Conversing with Dylan was somewhat akin to lugging a big, heavy tree branch to a dumpster.
Two nights after the Colemans’ anniversary party, Leah sat at her dining room table with her brother and Tess and Rudy Coventry, the couple who’d become their unofficial grandparents.
“How’s your math class going?” Tess asked Dylan. He was taking precalculus this summer because he hadn’t passed it last semester, despite having a built-in math tutor at home.
“Okay.” Dylan’s hair fell around his head more rakishly than usual. She suspected he’d donned his gray T-shirt after picking it up off the floor. Its neckline revealed his thin, pale clavicles.
Leah knew from his summer session teacher that he was doing a little less than okay. “When’s your next quiz or test?”
“Thursday.”
“You might want to start studying tonight.”
He shrugged. The window behind Dylan framed him with color. On this warm, bright evening in June, wisps of cloud had snagged their hems on the peaks of her valley.
“Do you want to sit down and work on it with me after dinner, before you go to Jace’s house?” she asked. His usual technique of procrastinating until the night before a test gave her hives.
“Maybe.” Which meant no. He chewed a mouthful of pizza, well on his way to consuming his customary enormous quantity.
“Do elaborate, dear brother,” Leah said grandly, “and tell us how we can become patrons of your math success.” She’d learned that a teasing response to Dylan’s sullenness drew him out more effectively than a serious one.
“Yes, Dylan,” Tess said. “Please do tell how we can help.” The older woman cut her bangs ruler-straight and allowed the rest of her pale gray hair to hang flat to her shoulders. The hazel eyes that tipped downward at the outer corners bracketed an imposing nose. She always wore a shade of lipstick called Frisky Peony and a pair of earrings that looked like miniature modern art sculptures—gold circles mounted inside larger silver circles. Her face radiated pragmatism.
In contrast, Rudy’s face radiated sweetness. His ears were long, his glasses slightly askew. A rosy, healthy glow underlit his lined, age-spotted skin. Tess ensured that his white hair remained neatly trimmed. Nonetheless, it managed to look disordered, as did his clothing.
“This subject is boring,” Dylan said.
“No, indeed,” Leah countered. “We’re all waiting with bated breath for you to tell us about your summer school math class, utilizing more than five words at a time.”
“There’s not a lot to talk about. I mean . . . I’m bad at math.”
He’d said that to annoy her because he knew it rubbed her the wrong way. No one was bad at math. Many people didn’t respond well to the way math was taught in school. But that did not mean they were bad at it. She hadn’t responded well to the way basketball was taught in PE when she was growing up. But she didn’t go around declaring herself bad at basketball.
“I understood math fine until it started using the alphabet,” Dylan added.
Rudy chuckled. “Yes! What are A and B and X and Y doing in math problems?”
“Rudy,” Tess said sternly. “Letters have earned their rightful place in math problems.”
Leah sent her an appreciative glance.
Rudy straightened in his seat repentantly.
Dylan started to explain his current math unit and why he disliked it. The rest of them listened, their meal of store-bought pizza and salad (that Leah had provided) and homemade bread rolls (that Tess had provided) garnishing the table.
Leah had met Tess almost ten years before. At the time, Leah had been navigating her first year of teaching, and Tess had been volunteering for the PTA at Leah’s school. When Tess realized that Leah was a teenager tasked with the job of raising her younger brother, she’d taken Leah under her wing.
A few times a week, Tess had stopped by Leah’s classroom to help out and to deliver batches of homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Eventually, Tess started inviting Leah and Dylan to her home for Sunday lunch after church. In return, Leah invited them to Dylan’s Pee Wee football games and school events. When the couple had shown up at those events, she’d been overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing that when her brother looked into the audience, he’d see more than one person there to support him.
Once, when Leah mentioned to Tess that she planned to spend the weekend painting a bedroom, Tess and Rudy had appeared on her doorstep with roller brushes and paint pans.
They played dominoes with Dylan and Scrabble with Leah. Tess gave Dylan practical gifts like coats. Rudy gave Dylan impractical gifts like Nerf guns.
Over time, Leah had come to trust Tess and Rudy enough to let them babysit Dylan, which had opened up Leah’s world a little. She’d been able to go out in the evenings with friends, take part in occasional chess competitions, or go hiking alone. To this day, they were the ones who stayed with Dylan on the rare occasions when she went out of town.
