked at Luke. "He's coming."

"Am I?" he murmured with a wicked smile.

"You will tonight," she murmured back, soaking up his low laugh.

Oh, yes, he was going to break her heart, and oh yes, she wanted him anyway. If this was all she could have, well, then, she wasn't going to waste a second of it.

It was a cruel joke that she couldn't seem to get sated, that she always needed more, but she'd deal with that, too, when the time came. But for now, she was going to smile.

"Tonight then," he whispered, and with one last hard kiss, he was gone.

One day the next week, Luke staggered into the hospital, his body still humming from the night he'd spent with Faith. He'd just had the hottest, steamiest shower of his life, and it had nothing at all to do with the water temperature, but the fact Faith had joined him with a naughty smile and a handful of soap.

He wondered if anyone could read what his idiotic grin meant, and attempted to swipe it off with darker, somber thoughts of work, but he couldn't.

He practically danced down the hospital hallways. Passing the nurses' station, still smiling, he waved.

Clearly still a little cautious of him, they waved back.

One week left.

Ah, there it was. A thought that managed to dim his smile. Only one week.

Briefly he considered making another stupid comment to the press about the clinic, one which would guarantee the need to spend another three months there. But since he couldn't even remember how or why he'd felt so strongly against it in the first place, and since it would only hurt Faith anyway, he wouldn't do it. Couldn't do it.

At least for the next few hours, he was blessedly busy, and didn't have time to think about anything other than what he was doing. There'd been a pileup on the 405, and an odd strain of the flu, which caused appendicitis-like symptoms, so he was completely swamped, up to his eyes in puke and broken bones.

In the midst of the chaos, one of the nurses asked him to check a patient that wasn't his.

"She asked specifically for you," the nurse said with a shrug.

When he pulled back the curtain, he was shocked to find Emma there, the woman with cancer that he'd met at Faith's clinic. She was fast asleep, which gave him a moment to read the chart. She'd passed out in the grocery store.

"Emma?" Gently, he stroked her far-too-thin arm until her groggy eyes fluttered open. "Hey. What happened?"

She sighed. "I think it was just the pain."

"Have you been going to the acupressure appointments?"

"And massage therapy as well." Her eyes filled as she shook her head. "It's not enough. Faith told me to talk to you, that you'd get something stronger for the pain, but I thought I had it handled. Then the grocery store incident." She managed a smile but it was watery. "I guess the truth is, I'm getting scared."

This was the part he hated, not having all the answers, doing the best possible job and having it not be enough.

"Faith believes in you," she said. "So do I."

He looked into Emma's solemn eyes and inexplicably felt like crying. "We'll take care of you."

She sighed, even smiled, and trusting him, laid back and closed her eyes.

If only he trusted himself half as much.

Yeah, Faith believed in him. Enough to trust him with one of her patients. It was a stunning revelation, and a powerful one.

Soon, in one week, he'd go back to his life and Faith to hers. So simple in theory, but suddenly he didn't know how he could have ever believed it.

There was nothing simple about never seeing her again, never laughing with her, holding her, being with her. Nothing.

Later, Luke sat on a large rock on the beach outside his house and watched the waves hit. He'd conferred with Emma's specialist, and had learned what Faith had already told him weeks earlier-there was nothing to be done for her other than to make her comfortable.

He'd done that, while silently ranting at the fates that gave them such a vicious, demoralizing disease he couldn't conquer.

Luke liked to conquer his world, damn it, and hated it when something prevented him from doing so. And though they hadn't lost Emma yet, he felt the despair the same as if they had.

"What are you doing out here moping when I made you a Mexican casserole that tastes better than heaven?"

He looked up at Carmen as she lowered herself to the beach next to him. "Thanks, but I'm not really hungry."