Chapter Text
The moment of grace between the time Luke crawls back to consciousness and when he remembers can be as long as four or five seconds. The wooden beams that arch high above his too-big bed stand sentry as Luke blinks and focuses, and in these moments, there is possibility.
Then reality comes again, and he knows why he’s not waking at the farm, stirred by roosters or the sound of laughter and a chorus of voices. Or at his parents’ house, Ethan jumping on his bed with boundless energy, begging him to get up and play.
Other mornings — or afternoons, more often than not — he knows before he opens his eyes, the long fingers of grief in his chest clenching into a fist as the vestiges of dreams fade.
They say people learn and grow from tragedy. Become stronger.
What Reid’s death teaches Luke is how to perform. He smiles. He laughs at appropriate moments. He feigns interest in a variety of subjects. He knows his audience, and the show they want to see.
He pretends only Reid’s heart was taken.
*
The world is white.
Snow drifts over the veranda, which wraps around two sides of the house. The real estate agent, a plump, middle-aged redhead named Betty, had waxed poetic about the view of the lake as she’d driven Luke out to see the property in November. Betty exclaimed several times that the water is only “steps” from the house.
Luke hasn’t ventured down to the dock, but he estimates the number of steps to be about seventy. The lake is an unbroken sheet of snow, several feet deep over the ice below. From where Luke stands by the wall of glass that forms the lake side of the house, he can’t even see animal tracks.
There is certainly no evidence of humans. The houses on Lake Simon are almost all empty now in the depths of January. During the holidays, Luke had spotted a light across the water, but for weeks now there has been only darkness. The glow of the waxing moon on the fresh snow exposes the barren branches of the forest surrounding the lake, although the evergreens remain impenetrable.
As Luke finishes the last of the vodka in his glass, his cell phone rings from the bedside table. With effort, he makes it over before the call goes to voicemail, and he croaks out a greeting.
“Hi, sweetheart. Are you feeling okay? It sounds like you have a cold.”
Luke clears his throat. He hasn’t spoken in days. “Hi, Mom. No, I’m fine. Sorry, my mouth was full.”
“I’ve been trying to get through for hours. You need to get a landline. There’s so much snow! We’re worried about you all alone out there. Are you sure you have enough food?”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m fine. Plenty of food.” It’s the truth. Grandma Emma had stocked the cupboards and freezer and Luke would have enough food to last all winter, even if he was eating regularly.
“How’s the writing going?”
“Good.” Luke’s laptop sits on a carved mahogany desk in the study downstairs, blanketed by a layer of dust. “It’s really coming along. Everything’s good.”
Lily sighs. “Honey, you just don’t seem yourself. We know how much you miss him, but…”
“Mom, I’ve wanted to write a book since I was a kid. The foundation’s doing great and they don’t need me in the office. This is the perfect time to write. You said so yourself.”
“I know. As long as you’re okay out there.”
“I am.” He squeezes out a chuckle. “You worry too much, Mom.”
“That’s my job, Luke. Oh, before I forget, Bob said he’s been trying to reach you. Something about the new wing. He’s been very involved in it all. I think it’s driving Kim a little crazy,” she laughs.
“Mom? Are you still there?”
Before she can reply, he snaps the phone shut. The reception at the lake is spotty, a convenience when Luke wants to end a conversation, which is often. He sits on his bed and places the phone back on the side table before carefully opening the drawer. Inside, the carved chess piece rests in the center, Reid’s stethoscope looping around it.
We know how much you miss him.
Feet bare on the cold wooden floor, he refills his glass and returns to the window.
*
Luke rarely sets an alarm, and today he slouches out of bed after three p.m. The winter sun is already in the west, although it’s barely visible through a barricade of grey bearing down. He leans against the window and listens to the wind whistling. His room is huge, taking up half of the top floor. The interior decorator had chosen the king-sized bed, side table and a matching chest of drawers. She’d wanted to cover the floor with rugs and buy more things to fill the space, but Luke likes the echoes.
In the adjoining bathroom, his hands shake as he opens the cap on the first bottle. This routine is years old and he could do it in his sleep. Once the four sets of pills are lined up on the counter, Luke reaches for the glass he keeps by the sink.