God had known she and Dylan needed grandparents, and He’d provided Tess and Rudy. They were the ones who had shown her—more than anyone else ever had—what it looked like to love through action.
“I suggest you take your sister up on her offer of tutoring,” Tess said to Dylan.
Dylan made a noncommittal sound and helped himself to another slice of pepperoni with veggies.
“What’s going on with football?” Rudy asked, clearly eager to talk about sports, something that interested him a mile more than math.
“Nothing much.”
“Do elaborate, dear brother, and tell us how we can become patrons of your football success!”
“Right now, we’re lifting weights and getting ready for a seven-on-seven scrimmage.”
It was as if Dylan’s every word were a pearl dropping into midair that she, Tess, and Rudy were doing their best to catch.
“We’re looking forward to your games this fall.” Tess speared a bite of salad. “We’ll be there to cheer you on.”
“You bet we will,” Rudy added happily. “Let me know if you need a ride to practice or summer school.” For years, Rudy and Tess had served as Dylan’s faithful cab drivers.
“Thanks,” Dylan replied.
“He drives his own car now,” Tess reminded her husband, then expelled an impatient sigh. Tess communicated most of her feelings through sighs.
A year and a half ago, when Dylan had turned sixteen, Mom had sent two thousand dollars to him for a car. They’d bought a small blue pickup truck.
“Oh, sure!” Rudy pretended he hadn’t forgotten. As was typical, he responded to Tess’s scolding like an amiable golden retriever. “But if it breaks down or something, I want him to know he can call me.”
This was a second marriage for both Tess and Rudy. Tess and her first husband had divorced. Rudy’s first wife had died. They’d married each other twenty-five years ago, when Tess was fifty-six and Rudy fifty-eight. Shortly after, they’d bought a vacation cabin in Misty River.
When Leah decided that she needed to move Dylan out of Gainesville, Tess and Rudy had encouraged them to move here. Leah had done so, and now the older couple spent the bulk of their year in Misty River, too. Tess had one son, and Rudy had two daughters. Combined, they had several granddaughters, but all their children and grandchildren lived out of state.
“Is the truck running well?” Rudy asked Dylan.
“Yeah.”
“How’s everything with your friends?” Leah asked.
“Good.”
“Really? No drama?”
“No.”
“Are you being cyberbullied?” Leah asked, only half kidding.
He snorted. His liquid chocolate eyes blazed disbelief. “No.”
“Busy trying to order prescription painkillers through the mail?”
“You can order prescription painkillers though the mail?” Rudy asked excitedly.
“Rudy,” Tess chided. “Eat your meal.”
“But—” Rudy said.
“And put your napkin in your lap.”
“Are you interested in dating any of the girls in your grade?” Leah persisted. Dylan was polishing off his food and would bolt in seconds.
“No.”
Should she believe him? Or should she add “teenage love” to her list of fears, right before guns and right after bomb-making?
He picked an olive off his slice and took his final bite. He’d picked the olives off since he was small.
“I wonder if he’s being cyberbullied,” Leah said companionably to Tess.
“I don’t believe so,” Tess said back. “No.”
Moving as if wearing a body that wasn’t quite the right size for him, Dylan rose and carried his dishes toward the kitchen. “I’m not being cyberbullied.”
“Are you sure, O love of my life?” Leah called after him. “No one’s heckling you?”
“I don’t even know what that word means,” Dylan said.
“Heckling means tickling,” Rudy announced.
“No,” Tess instantly corrected. “Heckling is abusive speech.”
“No one’s heckling or tickling me,” Dylan said loudly from the kitchen.
“Truly?” Leah asked. “No girls are tickling you?”
“I’m leaving to go hang out at Jace’s,” Dylan said.
Leah had vetted Dylan’s evening plans with Jace’s mom earlier. “Leave us here if you must, pining for your presence.”
He appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and dining area. “Thanks for the dessert,” he said to Tess, lifting one of the cookies she’d brought. “These are awesome.”
“You’re welcome,” Tess told him indulgently, followed by a loving sigh.
Dylan skulked out of sight, and Leah could hear him gathering his keys and wallet. Their kitchen ended in a door that led to a small mudroom containing their washer and dryer. Leah had cajoled him into using the mudroom as a dumping ground for his backpack, athletic bag, water bottles, spare change, wallet, and keys. Thus, he always came and went through the back door.
“Be safe!” Leah yelled. “Love you!”
Muffled grunt. The door closed behind him.
