Kept (14 page)

“You’d prove it. Because love is action, not talk. I think Ethan had cousins at my school.”

“Probably. So I gave in. Didn’t want to at first, but I got used to it and began to really like it, and then it was over. He moved on. I was devastated.”

“Then what?”

“A friend invited me to her youth group, and everything changed. I read what God said in the Bible and vowed to wait until my wedding. Since then, I have.”

“All that time? Going without?”

“Nine long years. But it ends in three months and four days. I can’t wait.”

“What about Garrett?”

Tracy paled. “Oh, no no no.”

“Come on.”

“Miska—”

“Please. Tell me.”

Tracy eyed her. “Why?”

“Because guys don’t wait, Tracy. They don’t. If he’s only been waiting since he met you, I’m not buying it. And if he is waiting, I want to know why. Because it doesn’t make sense.”

“Why couldn’t it make sense?”

“Because he’s living differently than every other man I’ve met. They don’t wait for marriage, Tracy. If you don’t put out, they go elsewhere.”

“I disagree.”

“Prove me wrong. Tell me Garrett’s story.”

Tracy fiddled with her cup. “Fine. The condensed version.”

It would do.

“Garrett picked bad friends in high school, guys that got their hands on magazines and passed them around.”

Miska frowned. What guy didn’t like those magazines?

“He hid it from his parents, but he was with a couple girls in high school. Once he went to college, he got tired of hiding it and went pretty wild. It caused a lot of problems between him and his parents. Then he went to law school and lived with guys who partied all the time. You know.”

She did. “How long ago was this?”

“Maybe a year before I met him. Maybe nine months. He moved back just as I moved here and started my job. He was very quiet when we met, very introspective.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t get into it. It’s not something he wants to talk about, not something his family likes to remember. But he went through something about a year before we met that made him stop and look at his life, made him get right with God. That’s part of the reason he came back to Chicago. He wanted to fix things with his family and have some accountability.”

“So he’d gotten out of that right before you met.” Miska swished the words around in her mouth, then spit them out. “Not that long, really.”

“Long enough.”

Maybe. “I can’t picture him introspective.”

“Yeah, he’s loosened up. Jordan and Dillan say the quiet Garrett was a little unnerving. But considering what God was doing in his life, it makes sense.”

“What does that mean? ‘What God was doing in his life’?”

“It means that God was bringing things to his mind, working on him to get rid of sin. It’s what God does to all of us Christians every day. He’s molding us, making us more like him—if we let him.”

Sounded boring. Miska held the words back. She wouldn’t hurt Tracy by saying them.

But the light in Tracy’s eyes faded.

Rats, it must have shown. Miska ran a hand over the granite, wiping away imaginary crumbs.

Garrett, the partier. She could see it.

But his brother… “And then there’s Dillan.”

“I know. Talk about brothers being opposite—in every way. Sometimes I wonder who God will send him, you know? Who my sister-in-law will be.” Tracy rested her chin in her palm. “Dillan deserves the best.”

Which wasn’t her. She knew it. Dillan—the man who didn’t date much while his brother partied through school—deserved a woman she couldn’t even begin to imagine. Someone sweet and honest, someone kind and gentle, someone who probably didn’t exist.

Just like the men in the novels she edited. Crazy sexy—and dedicated to one woman.

Poor Tracy. Poor Dillan. Like the rest of the world, they were in for disappointment.

The conversation turned to other things before Miska popped the disc into the DVD player. As Mary Crawley ruined her sister’s romance, Tracy’s words about Dillan and Garrett returned.
Brothers being opposite—in every way.

Curled up in her corner of the couch, Miska stilled. Surely Tracy didn’t mean that Dillan— She couldn’t mean—

There was only one way to find out.

Tomorrow. Lasagna. Lunch.

This time Miska went for simple. The condo was clean, but she left the stack of paperwork on her desk. Already wearing her favorite jeans, she changed the scooped-neck shirt for a black camisole and form-fitting, lightweight, gray sweatshirt zipped halfway up her chest.