It’s pale blue and has a faded and worn pattern circling its middle that once depicted yellow fish. For some reason — he doesn’t know why — it was his favourite glass to use at the farm. It had long ago been part of a set, but only one remained, and everyone knew it was Luke’s.
After the transplant, Emma brought it to him in the hospital, wrapped in tissue. Luke has used it every day since. But today, it slips from his grasp, cracking against the porcelain. It rolls to a stop in the bottom of the sink, a diagonal fissure marring it, tiny chips missing from the rim.
His medicine waits.
He watches as his hand reaches for the first two pills. Luke holds them between his fingers as he has countless times before. But today, he takes a step and extends his arm over the toilet. The capsules drop in with a tiny splash. Barely a ripple. The others follow, and then with a simple movement, they disappear in a rush of water.
Using care not to break it completely, Luke lifts the glass from the sink and puts it back in its place.
*
The new ritual is the same every day. Line up the pills in their order on the counter, and then flush them away.
One afternoon, Luke’s barely out of the bathroom when he hears the knocking from downstairs. He fumbles out of his sweatpants and t-shirt into jeans and a sweater, and runs a comb through his greasy hair. He tries to call out that he’s coming, but his throat is too dry.
His mother's purse is open, and she's digging out the set of keys they’d insisted on having when Luke opens the door. His parents regard him with matching expressions of concern that are almost comical. “You haven’t answered your phone in three days!” Lily exclaims as she folds Luke into her embrace, warm amid the blast of frigid air. Luke breathes her in, allowing himself the luxury.
“You had us worried, kiddo.” Holden claps Luke on the shoulder and shuts the door behind them. Snow has blown inside from the drifts on the veranda, and there will be puddles on the wood later. Luke hasn’t gone outside in weeks.
“Luke?” Lily peers at him closely.
Luke’s lips curve up into the smile that will reassure her. “Mom, I told you reception out there isn’t the best. I’m fine.”
“Which is why you need a landline.”
“I know, I’m sorry. But the phone company said something’s wrong with the line and there’s too much snow right now. They’ll have to wait ’till spring to fix it.”
Luke has no intention of restoring service to the phone line, which he assumes is in working order. The designer had placed an antique phone on a table near the fireplace in the living room. It was beautiful — the black handle looked carved from ebony and the white dial was immaculate. Luke had carefully wrapped its cord around it and placed it in a closet.
“Have you had lunch? You look so thin.” Lily doesn’t wait for a reply and disappears towards the large kitchen after yanking off her boots and hanging her coat on one of the hooks along the wall. Holden smiles at Luke, shaking his head fondly as Lily takes over.
Holden sets about starting a fire. The stack of wood he’d brought in on his last visit after Christmas waits in a neat pile in the box by the fireplace, untouched. If he realizes that no one else uses the fireplace, he doesn’t mention it.
Luke rests in one of the wing chairs that flank the stone hearth, watching his father twist a faded piece of newspaper to light the fire. Luke hasn’t had a drink yet today, and he folds his hands together in his lap to hide the tremors.
For the first month or so after the accident, he’d thrown himself into the hospital and plans for the new wing. It felt good to be doing something, and he focused his energy and rage and passion. Reid would not be forgotten. Luke was determined.
He had a mission.
Then the plans were made, and construction began. His calendar was no longer filled with meetings and purpose. He learned that people, despite their best intentions, tire of grief that isn’t theirs. Luke told himself they were right — it was time to move on. Yet the pain only grew stronger, the hollowness extending ever deeper, taking over, powering its way into every cell.
As Holden concentrates on his task, Luke mutters an excuse and quickly escapes upstairs to have a few sips. He keeps his bottles in a neat line at the very back of his walk-in closet, behind rows of sneakers and dress shoes and even a pair of cowboy boots Holden bought him years ago.
As he reaches past the worn leather, a memory surges to life, of a place filled with boots and hats and sawdust on the floor. A place with a mechanical bull. With laughter, and Reid’s self-satisfied smile. It sears, and Luke can’t unscrew the bottle and gulp fast enough.