When Dylan was younger, he’d been challenging because he’d been wounded by Mom’s abandonment, hungry for attention, in need of constant supervision, full of energy, and not in the least independent. But he’d been good company.
Now he didn’t want attention, didn’t require much supervision, had low energy, and was very independent. And Leah really, really missed his company.
Why was it so easy to focus on the difficulties that came with a specific phase of a relationship? As soon as that phase ended, you mourned the benefits.
“And you?” A roll in one hand, Rudy stretched his knife toward the butter dish. Tess moved the butter dish out of his reach. His attention swung to Leah. “Are you interested in dating any of the young men you know?”
“I’m not. No.”
“None of them has been tickling you?”
“Not a one.” Rudy wanted her to fall in love. Unsuccessfully, she’d explained to him that she was already married to her goal of achieving her PhD. That was the only thing she needed to keep her warm in bed on a cold night.
Tess and Rudy stayed for coffee, cookies (of which Tess allowed Rudy two), and a speed round of Scrabble (since Rudy’s bedtime was ten).
When they left, Leah waved them off from her dark front lawn, Rudy’s question echoing in her ears. “Are you interested in dating any of the young men you know?”
She’d thought about Sebastian Grant often over the past few days, because thinking about him caused delight to rumble within her like kernels of corn about to pop. At the Colemans’ party, he’d been very composed and controlled. Yet she’d felt the energy in him, pulsing under his skin. Behind his bland expressions, she sensed a tremendously sharp, alert mind. He was focused, but remote. Intelligent, but not open. Determined, but difficult for her to read.
There’d been a moment when he’d looked at her so directly that sensitivity had bloomed across her skin. When he’d told her about his mom’s death, she’d had a wayward, but powerful, urge to comfort him.
She’d been telling herself that the physical attraction she’d experienced for him when they’d met at the hospital coffee shop a week and a half ago was an outlier, a data point differing significantly from the rest of her responses to the opposite sex. But now that it had occurred again, she couldn’t classify it as such.
She returned to the house, picked up her laptop, and walked straight through to her miniature back patio. Exterior and interior light spilled illumination onto the pavers that formed a curving shape just large enough for an outdoor chair, footrest, and side table.
After lowering onto the chair, she hooked a toe beneath the footrest, pulled it into position, then settled her computer so that it formed a bridge between her thighs and abdomen.
Due to the waiver that Mom had finally submitted, Magnolia Avenue Hospital had gathered the files about her birth. She’d been born at a time when records were kept only on paper. However, she’d requested them in an electronic format, so the hospital had scanned the pages. Earlier today she’d begun reading them via an online portal.
She’d seen at once that doctors’ reputation for illegible handwriting wasn’t unfounded. For several hours she’d combed through the documents, slowly deciphering words, taking notes. Now she could revisit them and finish researching the oddities she’d found the first time through.
Immediately after birth in the delivery room, her weight had been listed as eight pounds, one ounce. Two days later, when she and her mom left the hospital, the log noted her weight as seven pounds, one ounce.
She surfed the web and discovered that it wasn’t unusual for a formula-fed newborn to lose five percent of her body weight after birth. But according to her chart, she’d lost twelve percent of her body weight.
Her mother’s biological daughter was the one who’d weighed eight pounds, one ounce. Leah had likely weighed close to seven pounds at birth.
Mom’s blood type was recorded here as type O. A Google search informed her that O was common. So was Leah’s blood type, A. Her dad had type B, which was more unusual. A few of the times he’d given blood when she was a kid, he’d taken her along. Those occasions had imprinted on her memory because . . . needles. Blood. “I’ve got to help out my fellow Bs,” he’d told her. Afterward, he’d winked and cajoled the staff into giving Leah a carton of juice and a package of saltines.
She located a chart listing how blood types descended from parents to children. Ah. It wasn’t possible for a type O mother and type B father to have a type A daughter.
She’d already known she wasn’t Erica and Todd Montgomery’s child. The DNA said so. Her improbable weight loss as an infant said so.
So why did this fresh confirmation lower onto her shoulders like a lead blanket?
She read back over every item—the doctor’s scrawl regarding the caesarean section, her mom’s blood pressure stats, the notes on the baby’s feeding times, the results of the pediatrician’s exam.
Her mother’s baby had been whisked from the delivery room to the nursery because of concerns over a rapid heartbeat. As far as Leah could tell, the baby’s heartbeat had stabilized quickly. The remainder of Mom’s stay at the hospital appeared ordinary.
