Liza drew back her hand and rolled her eyes. “Oh comeon. You’re helping me with this crap with Connor. You should let me help you find love again.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and sat back against the booth, arching one eyebrow coyly. “Well, I already loveyou, L.”
She smiled again. “You know what I mean. Notthatkind of love. The other kind. TheJooosephinekind,” she said, mimicking his inflection from earlier.
“I don’t want to find that again because I don’t think I’d live through that kind of heartbreak a second time. And it would definitely end in heartbreak.”
She sat back against the booth as well. “So let me ask you this: if you think it’s pointless to find love like that again, why have you basically made it your mission to get me and Connor to get back together?”
“Because you and Connor aren’t like me and Josephine. Because you both still love each other. You belong together. You’re both just still gravely wounded. But if you just hang on and don’t waste this second chance, you’ll both heal, probably together, and you’ll be able to fix this. And that’ll make your relationship stronger and more full of love than it ever was.”
Liza’s shredded heart panged inside her chest. “There’s no fully healing, and there’s no fixing this. Look at the way he is. We’ve been getting along great for weeks, we were having a great night, and all of that turned on a dime, and now we’re back at square one.”
Brennan shook his head. “You’re not back at square one. He had a bad moment. He has shit he needs to deal with, and I’m telling you, L. It’s worth fighting all these little battles to get back to where you both were. Because that kind of love either doesn’t come around twice in one lifetime,or…” He leaned forward, holding her hand again as his dark brows crawled upward. “When itdoes…something will be there, standing in the way and keeping you from it.”
Liza squinted. “So it came around for you a second time? Maybe I should hold out for that instead.”
Brennan’s mouth flattened, and he slid his eyes sideways. “I didn’t say that.”
“I mean, you kind of alluded to it just now. You saidwhen.”
“I—” He shook his head and blinked rapidly. “No.”
She squinted harder and tilted her head.
“Listen, L. I know what he went through, and I’ve been watching him this whole time with you, and I’ve been around him basically every day for the pastdecade. Trust me that I know him. I know he still loves you, and I know he’ll come around, and I know you’ll both regret not—”
“You know whathewent through.” Fire abruptly crackled in Liza’s veins, and her stomach soured. “But you do not know whatIwent through.”
“Sweetheart, whatever it is, I know—”
“Don’tsweetheartme,Brennan.” She gritted her teeth, and her eyes burned with fresh tears. “Not over this. Becauseyou…don’t…know.”
He closed his mouth and offered her a patient, sympathetic look. “Okay. That’s fair. I don’t—”
“You said you wantedbabieswith Josephine, but let me ask you this: did you two have a child?” This was heading for disaster, and Liza knew it, but the words were hurdling up and out her throat, and there was no stopping them. “Did she ever getpregnant, B.? And did you do somethinghorribleto her that caused her tolosethat baby?”
The patience and sympathy in his expression sharply morphed into wide-eyed alarm. “No.”
In a fit of rage, Liza shoved the soup away from her so hard that it sloshed onto the table, and then she started to shift sideways to slide out of the booth. “Fuck you, fuckhim, and fuck New Orleans. I amleaving.”
His hands suddenly, yet gently framed her face. “L…I’m sorry. Please stay.”
She wasn’t even looking at him, so all she felt was tender, masculine hands holding her cheeks, thumbs stroking away tears she didn’t notice had started falling, exactly the way Connorused to.
“I’m an ignorant fool, and I’m sorry,” Brennan added. “You’re right, I don’t know anything. And you don’t have to tell me. I really was just trying to—”
“He doesn’t know anything.” Brennan’s hands were still holding her face, but Liza couldn’t look at him because the words were barreling out of her like a freight train with shot brakes. “He doesn’t know there was a baby. He doesn’t know he caused me to wreck my car. He doesn’t know that car accident ended the pregnancy and nearly killed me.”
Silence stretched for a beat, and then there were more words that she shouldn’t have said.
“He’d stopped calling me. He’d stopped returning my calls. He didn’t really respond to text messages, and when he did, he sounded like someone else. I had to tell him in person because of that. So I got in the car and drove. That’s when he finally decided to call me back. He told me we were over, to turn the car around and go back to Austin, because he’d cheated on me, and he was living with his new girlfriend. I didn’t even have a chance to say a word before everything went black. And then I woke up later, single andnotpregnant anymore.”
There was another beat of silence as Brennan slipped his hands away from her face and slumped in his seat. “Jesus, L.”
“Yeah, not evenJesuscould save this.”
She could vaguely perceive Brennan looking at her, but he was nothing but a big blurry blob through her tears. “You never told him?”
