Page 24 of Decked By The Grumpy Golem
The question hangs between us, and I see her jaw tighten slightly.
"There was. Daniel. We dated for almost a year, but…" She shrugs, trying to appear casual but falling short. "It didn't work out."
Relief floods through me so intense it's almost painful. It’s selfish of me. I have no right to care. But the thought of her with someone else, building a life with another man, has been eating at me for years.
"What about you?" she asks, turning the question back on me. "Anyone special in your life?"
I almost laugh at the absurdity of it. How do I explain that I’ve loved no one but her since we were both kids? That from the moment I recognized her as mine, the idea of being with anyone else became not just impossible but physically repulsive?
"No," I say simply. "There's no one."
She nods, looking unsurprised, and takes another sip of her whiskey. The silence that falls between us isn't uncomfortable exactly, but it's heavy.
"The writing," I venture. "Is it still bringing you joy?"
Her face clouds over, and she sets her glass down on the coffee.
"It used to," she says with an expression close to longing, her voice tight. "I used to get in my own world. I used to be able to feel my characters like old friends, whispering to me. Then I made money, obligations piled up. I lost that, little by little, so slowly I didn’t even notice at first. Then one day, my brain was just blank."
The pain in her voice makes my chest ache. I remember how she used to light up when she talked about her stories, how she'd pace around my bedroom reading me passages while I did homework, her whole body animated with excitement.
"You'll find it again," I say with quiet certainty. "The passion, the stories. It's still there, just buried under everything else."
She looks at me then, really looks at me, and I see vulnerability in her dark eyes that makes me want to cross the space between us and pull her into my arms.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I know you," I say simply. "I've always known you. The stories are part of who you are, Lucia. They always have been."
A silence falls between us, heavy with history and present tension. The fire pops and crackles, sending sparks up the chimney, and outside the wind howls like something wild and desperate. Lucia's eyes meet mine across the space, firelight flickering over her face, casting shadows that make her look both vulnerable and impossibly beautiful.
“I’m writing a new book.” Lucia’s wide, dark eyes crinkle at the corners as a slow smile lifts her lips. “Started it three days ago.”
Her tone is low, like she’s confessing something secret. Like she’s afraid if she speaks any louder, it will disappear into thin air. As I look into her soft, beautiful face, I feel the same pull I felt all those years ago—magnetic, inevitable, dangerous. My chest aches with want and regret and the terrible knowledge that she's here now, within reach, and I still don't know if I have the right to reach for her.
Well, I do know. I have no right to her. No right to disrupt her life with my feelings, my secrets.
“I’m glad,” I tell her sincerely. “I never doubted you.”
“Well, that makes one of us.” She chuckles.
Her lips part slightly, and I see her pulse jumping in the hollow of her throat. The air between us feels charged, electric, like the moment before lightning strikes. Every instinct I have screams at me to close the distance, to touch her, to say the words that have been burning in my throat for a decade.
But I can't. Or can I? Ernesto’s words flutter in my brain like moths and everything I always thought I knew seems fickle and unimportant.
Coward.
I grip my whiskey glass tighter, knuckles white against the crystal, fighting every instinct that tells me to move. I know with golem certainty that if I touch her now, if I kiss her again, if I say what's clawing its way up from my chest, everything will change.
The question is whether I'm finally brave enough to let it.
Then she pulls the rug right from under me.
"Do you regret it?" she asks quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. "What happened between us? Do you ever think about that night?"
The question hangs in the air between us, and I watch as something raw and vulnerable flickers across her face. For a moment, I see the girl I used to know underneath all that polished strong woman persona she wears.
“Every day,” I say, the words leaving before I can think any better. “Not a day has passed since that morning that I don’t think about you.”