Not a single detail pointed to the question of how. How had two babies been switched?
Leah tilted her head up. Trees conspired to crowd out most of the starry sky. It might not be possible to answer the question of how. But it should be possible to answer the question of who. Who were her mother and father?
She logged in at YourHeritage. Starting with the DNA matches that the site designated as her closest relatives, she’d been studying each person one by one. Many had opted to keep their information private. Some who’d made their family trees public had only used the site for genealogical purposes and therefore hadn’t included living relatives. Others had only traced one branch of their tree.
Borrowing and building on the research they’d made available, she’d been striving to assemble a master family tree for herself. It was laborious.
The site says this woman’s my second cousin. But how? Through whom? Who are her parents, siblings, and kids?
Given more time, however, she had faith that she’d be able to crack the code.
Two days later, she did.
Maybe.
She’d taken her computer on a breakfast date to The Grind Coffee Shop and was just finishing up a chai latte when she suddenly located a jackpot of a family tree.
It had not come from one of her closest DNA matches. It had come from a distant relation named Cheryl Brookside Patterson. An obvious overachiever and a woman after Leah’s own heart, Cheryl had made public the most thrillingly thorough family tree Leah had ever seen.
Section by section, Leah compared her fledgling tree with Cheryl’s enormous tree until—finally—she found the place where her tree overlaid with Cheryl’s tree exactly. If she slotted a man named Jonathan Brookside into her tree as her father, then the few matches she’d been able to determine fell into place.
Many of the people on Cheryl’s tree had been born in Connecticut. However, Jonathan had been born in Atlanta. He had no siblings. At the age of fifty-seven, he was certainly of the right generation to be her father.
It seemed she was . . . a Brookside.
No information beyond his birthdate and place of birth had been given. She ran a search for him at YourHeritage, then on Google, then on social media sites.
No hits, which frustrated her curiosity but did not detract from the fact that she now, very likely, had enough DNA data to justify a court order for Baby Girl Brookside’s records.
Leah wouldn’t presume to call her knowledge of music well rounded. When she was young, her parents had introduced her to the 1980s soundtrack of their high school years, and she’d never found songs she liked better.
However, she was familiar enough with TLC’s hit “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” to know the lyrics suggested that you shouldn’t go chasing waterfalls, but instead stick to the rivers and lakes you were used to.
Which was preposterous.
Case in point: She’d spent a glorious Friday morning chasing a waterfall at Tallulah Gorge State Park. She’d hiked from the rim down to the floor. From her current spot on a shaded rock, the river tumbled past, crystal blue and frothing white. A hundred or so yards away, Hurricane Falls cascaded over ancient rock and filled the air with an underlying drone of nature’s power.
She’d have missed all this if she’d stuck to the rivers and the lakes she was used to.
After unpacking the lunch she’d brought in her backpack, she checked her phone and found a new email from Sebastian’s attorney, Jenna Miles. Leah had called Jenna immediately after deducing that Jonathan Brookside was her father, and Jenna had wasted no time.
Leah opened the email, a smile growing as she read the contents.
Then she spent far too long formulating and proofreading a text message to Sebastian. She was determined that no person would ever, ever, receive an email or text from her riddled with typos.
Jenna just informed me that she was granted a court order. She’ll deliver it to Donna McKelvey at Magnolia Avenue Hospital within the hour and request that Baby Girl Brookside’s documents be made ready for my perusal on Tuesday. You’d asked me to keep you informed about upcoming meetings, and I’m upholding my end of the bargain. Thank you very much for securing Jenna’s services on my behalf.
She could only hope that the detective work she’d done to pinpoint the identity of her father had been sound. If it hadn’t been, the effort to secure a court order pertaining to a baby girl with the surname Brookside would be wasted when Magnolia Avenue Hospital informed them that said records did not exist.
She completed her hike and was backing out of the parking lot when her phone dinged. She pressed the brake as if on the verge of flattening a pedestrian, even though no one was nearby. Bobbled her phone. Then plucked it up and checked her texts.
Let me know when to meet you at the hospital on Tuesday. I’ll do my best to be there.
Please don’t feel duty-bound to attend.
I want to be there.
I’m sure your schedule is full, and I’m sure Jenna and I can handle it.
I’ll see you Tuesday.
Sebastian sent his text and swiveled his office chair so that his vision landed on the pictures that his patients’ parents had sent him. Smiling babies.
