Page 57 of My Favorite Mistake

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Liza stood at the curb,scrolling through her phone for a cab company, biting her bottom lip so hard she almost drew blood to avoid crying.

“L.,” Brennan’s voice called to her. She heard his fancy Oxford shoes smacking the pavement like he was jogging to her. “L., hold up.”

He stopped right next to her, but she kept her face turned way down and kept looking at her phone. “Hey.”

“Are you okay?”

She hazarded a glance at him and managed to speak without triggering the lump in her throat. “Yeah, just getting a cab. I need to go home and get out of these shoes and this stupid skirt. I’m really just not feeling well all of a sudden.”

“I saw him grab you. Isthatthe reason you’re not feeling well?”

Liza cut her gaze toward him again. He looked angry. Brennan had never looked anything but pleasant and sympathetic. But he was angry right now. He looked like he wanted to hurt someone—and it was probably Connor.

Now that she thought about it, she really wasn’tfeeling very well all of a sudden, but it had way more to do with Connor lashing out at her than whatever illness may or may not be sneaking up on her. Liza was a crybaby, and she knew it. So did Brennan; he’d seen her cry more times than she cared for or could even count at this point. And so, she didn’t even bother trying to stop it.

But this time it wasn’t so much the overwhelming sadness, but pureangerthat fueled her tears.

A guttural growl surfaced from her throat and catapulted a sob from the depths of her belly. “I was beingkindto him! I was trying to help him when it was so obviousthat his dad hurt him! He hatesme, and I never did anythingto him, and I am so fuckingangry!”

The sobs just kept coming like a battery of tidal waves, dizzying her mind and shredding her throat and racking her body with soreness and stress she felt deep in her muscles and bones.

“I know, honey,” Brennan said, but Liza could barely even hear him. His words were just a low rumble in his chest because she was now wrapped in his arms. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d pulled her into a hug. “Don’t get a cab. I’ll drive you. But I’m going to feed you first.”

13

Irish Channel, New Orleans

After sitting in the booth for thirty minutes, Liza had consumed all of three spoonfulls of the chicken soup that sat on the table in front of her. Brennan patiently sat across from her, sipping his second refill of black coffee. Her head was fuzzy, and she still couldn’t tell if that was from sobbing for half the drive over to the small café near her house, or if she was actually coming down with something.

“Really wish I were better at this,” Brennan said, absently turning the coffee cup back and forth by its handle.

Liza swirled a large slow circle through the soup with her spoon. “Better at what?”

“Relationship advice.” He lightly drummed the side of the cup with his fingertips. “I’ve only had one girlfriend, so I’m kind of at a loss for how to help right now.”

“You went out of your way to try to make me feel better. You always do. That’s helpful.” She gave him a small smile before spooning a small carrot slice into her mouth. “You’ve really only hadonegirlfriend?”

“Yep. Back in high school, and it ended in tragedy.”

Her eyes widened. “What happened?”

Brennan looked at her with nostalgia that warmed the espresso hue of his eyes. “I loved a girl.Jooosephine,” he said wistfully while he drew out her name. “I fell in love with her when I was thirteen. I loved her all the way through the end of high school. She was my firsteverything, and I was going to love her for the rest of my life. I loved her like I couldn’t even comprehend. But when I was approaching the end of my senior year, my father had expectations of me to do something, and I chose to placate those expectations with a stint in the Marine Corps. And Josephine didn’t love that. And then she made it clear all this love we’d been living in for all those years was pretty one-sided.”

He paused to sip his coffee, briefly cutting his eyes downward. Looking back up at Liza, he hitched one shoulder. “I wanted to marry her, have a bunch of babies, live happily ever after, love her and dote on her until death do we part, all that stuff…but the idea of me going into the Marines…you know leaving for basic training and then leaving for wherever I had to go while I was enlisted…she just had no use for it. So, she drop-kicked me straight to the curb and didn’t look back.”

Liza frowned, poking at a small piece of chicken with her spoon. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry, B.”

“Well.” He shrugged again. “It’s truthfully not as tragicas some things I’ve witnessed and been privy to, but it broke me, and it changed me. So since then, I only do one-night stands. A lot of them. On purpose. I have no use for relationships like that anymore. Because that kind of heartbreak damn near killed me.”

Liza knitted her brow. “I think that’s extremely sad. All of it’s really sad, but the saddest part is how badly it obviously burned you.” She smiled. “You’ve made it very clear that you’d be the world’s greatest boyfriend.”

He returned her smile. “You think so?”

“Uh.” She raised her eyebrows and pointed the spoon at her soup. “Yeah, I do. If this is the way you treat someone who’sjustyour friend, I can only imagine what you’d do for a girlfriend.” She pointed the spoon at him. “You’re basically the perfect man, B. I think you should try to get over your fear that it’ll happen again and find someone. You’d make someone very happy. And you’d be happy, too. You deserve to be happy.” She set down the spoon, flattened her hands on the table, and leaned forward. “You should let me help you find a great girl.”

Brennan smiled and then picked up her hand off the table to kiss the back of it. “No.”

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