Stunt Day arrived.
Noah continued to scan the documents emailed to his smart phone. Damian Grimaldi had quite a list of creditors.
Lifting his eyes from the bright screen for a moment, all Noah could see was Luke, locked out of his house; trying desperately to steer people away; hiding the truth of his situation, only admitting the debts when forced...
"Noah, man, you're cutting it close," Blake's voice broke through his thoughts.
Noah dumped the phone and dragged up the zipper on his fire-retardant suit, pulled on the face mask and reached for his helmet.
The sound of the crowd, the smell of gasoline fumes, the whir of his car being readied was usually enough to get his adrenaline going. But this afternoon he didn't need any help with that.
His heart was pounding. He was sweating inside the hot suit. But he knew how to switch off and do his job.
He'd performed plenty of dangerous stunts in the past - some successful, some not so much.
He usually knew the outcome before he got in the car. He studied the field, he knew how his car handled; and he applied logic and ability. Added to that was the allowable two percent of unpredictability that lay ahead.
It was that two percent that weighed heavily on his mind; and it had nothing to do with the stunt.
As he performed a perfect double flip of the car, he took little pleasure in the success despite hearing the thunderous roar of approval from the crowd of press and onlookers. Slinging himself out of the car, he embraced his team mates in turn. He shook hands with a couple of guys from the pit crew and mounted the podium.
He was stepping down amidst champagne sprays and beautiful women, when he spotted Luke. He was standing with Blake. He was wearing blue jeans and a simple green shirt; his hair a halo around his perfect face. But, most tellingly, a lanyard dangled around his neck.
Noah focused on the lanyard, knowing then that this wasn't some fantasy apparition. Luke was real. Heart thumping, Noah moved away from the podium but the crowd had already swallowed Luke up.
He shouldered his way through and grabbed one of the security guards forming a shield around him. "There'll be a blue convertible in the VIP Car Park. Can you hold on to it until I get there?"
"Sure thing."
"The guy who owns it will kick up a fuss. Make sure he's treated with respect."
"Absolutely. Great show, man."
"Thanks."
Please let him be there.
If Luke wasn't, Noah would grab a car and race every mile back to LA to find him.
Noah hadn't wanted to do the stunt at all. But he had a job to do. A lot of people were relying on him - as always. You couldn't escape responsibility for others. Luke had never tried. His sense of compassionate humanity humbled Noah.
Luke had hidden so much behind those charming mannerisms. What Noah had read as light-heartedness and frivolity were Luke's coping mechanisms. Noah had got it all wrong.
Back in Mauritius, when he confronted Luke about hiding things, Luke had accused Noah of not knowing him at all, of not trying to know him.
Luke had been right.
Noah hadn't wanted to look at what was shouting in his face. He'd been so damned determined to keep to his single-minded plan that he'd been willing to sacrifice this extraordinary chance he'd been given to love and be loved. His mind had remained focused on his own selfish need to prove himself - to prove his ex-lover and old man wrong.
He was the weak product of a sniveling kid who had reached instinctively for love and been denied it. He wasn't a man blessed with luck either. He'd learned to deride his own needs, and when Luke came along, he hadn't had a clue how to even begin loving him.
Yet he did. Luke's compassion and his humanity had torn into those barriers Noah had raised, yet still he'd gone back for more.
It had always been there when they made love, from the very first night, and he'd seen it when Luke stood naked on the beach - the acceptance in Luke's body of who he was.
Luke's acceptance of Noah - faults and all.
He closed his eyes, took a deep, sustaining breath, and knew his life had just taken a sudden irrevocable turn. For the better.
...
To Noah's surprise, Luke was there, just sitting on the hood of his car. He wasn't kicking or scratching or punching anyone out. He was just casually chatting with three security guys, who stood around looking entranced by whatever tale Luke spun.
They faded away with polite nods as Noah approached. Luke leaned back, angling his body at Noah. The old playful pose dragged Noah back to the first time he'd met Luke, when Luke had put on that little show and Noah had lost his head over the man.
"I thought I dreamed you up," Noah said, his voice suddenly rather hoarse.
"Are you in the habit of doing that?"
"Lately? Yeah. All the time."
