Re: Guest Room Hallway, Fourth Floor
The fact that she hadn't thought he would mind just made everything all the more painful. He winced, grateful it was hidden by the lack of light, and the guilt he tried so very hard to keep away crept back in like an old friend. Luke usually didn't give much thought to the boy he'd once been, preferring to believe that part of him was dead and gone, but now he felt sorry for his younger self. If only he could have been stronger, maybe a different sort of man would have stood before her now. "Well, I did," he said, though that had been made very clear by now. She'd taken something with her when she left, but she hadn't understood that then, and maybe she wouldn't be able to understand it now either. "I never knew you felt that way when we were together. Not to the point where you'd leave and think I wouldn't care." Oh, but she said it wasn't his fault. That made everything so much better, didn't it?
He realized there was absolutely no point in asking what, exactly, she didn't know how to make okay. Whatever her true reasons were, she wasn't going to tell him, and that stung. Luke couldn't hate her, but he thought he was at least owed a proper explanation, and the fact that she refused to give him one was something he found very difficult to understand. Maybe he'd be able to forgive her for leaving one day, but to not even tell him why... he couldn't reconcile himself with that. He could try to find out on his own, but he wouldn't even know where to begin. "Staying away didn't exactly make anything okay either," he said, unable to stop himself. That wasn't sarcasm, nor was it particularly bitter; it was just simple fact-- for him, at least.
Had his expression been visible, she would have seen genuine surprise written on his features. Luke hadn't expected her to answer, admittedly, and he tucked away the knowledge that she'd been in Florida to collect cobwebs in the back of his mind. There wasn't much he could do with that information. Here, unlike in New York, his resources and contacts were limited. Try as he might, he couldn't help making assumptions about her well paying job-- though, in his defense, it was hard not to. This was Las Vegas, and there were certain kinds of jobs that paid well enough to outfit her like that. He told himself he didn't care, because he couldn't care, not now, and he'd lost any right to be angry about her career choice when she left him. "Oh," he managed, sorely tempted to toss in a good for you but refraining at the last moment. He didn't want to answer her question; that was obvious enough, even in the dark. There was no well-paying job to act as the light at the end of his tunnel. Once he'd thought of fabricating an entire life, one where he was happy and had a girlfriend (or fiancee, possibly) just to make her feel the way he did, but he no longer desired to inflict that sort of pain. He could play at being cruel, but at his core he simply wasn't. "I got tired of trying to please everyone," he said grudgingly. 'Everyone' was primarily one person, but he suspected she'd manage to figure that out. "That's what happened."