She brushed her teeth, dabbed a little perfume on her wrists, then went for the pièce de résistance. She carried the small lasagna to the hallway and waved its herb and tomato scent by Dillan’s door.

He and his tuna had no chance today.

Lasagna safely on her table, she hurried back to Dillan’s door and knocked before the scent vanished. He opened the door quickly, like he’d been about to leave.

“Hey. How’s the arm today?” she asked.

He looked at the blue cast as if he needed to ask it. “Better. Doesn’t hurt much anymore.”

“That’s great.” Yes, he was very different than Garrett who would have said a lot more, teased her, and given her something to go on. “Remember that lasagna recipe I mentioned? I found it and made some for lunch. You hungry?”

His eyebrows went up. “Lasagna?”

“I can’t eat it all, and I thought of you and that sad can of tuna. You got a few minutes?”

He nodded as if he didn’t need to think twice. “Definitely. I love lasagna. Thanks, Miska.”

“No problem.”

Inside her condo, the aroma wrapped around them. He inhaled, long and deep. “Man, I was sure I was making this up a minute ago. I could smell it next door.”

“Really?” Ah, she loved playing dumb. “Have a seat at the table. I’ll grab dressings.”

Instead he followed her to the fridge. “Anything I can help with?”

She looked up at him, aware of his warmth. “Umm, drinks maybe.” She nodded at a cabinet. “Glasses are up there.”

He turned his back to her as he opened the cabinet, muscles in his shoulders bunching beneath the thin fabric of his T-shirt. She searched the fridge for salad dressings before he caught her staring.

“What do you want to drink?”

It felt so good to have him here. Almost like he belonged. “Water’s fine. You want A&W?”

“I’ll do water.”

She set the salad dressings on the table while he filled glasses. By the time he joined her, she’d cut the lasagna into pieces and slid a piece onto his plate.

He eased onto the chair across from her, her usual seat with the view out the windows. “This looks great.”

“Thanks.” She gave herself the smallest piece. “Do you want to pray again?”

“Sure.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes, and she did the same. “Heavenly Father, thank you for the food you’ve given us and for the income you’ve provided Miska. Please bless her for sharing with me, and bless this food to our body. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

She mumbled an amen, feeling very fake. But when in Rome and all that. She slid her napkin onto her lap. “May I ask why you pray before you eat?”

“Keeps the calories from sticking to you.” He dished a large helping of salad onto his plate before looking at her and breaking into a grin.

She took the salad bowl from him. “You’re hilarious.”

“So I hear.” He drenched his salad with honey mustard dressing, negating any value the lettuce had. Well, he was in his twenties. Clearly his metabolism was still going.

“Do you think it’s wrong not to pray over food? Because I never have. Today’s the second time I’ve ever had my food prayed for.”

This time his expression was more serious as if he were a bit shocked. But then he shrugged and took knife and fork to the lasagna. “It’s not wrong. My family always prayed at meals. It’s just a way of thanking God for what he’s done for you.”

She dribbled balsamic dressing over her lettuce. “What’s he done for you?”

“He’s done everything. He’s given me hope, a future; he’s given me health. He’s given me a great family, work that I love. Peace. Security.”

His words rolled around in her mind. She could see crediting a higher power with family, because no one could pick that. “I don’t understand health. You run. You’re the one taking care of your body.” She waved a hand at his salad. “Except for that.”

He swallowed a bite and grinned at the dressing-drenched lettuce. “Honey mustard is my weakness.”

“Do you drink it?”

“Only for breakfast.” His smile faded. “Miska, I can do everything I want to take care of myself, but if God doesn’t give me health, I won’t have any.”

“That’s not true. You put the work in and you get the results.”

“Then someone’s in an accident. Or they get some rare disease. Their muscles deteriorate or—” He pointed at her. “Look at Lou Gehrig. A professional athlete. Active. Healthy. Goes from being one of the best athletes to dead in a few years.”

“So God killed him.”

His brown eyes roamed her face.

“Don’t think I’d want to believe in a god like that.”

“You have to go back to the beginning, Miska.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Of man. Have you read any of the Bible?”