Luke slid off the car and stood before Noah, suddenly looking less sure of himself, his face solemn.
"I'm not Brendon," Luke declared. "I'm not your father either." Noah went still. "And I'm grateful for the time with the house, but I'm not your rescue mission, Noah Mayer."
Noah bowed his head. "I know that, Luke," he said in a thickened voice. "I saw you at the equestrian center. The day we got back from the island, I followed you."
"You were there... at the center? I didn't see you."
"You were training that young girl, the one with the artificial arm and leg. I had no idea." Noah stepped toward Luke, aching to take him in his arms. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Luke hesitated. "I don't know. I could say it was because it didn't come up, but the truth is..." Luke's voice died away. He shook his head. "I'm not proud of it, but I wanted to hold something back from you because I sensed you were holding so much back from me."
Noah nodded slowly. "Fair enough. But you have to know when I got the big picture everything I'd told myself about my feelings for you came crashing down. I didn't want to love you, Luke, and so I told myself you could never be anything but another person I'd have to bail out."
"In the end you did," Luke said in a strangled voice.
"No." He shook his head with a soft smile. "I gave myself time."
"Correction... you gave me time."
Noah's smile grew. "Believe me Luke, you're no rescue mission. I did it for both of us."
Luke stood there for a timeless moment. "Then why couldn't you love me?" came the plea from his heart.
"God, Luke." It was wrenched from him. "I was afraid I'd love you too much."
Time stood still.
"I was a clingy kid," Noah said, nearly flat. "Dad had a stream of women in the early days, and whichever woman picked me up, she'd be my mom. But they'd always leave. Dad would drive them away with his drinking."
...
Luke didn't shift an inch, afraid if he did Noah would stop. Luke so desperately wanted to hear it all, even as his mind turned in horror from the picture Noah was painting.
"The old man used to say they left because of me." Noah shook his head at Luke's expression. "That was bull shit, I know. But when you're a kid you believe whatever your dad says."
"Noah-" Luke reached up and stroked Noah's face, unable not to touch him.
"When I went back to Sydney and saw the state Brendon was in, his ex-wife told me the same thing. 'He's this way because of you,' she charged. And in a way she was right. I succeeded. I got the career, the money, the accolades. All the attention. Brendon couldn't cope." He looked Luke in the eye. "I looked at you, Luke, and all I saw was a fragile person who'd run up debts and was living like there was no tomorrow."
"Well... that's not entirely inaccurate," Luke said softly. It was true.
"I knew you'd been through the wringer with that trial; and all the nasty publicity. I thought if I put you in the public eye it would be as if I'd turned a hunter's spotlight on you. All the stuff about your father would come out. For all those reasons, I couldn't do it to you. I thought I'd break you. Just like I broke Brendon."
Luke shook his head.
"Then I saw you at the equestrian center and I knew I'd got it wrong."
Luke waited.
"All my life people have put my success down to natural gifts, and yeah, I've got some talent. But I've worked damn hard to get where I am. When you told me about your accident I knew we were alike. I understood you'd worked hard at your sport. I assumed you'd given it up. But when I saw you'd turned your dream into something better - something outward, for other people. I recognized what I already knew. You're a special person, Luke Snyder. So I did some phoning around. Why in the hell didn't you tell me those debts were your father's legal fees?"
Luke swallowed. "I didn't tell anyone. I was shamed."
"You should be fucking proud. Your father is a lucky man. I kept telling myself you were like Brendon. I'd overwhelm you, wreck your life. But the truth is, Luke, you're strong. You're the strongest person I've ever met. Stronger than me. You overwhelm me."
Stunned by this outpouring, Luke didn't know what to say. Noah, who never said more than he had to, hadn't stopped talking. He was calling Luke special and strong and all the things Luke had wanted to be to someone but somehow never could.
But all of this praise, all of this putting him on a pedestal, frightened him. "Please don't turn me into a trophy. I'm flesh and blood - prone to mistakes, to overreacting..."
"No." Noah vigorously shook his head while taking hold of Luke. "No, I've never seen you as a trophy, Luke. I only said that because I didn't want it to be any different than what I'd known before. But it already was. From the moment we met. And that passion of yours - I never want to lose it."
