LUKE: Complete Series by Cassia Leo Page B

wasn’t it,” I continued. “After he told me he wanted to drop out, he dropped an even bigger bomb. He wanted to join the Marines.”
    I stuffed my hands between my thighs as they began to shake. Luke rubbed my back as I took a few breaths and tried to swallow the long-buried emotions that now threatened to choke me.
    “I was in awe of him. Here he was, one year into an engineering degree at one of the best universities in the country and he was willing to drop all of that to do something that felt right to him. I admired his courage. So I did what I thought was the right thing to do and I told him to go for it. I… I encouraged him to enlist.”
    I buried my face in my hands as the tears began to blur my vision.
    “Hey, you don’t have to talk about it anymore.” Luke’s voice was soothing as he rubbed my shoulders. “I’m sorry I made you talk about it.”
    I wiped my tears before I sat up and looked him in the eye. “I need to talk about this.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I nodded and he handed me his glass of bourbon again. I downed the rest in one swig and continued. “The worst part was….” I took another deep breath. “The worst part was right before it happened…. I hadn’t seen him that happy in years. When he came out of the mental health office he looked fucking ecstatic. I didn’t find out until later that he had actually requested the psychological evaluation. It was his only cry for help and it went unheard. I thought when he walked out of that office with a smile on his face it was because he wanted to serve another tour. How stupid is that?”
    Luke grabbed my hand and looked me in the eye. “It’s not stupid. It’s what anyone would have thought.”
    “Yeah, well, I should have known something was up ‘cause then he asked me to bring the car around while he stood in front of the hospital and smoked a cigarette. He only smoked when he was drunk.”
    My entire body trembled as a loud voice inside my head told me to stop before it was too late, but I couldn’t stop. The chains were breaking on these memories and everything was rushing to the surface, crisp and clear and unbearably real.
    “As soon as I walked away to get my car, he made his way to the back of the hospital and climbed a fire escape to the roof. I was the first one to find him because I was the first to notice he wasn’t in front of the hospital where he was supposed to be. When I found… when I found him he was still alive. He fell ten stories and survived long enough to tell me he was sorry.”
    I wiped at the tears on my face, trying to catch them before they fell, but they were coming too fast. Luke peeled off his coat and held it in front of my face. Something about him offering his thousand-dollar coat for me to use as a hanky made me smile—until he spoke.
    “Brina, I have a confession to make.” He tucked the coat behind him and took my hand in his. “It’s something that’s been eating away at me for a while and I’ve wanted to tell you ever since you walked into my office last week. I was hoping you’d bring it up somehow, but it looks like I’m the one who’s going to have to do it.”
    My heart pounded wildly against my chest. This was it. He was finally going to confront me about working for NeoSys—right after I poured my heart out to him. I took a deep breath that rattled in my chest as I prepared for his words.
    “I paid the excess costs on your brother’s funeral.”
    I blinked a few times as I gathered myself. “What?”
    “I’ve been doing it anonymously for the families of fallen servicemen in Seattle for a while. Janice used to take care of all the details. I didn’t know when I sent the donation to your family that they would use it to hold the services before you got back from San Francisco. If I had known you would miss the funeral, I would have put some kind of contingency on the donation or something. I didn’t know they would go ahead without you. I’m so sorry.”
    I heaved a