“Son?” Holden calls up the stairs.
Luke tries to keep his parents on the main floor when they visit, and he hurries down to take his seat again. “Sorry, had a thought about a scene and I needed to jot it down. I’ve been lost in my writing lately.”
He really had planned to write. The foundation needs his money, not his presence, and Luke has left it in capable hands. Grimaldi Shipping carries on its business as ever, and he doesn’t care to know anything about it. His profits go directly into the endowment his grandmother founded in Reid’s memory. So Luke had decided his new mission would be a book. He bought the house with one of his millions, and stared at a blank screen.
Holden regards him with his usual stoicism as the blaze sparks to life. “Glad to hear the book’s coming along. We know how hard all of this has been for you.”
But you need to get over it.
You didn’t really know him that well; you were only together a few months.
It’s time to go on with your life.
Reid would want you to be happy.
He hears everything Holden leaves unspoken. Noah’s voice rings loudly in Luke's mind in these moments, but few others.
...
Luke smiles on cue and listens to Noah’s tales of adventure in Los Angeles. There is something strangely comforting about it, hearing Noah talk all about himself. Luke remembers the previous Christmas at the farm, and how much Noah hated him. A year later, everything — and nothing — has changed.
He walks to the barn to breathe, and escape carol singing or being force fed another piece of the Yule log. Noah follows.
“I heard you bought a house out in the middle of nowhere.”
Luke picks up a strand of hay and wraps it around his index finger, cutting off the circulation. “I’m writing again. It’s nice and quiet out there.” He unravels the hay and starts anew, watching the tip of his finger turn bright red.
“Maybe I can visit. I’ll show you the dailies for my movie. It looks amazing!”
“Sure. Next time, when I’m not working on the book.” Luke plucks another piece of hay from a bale and starts on his next finger.
“I’m not flying back for a few days. I could come to—”
“Next time.”
Noah grasps Luke’s hands, the hay trapped between their skin, scratchy and rough. “Come with me, Luke. I know I said I wouldn’t ask, but I’ve been waiting and waiting. You can write in LA. You’ll love it. The sun, the beach. We can start a new life together. Like we always planned.”
Luke lets Noah hold his hands, because it seems too cruel not to, just as he allowed their last kiss. Regret for that still lingers on his lips. “Thank you, but I can’t.”
“You can! Luke, I love you, and I know you still love me. We can make it work. We were always going to find our way back to each other. Don’t you see that?”
Luke draws away, but Noah’s grip tightens.
“It was terrible, what happened. And I understand that you…loved him. But he’s gone, Luke. You’re still here, and so am I. Reid would want you to be happy.”
Tears spill over Luke’s cheeks. “I know he would. But you don’t make me happy, Noah. I don’t think you ever really did.”
He’s free then, hands left dangling. Noah tightens his jaw, his face hardening into a mask that long ago would have broken Luke’s heart. “Fine. Wallow in your misery over a man who was never worth it. I’m done waiting. You hear me? I’m done.”
...
Holden’s voice slices through the memory. “Everything okay?”
Luke knew true happiness for fleeting moments in a hospital parking lot, the sun warm on his skin, Reid’s lips against his. There. I said it.
“Yeah, Dad. Fine.” He eats the soup and crackers his mother brings out on a tray. He says the right things and asks about his siblings and performs so well that after a while, his parents are clearly reassured. As Lily tells him about Natalie’s disaster of a piano recital, Luke laughs, and thinks of the bottles upstairs, waiting faithfully.
*
Even in dreams, Reid is out of his grasp. He’s omnipresent, but never in focus; never close enough to touch. In nightmares, Reid is trapped and calling for him, but Luke can’t make his legs work. Can’t reach him, and he’s overcome with a terrible frustration and anguish that clenches his teeth. Other times, Luke wakes up hard with longing, but the desire fades soon enough.
He’d masturbated once, let himself get lost in the fantasy of Reid kissing him, hands and mouth everywhere. Reid inside him, filling him. Making him whole again. His orgasm was almost violent, it was so powerful. But as the ecstasy ebbed, sorrow returned, grown stronger yet. He’d been utterly paralyzed by it, sticky and cold and alone. He hasn’t touched himself since.