"You broke our date!" Luke knew it was a small thing, but suddenly it assumed the huge dimensions it had always held inside his head and heart. Luke hadn't completely trusted Noah after that, and when Noah let him down he'd been half expecting it.
Luke needed to know why.
"Call it a last-ditch attempt to throw myself across the tracks. I knew, even then, I would love you to distraction. That night when I was coming out of the bar, and you were going in, I was on my way to see you."
He loves me to distraction?
"You were?" Luke felt a rush of warmth dispelling the last of the coldness that had been dwelling within him since their parting. "I wish you'd told me. I wish this had all been different..."
"It is different. God, Luke, I can't lose you. Nothing matters to me if you're not there to share it with me... It was never so clear to me as it was today. That stunt - I was numb. And then I saw you, and suddenly it was clear as light."
Luke's heart thrummed and started beating to a slower, truer beat.
"You were right - what you said that night in Mauritius. The stunts were never the point. I was empty and I found you, and the emptiness went away. I knew I loved you. Deep down I knew it. Every which way I tried to figure it. I kept coming back to this selfish need I had to keep you with me. I kept telling myself you wouldn't cope, but it was me that couldn't." Noah lowered his voice. "I was so afraid of building a life around you and you walking away. I was scared to risk it."
Luke laid an open hand over Noah's heart. "All I want is to love you," he said softly, sincerely. "If you'll let me. . .."
Noah caught Luke up fiercely in his arms and for a long time held on to him. Luke thought about the little boy, who had craved love; the man he became, who had avoided it and its painful associations, and the man standing before him now. Noah held so tightly to Luke, as if Luke were as vital to him as the blood running in his veins, the air he breathed.
Noah loved him for who he was, not who Noah wanted him to be.
It was a miracle.
Suddenly sobbing for breath, Luke framed Noah's face tightly with his hands. "Where you go, wherever you are, that's where I'll be. I won't leave you. I won't betray you and I'll never stop loving you."
Noah wrapped Luke in his arms and kissed him. Luke could feel him shaking slightly, feel the groundswell of feeling behind the sensual motion of his mouth.
Noah rested his temple on Luke's. "Just let me love you," he said simply, his deep voice shaking with the force of his emotion.
"Oh, yes," Luke whispered. "I can do that, too."
...
It was a beautiful sunbathed morning that following April, when Luke stepped out into the garden.
A great deal had changed over the past six months. A ridiculous amount of money had been poured into restoring the old house to its original grandeur, and the gardens once more lay in variegated neatness. The fountains sprang to life as the groom met his father at the top of the steps.
"You're sure," Holden asked him, "this is the one?"
Luke smiled. "He is, Dad. It was from the moment I set eyes on him."
Holden smiled. "I suspected as much. So it's love and I gain a very famous... and wealthy son-in-law."
Luke's laughter sang them down the steps. He paused only to pluck a spray of lavender and tuck it into Holden's lapel.
...
Noah restlessly waited with a small congregation of friends and family on the back lawn overlooking the big blue Pacific Ocean.
For the first time in months, Noah hadn't slept in their bed here at home. He'd been relegated to a suite at the nearest hotel.
This morning he'd dressed in a cutaway coat and striped tie; and had had his shoes polished while Blake ribbed him about those who stood tallest falling hardest. At precisely 10 a.m., they'd climbed into the vintage Dodge and taken off up the hill.
This was the most important day of Noah's life, and after every stumbling block he'd faced to getting Luke here, the sight of the blonde coming toward them beneath a fine veil of garden flora almost overwhelmed him.
Noah felt Blake's hand rest on his shoulder. Noah nodded and blew out a deep breath.
He reached out his hand as Luke approached and Luke took it, his fingers trembling.
The Justice of the Peace guided them through the ceremony, pronouncing them married. As he took Luke in his arms. Noah knew exactly what all the wedding fuss was about.
"Noah... Bubby, you're shaking," Luke said with a little smile just for him.
"Just wait until I get you alone," he replied.
"I can hardly wait," Luke whispered.
Noah grinned. Yeah, that's one way of putting it.
And that was when the kissing started.