Page 71 of Luck of the Draw

“Oh yeah.” He sighed, rubbing his face. “Yeah…I’m sorry for disappearing on y’all like that.” He gently set Skye’s hand back on the bed and then stood up. “I think I was just having a bad morning yesterday.” He gestured at the chair. “Here, have a seat. I’ll grab the other one.” He glanced at the doorway behind her. “Is Connor here?”

“Nope.” She grabbed the line of buttons on his Oxford shirt and used it to pull him back while he was starting walk away. “No, Connor’s not here. No, I don’t need a chair. I’m not going to stick around long because I know you need youryoutime to keep processing all of this. I’m only going to be here long enough to do one thing for you, and then I’m going to leave.”

His brow pulled low at her dramatic phrasing. He looked at Skye, who still hadn’t even moved, and went back to silently hating himself. “Okay, but I really don’t need anything.”

Liza moved past the doorway toward the opposite side of the bed. Clutching her purse under her arm, she slipped it out to open it, and she fished out a comb and some elastic hair bands. “You need this.”

He lifted his gaze in an attempt to look at his hair. “I don’t think it’s quite long enough for those.”

Liza simpered as she set her purse on an empty chair and eased her shapely hip onto the edge of the bed. Very carefully, she swept all of Skye’s long, thick mass of red waves and fat, loose curls, freeing it from the tubes and draping it down her shoulder. She picked up the comb and a section of Skye’s hair and began to gently, carefully work through the tangles.

“I used to go to church, B.,” Liza said after few minutes of combing. “Looongtime ago.”

Brennan sat back down in the chair, shifting it so he could have a better view of Liza working on Skye’s hair. The sight of it made him feel better on some level. “Did you? My parents used to drag me to mass.” He rested his chin on his fist. “It didn’t really take.”

“It took for me for a little while.” The section Liza was working on was now free of tangles, and she swept the comb from root to tip in long, smooth strokes before moving to the next section. “Mostly because there was this really down-to-earth youth pastor. He talked about God in a way that was practical. You know. Teenagers don’t usually care about abstract concepts of spirituality and religion. They want advice that helps them in real life. And this guy used to be full of little pearls of wisdom that I found useful.”

Brennan smiled. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” She paused while she finished working through the next section, and Brennan could tell she wasn’t done talking, so he kept silent. Liza combined the two detangled sections, drawing the comb through them, and then slid the comb down the center of Skye’s scalp to gather exactly half of her hair. “He said something once that I never forgot.”

“Do I get to know what it was?”

“Yeah.” Liza cut her eyes to him and smiled, but then she paused for another long stretch.

The pause lasted long enough that Liza had finished combing through the bundle of half Skye’s hair, and she tied it into a thick French braid. The rope of hair was now shiny and smooth as it intertwined with itself, perfectly positioned on the side of Skye’s head so it was out of the way and so she wasn’t lying on it. It hadn’t even occurred to Brennan that Skye might be more comfortable with her hair tied up and out of the way like that but leave it to a woman to know what a fellow woman might really need in any given situation.

“I love you, B.,” Liza eventually said, slowly and meticulously braiding all the way down to the tips of Skye’s hair and then wrapping an elastic band around the end. “You are hands-down the best person I’ve ever known. You’re the world’s greatest guy. You really are. The stuff you did for me and Connor. The stuff you did for him. The stuff you’ve done for him for as long as you’ve known him, taking him under your wing on purpose like you did, just tohave his six.” She smiled, and he smiled, too, recalling a heavy-ass conversation they’d had before she and Connor worked everything out. “The stuff you did for me when I got here. The fact that…”

Liza pressed her lips together. The tip of her nose turned pink in a telltale sign of her emotions getting the better of her. “You loved this baby before it was even conceived, just because you knew what it meant to me. You’ve loved this baby before it even it existed because you love me.”

She stood up and crossed around to the other side the bed where he sat in the chair, pausing in front of him. She cupped his chin, but he couldn’t lift his gaze to look at her. The purpose of her saying all this stuff wasn’t clear, but it was slowly wrecking him anyway.

Nevertheless, she held his chin and started combing his hair back. “And you love me because you love Connor. That’s why you did all of it. You decided a long time ago that you loved Connor and would do anything for him, all because you saw that he needed someone to love him like that. The day you met me, you chose to love me because you knew he loved me. And your love for him is the only reason for everything you’ve ever done for me.”

Brennan still couldn’t look at her. After all, she wasn’t exactly right about that. The day he met Liza, he loved her because the sight of her caused a hidden thread in his soul to electrify. It was connected to hers, and something in him recognized that immediately. For all of an hour, he meticulously laid plans for how he was going to pursue her and claim her as his for all eternity. Then Connor showed up and informed him of the reality of the situation. After that, it all did sort of play out like she just explained. It was just a far more complicated version of it.

Liza dragged the comb through his hair, smoothing it back. When she was finished, she stroked her thumb across his cheek. “Look here, B.”

He blinked away the sting of tears and cut his gaze up to hers.

“When you really love someone, you love who they love. That’s what this youth pastor used to say. That’s why we’re all as close as we are. And it’s why I’m here right now.”

Brennan swallowed the lump in his throat. “I don’t think I can argue with that statement.”

“Yeah, I always liked it.” She moved to sit on the edge of the bed and started the process of combing again with the other half of Skye’s hair.

Slowly, gently, patiently, Liza worked through all the tangles in sections like she’d done with the other side. A soft, serene expression on her face. Once again, he was struck by how much she already looked like somebody’s mama. He wondered if Skye had a mama who’d done this for her all through childhood. This simple process of caring for her hair suddenly struck him as a supreme act of love. And apparently, that was the point.

“I love her, B.” Long, smooth strokes with the comb. Skye’s motionless, but beautiful face. Liza’s elegant hands sweeping through the strands. “I chose to love her weeks ago because it was immediately clear that you love her.”

That caused his hackles to go up, and Brennan forced himself to chuckle casually. “I mean, L…I wouldn’t go all the way to—”

“Don’t try to lie to me.” She slid her coy gaze to his and arched an eyebrow. “I know you too well.” She looked back at Skye’s masses of hair. “You already cared about her before this happened, and this situation is making you love her. You were already falling. Now you’re doomed.”

What an apt word choice.

He rolled his lips between his teeth and rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “Well, honey…I do care about her, but—”

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