The regret is overwhelming. The missed opportunities that will never come again. The days pass in a white blur of vodka burning his throat and pills swirling into watery oblivion. From his windows, he stares at the blank canvas of pristine snow. Sometimes he tries to read, but more often than not he falls asleep.
In the weeks after it happened, everyone told him that Reid lives on in Chris Hughes. Luke had agreed, desperately clinging to the lie with all his strength, needing Chris to prove himself worthy of Reid’s gift. But the illusion could only last so long before being exposed.
Reid doesn’t live on in Chris Hughes.
Reid is gone. His heart beats in the chest of the foolish, selfish man who sealed his fate, but Reid does not dwell there.
Because Katie wouldn’t take no for an answer, Luke went to Tom and Margo’s New Year’s Eve party at Katie’s old place. He made small talk and ate hors d'oeuvres and pretended he wasn’t thinking about the holidays he and Reid never had the chance to spend together.
Reid was everywhere between those four walls. Making an impossibly large sandwich in the kitchen. Feet up on the coffee table, remote in hand. Kissing Luke, holding him close, telling him it’s okay, they can wait.
...
When he can’t take one more conversation about nothing that will ever matter, Luke flees to Reid’s old bedroom, now nothing more than an empty guest room. He sits on the bed in the dark, eyes closed, imagining all the things he and Reid never did. All the moments he wasted. He wishes he could remember what it was he’d been so afraid of.
“How are you?”
Luke hates Chris bitterly in that moment, hovering in the doorway, living and breathing, owning a piece of Reid when Luke is left with nothing. Luke opens his eyes. “How do you think?”
“Luke, I…”
“You never would have needed a new heart if you hadn’t ignored your symptoms for so long.” Luke is surprisingly calm as he finally gives voice to the truth. “Everyone told you it’s not your fault, but you know it is. You know the world lost one of the greatest neurosurgeons in history, and that countless people will die because of it. You know you’ll never be the doctor he was. The visionary. The human being. And you know that the man I loved more than I ever thought possible is gone forever. Because of you.”
Chris’s eyes glisten in the light from the hallway. “Luke, it wasn’t my fault. I’m so sorry. You have to know that.”
“It will never bring him back. It will never change what you’ve done, or who you are. And we both have to live with that.”
He leaves Chris in his wake. In the living room, couples gather by the TV, waiting for the ball to drop. No one notices as Luke takes a bottle from the bar. He slips out the front door as the countdown begins.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven…
...
He didn’t look back.
*
More snow falls, and Luke’s car is only a white-covered mound now. He should call someone to plow his private lane, which winds through the forest for half a mile before reaching the country road. Instead, he has another drink and goes to bed.
Once he started drinking again, Luke wondered why he resisted for so long. All the reasons he’d convinced himself were so vital are meaningless now. It’s a relief to stop fighting.
When he drags himself awake, it’s past noon. He takes a swig from the bottle on the floor and makes his way to the bathroom. Hands shaking, he tries to line up the pills, but they slither from his grasp, two disappearing onto the tile.
By the time he’s able to flush them all, Luke needs another drink. He makes it back to bed and holds the bottle to his chest as he leans against the padded headboard. A soft beep draws his attention to the side table where his phone rests, a message waiting.
His parents will arrive at his door before long if he doesn’t return their call, so he reaches for the phone and flips it open. The time of the message makes him pause.
3:14 a.m.
A memory of distant ringing emerges through the haze, and worry unfurls in Luke’s empty stomach. The number is marked private, and Luke can’t think of anyone he knows who’s unlisted. As his heart thumps, he tries to punch in his code, finally getting it after four attempts. All he can think is that there was an accident, and that he slept through it. That it might be too late. That there might be more to lose after all.
The automated voice reports in. “You have one new message.”
Beep
“Luke, please. Find me.”
Reid’s impossible voice ricochets through Luke’s body like gunfire, and he crashes to the floor, phone skidding across the hardwood. On his hands and knees, he vomits, liquor splashing as his stomach heaves.
Find me.