His Brother's Bride

She lay back again but couldn’t find her earlier contentment. Knowing that Scott was in love left her feeling very unsettled.

The sun lowered slowly. There were still several hours of daylight left, but it was getting cooler.

“Do you ever wonder what’s real and what’s really just your head playing with you?” Laurel asked, breaking the long silence that had fallen between them.

“Not often,” he said. “I just weigh the facts.”

“But what if the facts, as you see them, aren’t really the facts at all, but rather your head changing them to fit some preconceived picture you have?”

“But then that would still be reality, wouldn’t it?” he asked. He was lying on his side, his head propped with his hand. He took a sip of wine. “Reality as you know it?”

“Twisting facts does not make them reality.” She’d missed this so much—feeling comfortable enough with another person to just let her thoughts fly.

“Not if you knowingly twist them.”

Lying on her stomach, resting up on her elbows, Laurel persisted. “But what if it’s not knowingly, and so you act upon them, and then later find out that you had twisted them, after all.”

He grimaced. “I think that happens to everyone at some point. Don’t you?”

It wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for. “I guess.”

She pondered some more. “So how do you protect yourself from making a mistake if there’s no way to determine if you’re making one? How do you keep your head from playing tricks on you?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe you don’t.”

Laurel couldn’t accept that. “There’s got to be some way to be able to trust yourself. I mean, if you can’t even trust yourself, who can you trust?”

“You can trust yourself to do your best. It’s all anyone can do. Their best.”

She shook her head. “Not good enough.” Not if it meant she was going to talk herself into marriage to Shane and then wake up one morning and find that she’d just been twisting loneliness into love, need into want.

Scott picked up a bottle of water, then rinsed their glasses and filled them. Settling back on his elbow he said, “I guess being aware of the possibility goes a long way toward prevention.”

“Maybe.” The fear remained.

“Talking it out with someone might be the best option,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. “If there’s a hole in your logic, if your hypothesis is false, then someone who isn’t traveling on the same mental journey would probably be able to detect the weak link.”

Laurel considered that a moment before asking, “Do you think that, even after three and a half years, I could still be coping with Paul’s loss by substituting so

meone else for him?”

His glance was suddenly completely focused. “Do you think that’s what you’re doing?”

“No.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know,” she said, changing her mind. “I’m just so afraid to find out. Afraid to even try to replace him in case I’m just transferring my feelings for him to someone else.”

Only with Scott could she even be having this conversation, expressing fears she’d just started to admit to herself.

He’d seen her first thing in the morning, half-awake, with messy hair. He’d seen her sick with the flu.

He’d stood solid, taking her beating without flinching when he’d come to the church on her wedding day to tell her that Paul had been killed....

“You think he’s the only man you can ever love?” Scott asked.

Good question. “I don’t know, you know? I mean, I planned to love him for the rest of my life.”