“Some. In college.”

“If you go to the beginning, you read how God made the first man and woman.”

“Adam and Eve. I’ve heard that story.”

“Only it’s not a story. It’s truth.”

His words hovered between them. Miska waited for the punch line, waited for him to smirk and tell her he was kidding, but the serious look on his face stayed there. Remained. Watched her digest the realization that he was a complete lunatic.

How horribly sad. How wrong that such a wonderful guy would believe such—such stupidity. “Dillan, don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because we know how the world began.”

“How?”

“The gasses caused an explosion that brought about the very basic forms of life, and millions of years later, here we are. Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone who rejects God, everyone who wants to bury their head in the sand.”

“Hey now—”

He crossed his arms. “What evidence is there?”

“Science has proven it.”

“No, it hasn’t.”

“Okay,
you
prove it.”

“In so many ways science has proven that evolution couldn’t have happened, that the earth is nowhere near millions of years old. Mt. Saint Helens—the volcano in Washington that exploded back in the eighties? All the stuff scientists said took millions of years to occur—the rock layers, the trees in the rock layers—all of that happened in one catastrophic event. They know what the area was like before the eruption, they went back in as soon as they could, and it had completely changed. Completely. All these new rock layers that weren’t there before the explosion—they happened over days and weeks, Miska. Days and weeks. And there have been more eruptions and new rock layers since.”

Her mouth fell open. Had he ever said so much at one time?

“And then there are scientific calculations like the rotation of the earth, the magnetic field, the size of the sun if the earth had been around that long. Nothing—nothing!—could have survived the speed of the rotation or the heat of the sun or the force of gravity. And when’s the last time an explosion created something complex?”

Holy cow. “Dillan—”

“Does a fertilizer plant explode and create the best fertilizer known to man?”

She raised her eyebrows, pretending boredom.

“Of course not. That’s absurd. So why do we believe an explosion brought about the most intricate form of anything anywhere?”

“I’m not a scientist, Dillan, but those guys are way smarter than you or me. I trust that what they tell me is the truth.”

He pointed at her. “Exactly. You have to trust. You have to have faith in what they say. Because whether you believe God made the world or that the world evolved, both beliefs go back to the same thing.”

“Which is?”

“That no one was there in the beginning. No one. Either way, it’s a religion that you have to put your faith in.”

A religion?

“When you go back to the beginning, the Bible says that God made the world. He made man and woman and put them in charge of the earth. God told them there was one thing they couldn’t do. Everything else was theirs to enjoy. But they chose to disobey God, and they brought sin into the world.”

Sin? Wow, this guy talked like he’d come out of the fifties.

“And sin brought death and destruction. We see it every day. So that’s the answer to your question. Man caused his own death, his own destruction. Not God.”

“Let’s pretend what you’ve said is true. Then isn’t God to blame for leaving the world as it is? Look at what happens every day in this town—all the murder, abuse, crime. What kind of god lets that continue?”

He nodded. “Man ruins everything in the beginning of the Bible, but what follows is the story of God’s love for us, of his decision to come down and give us a way out of our mess.”

“Really.”

“God makes this incredible promise, that someday he’ll send a perfect sacrifice—Jesus—to pay for what we’ve done. Everyone who believes will be forgiven. They’ll have eternal life in heaven when life here is over.”

What had she ever seen in him? He was a nut job. “When does the spaceship come?”

His shoulders drew up, straight and stiff. “You’ve never heard this, have you?”

“Never.”

“Then it makes sense that it would sound crazy, but it’s the truth. It’s what our country was founded on, the beliefs of the Bible. That there are rights and wrongs, absolutes.”

“Dillan, it’s outdated.”

“Really? So we push the Bible aside, say it doesn’t apply, and our society gets worse and worse. You said so yourself.”

“But that’s not…” That’s just how life was—hard, difficult. People weren’t fair, couldn’t be trusted. Everyone had to look out for themselves or be taken advantage of. There
was
no other way.

But to imagine that there could be something better—

“Miska. Tell me.”

She jerked her gaze to his. What had he seen?