Page 58 of If This is Love

Gabe looked unamused. “Sarn’t Riley, I sure as hell hope you’re behaving like the gentleman you swear you are.”

Brennan’s face instantly sobered, and he straightened his shoulders, standing up a little taller. “Of course, Stassarn’t. Always.”

Gabe’s salty gaze lingered on Brennan’s face for a second before he unleashed a quick, high-pitched whistle, and Gunner trotted into the hallway a moment later. “Maybe tone it the fuck down with her when you’ve got a bunch of people over here,” he mumbled as he and Gunner made their way to the front room. “It makeseveryonefucking uncomfortable.”

Brennan watched him leave, his expression now panicked as he dragged his eyes to meet mine, andoh my heavens.

Right there in his expression wasme. There I was, way back then again, like no time had passed at all.

“You and that sissy boy have been slippin’ into sin like this so much that it’s just obvious, Ruth,” Pastor John’s voice boomed from across years past and across a room from me in my mind.

“I promise you, Pastor, it’s not like that at all. He’s my dear, dear friend, and we’re both just hurting.”

Nobody ever cared what it really was. It never mattered that Astrid was just my best friend. It never mattered that the real problem was with all of those people who didn’t understand our closeness or what we’d gone through that nurtured such closeness, and it was all deemedwrongby everyone whojust didn’t understand.

I could’ve cried right here in the hallway.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” I blurted out. “I had a friendship like that.”

Brennan opened his mouth, his jaw moving like he was searching for words. “I… she… it’s really not—”

“Iknow,” I hastily added, saving him from making him feel like he needed to explain anything andhatingmyself for every inappropriate thought I’d had over the past three minutes or so.

Andagain,why did Ihate myselffor something like that? That wasn’t worth hating anything over.

I dropped my eyes to the long oriental rug below our feet for a second and then looked back up at him with the kindest expression I could fix on my face. “I wouldn’t have made it through losing my husband without a friend like that. And then life separated me from him, too, and that was almost as bad. So, I think you’re both blessed to have that. I hope you never lose it.”

He closed his mouth and looked in the direction of the front room. “I really hope not either,” he said quietly, almost like he was saying it to himself, but then he turned to me and smiled, tenderly squeezing the side of my shoulder. “I appreciate that more than I can say.” He leaned forward and pressed a quick, firm smooch to my forehead before stepping away. “And you have my deepest condolences for losing both of them.” His throat pulsed with a swallow, and he absently shook his head as he looked at the floor and started to step away. “I can’t even imagine how hard either of those things must’ve been for you. I can’t even imagine how hard going throughoneof those things was for you, let alone both.”

I watched him slowly meander back toward the dining room, his face downcast, and my heart wouldn’t stop panging. It panged for Michael, and Astrid, and even Brennan, too, though I didn’t understand that pang as much. That was a pang of empathy, like something in me knew he knew this kind of pain, too. Or that my spirit, through its connection to all-knowing God, knew he would know that kind of pain one day, too; that he was going to toil through both of those very specific types of pain. And I didn’t know what that meant other than the likelihood of losses like that only increased with age. I figured it was just a knowing that every single person in this house would likely experience losses like those over the course of their lives.

But I couldn’t be sure exactly what this pang in my heart was. It was strange. And I watched him walk away with his head down like he was already hurting from it, too.

* * *

“This town is amazing,”Austin, Emma’s husband was saying from where they were sitting close to each other on one of the couches in the front room. “I’ve never been here before. I didn’t expect it to be so chilly though.”

“Oh yeah, we’ve had an uncharacteristically cold winter,” Skye said, sitting on the opposite end of the same couch and angling herself toward them. She was practically on Brennan’s lap because of the lack of seating with so many people in the house. “It snowed on our wedding day.”

“Awwow, that soundsmagical.” Emma’s light brown brows drew together, highlighting a severe scar that was dead center on her forehead; evidence fromhertime overseas. She hadn’t served in the military, rather she’d been a war reporter working in Syria during the ongoing civil war, was kidnapped by terrorists, and thenshot. Right there where that scar was. But that wasn’t the reason she was here. Prior to her kidnapping, she’d traveled all over Syria and visited displaced women who’d been subjected to the same horrors that Skye was trying to combat here at home. Emma was now with the UN Refugee Agency and was here as a liaison for refugee women who had fled terrorist-backed trafficking in Iraq, and they would be attending Destination Destiny’s rehabilitation and recovery program once we launched.

“Yeah, it was wild.” Brennan cast an enamored smile at Skye, who had shifted all the way onto his lap, and he rubbed the top of her thigh as he kissed the cusp of her shoulder. “It was completely magical.”

Skye turned her head to look down at him and gently bumped the tip of her nose against his. “You’re completely magical.”

“Nooo,honey,” he murmured, resting his temple on her shoulder as he rolled her wedding band between his finger and thumb. “All the magic is all you.”

Skye kissed the top of his head and then turned to Emma and Austin again. “Sorry, we’ve literally been married for like two months, and we were already gross like this.”

Emma smiled warmly, giving a small, slow shake of her head. “No need to apologize for loving each other.”

“It wascold!” Luke piped up from kitchen. “Andthen,we had to walk from the friggin’ church all the way to the reception.”

“The second line is an important tradition, honey,” Chloe called back sweetly from where she was sitting on the couch next to me. “Prepare yourself to do it again.”

“Yeah, well… we’re not getting married during a damn snowstorm,” he retorted, stepping into the front room with a bag of grapes, and he stopped behind the sofa where Skye and Brennan were sitting. “This isreallythe only friggin’ snack y’all have in this place?”

“Corporal.” Brennan exhaled long and quietly. “Those are for when Savannah is over here. Please don’t eat them.”

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