He understood hospital politics and procedures better than Leah and Jenna. It was justified, generous even, for him to attend the meeting in order to provide backup.
So why did he feel guilty?
He pressed from his office chair and headed toward the stairs that led to the PICU, one floor below.
He felt guilty because he didn’t know how much his desire to see her again was influencing his certainty that she needed him at the meeting. Did his desire to see her again account for twenty percent of his motivation to be present at the meeting? Fifty? Eighty?
At exactly what point did helping Leah cross the line into betraying Ben? Had he already crossed that line?
No.
During his meeting with Leah at the hospital coffee shop, he’d encouraged her to date Ben. At the Colemans’, he’d talked Ben up. When he saw Leah this next time, he’d advocate for Ben again.
If Leah found the information she needed on Tuesday, that meeting would likely be their last. She’d no longer need his help with her search into her past, and so he’d see her again only through Ben. If he went out with Ben’s friend group in Misty River. Or if Leah became Ben’s girlfriend.
His stomach churned.
He strode toward Josiah Douglas’s room. Sebastian had performed a successful arterial switch operation on him a few weeks ago. Since then, they’d been monitoring him around the clock and administering medicine to improve his blood flow.
When Sebastian entered, Josiah’s mom and dad pushed to their feet to greet him. Josiah, awake and relaxed, still hooked up to his IV, was cradled in his mom’s arms.
“Good news,” Sebastian told them. “After morning rounds, we discussed Josiah’s case, and we all agreed he’s ready to go home. I’m discharging him.”
Instantly, Josiah’s mom’s eyes filled with tears.
“Thank you,” her husband said, looking more grateful than if he’d won the lottery.
It strained families to have their child admitted here for weeks or sometimes months at a time. The opportunity to go home was always celebrated, and Sebastian was always glad for them. This was the outcome he worked toward—hearts with congenital defects, repaired as much as medicine allowed.
However, he understood better than Josiah’s parents did the difficulty of the road before them. The surgeons here could not cure patients. They could only exchange a life-ending condition for a serious chronic condition. Josiah’s needs—medicine, check-ups, vigilance—would demand a lot from his parents. He was at risk for leaky valves, arrhythmias, and more.
“I know the staff here has been teaching you how to take care of him,” Sebastian said. “I just want to remind you to keep an eye on his weight gain, his growth, and his oxygen levels. Call us if he has any feeding or breathing problems. All right?”
They both nodded.
Sebastian stepped forward and swept a few fingers across the top of Josiah’s springy hair.
The baby peered up at him with a trusting expression.
“Good-bye,” Sebastian said. “Stay healthy.”
Leah was about to be granted a peek into the hospital records of Baby Girl Brookside.
Who was her. Or . . . had been her for a short time. Before she’d been given to Erica and Todd Montgomery.
Over the past few days, after Jenna had delivered the court order to the hospital, she’d been half expecting a call informing her that Magnolia Avenue did not possess records for an infant girl named Brookside, born on her birthday.
But that call never came.
Leah waited for Sebastian and Jenna at the same table at Magnolia Perk where she’d waited prior to the last meeting with Donna McKelvey. Unlike last time, it was late afternoon. Like last time, she’d arrived early—
And there was Sebastian. Also early. The electronic doors whooshed open dramatically as he swept in alongside a sleek woman in her forties.
He had on a pale gray dress shirt and navy suit pants. All the vitality in the place seemed to pull toward him like ocean water whizzing back out to sea. Was Leah the only one who noticed? She glanced around. Everyone else seemed to be carrying on as usual.
When the pair reached Leah, Sebastian introduced the woman as Jenna Miles, attorney. Jenna promptly excused herself, making a beeline for the coffee counter.
He didn’t take the chair opposite Leah, so she looped her purse over her shoulder and stood. Together, they moved out of earshot of the other tables.
“Thanks for coming, Dr. Grant.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it, Professor Montgomery.”
“I’m not a professor.”
“You will be. Besides, the title suits. You’re more of a professor than most of the professors I had in school.” He was only thirty-two, but his life, his career, and the pressures he lived under made him look a few years older than that. There was nothing soft or young about Sebastian Grant. “So. We talked about Ben’s interest in you the last time we were here together.”
“We did, yes.”
“And you said you weren’t interested in him in return. I heard you, but—”
She arched a brow at him.
“What?” he asked.
“When a woman expresses her stance and a man responds with ‘I heard you, but,’ that doesn’t bode well for the quality of the exchange.” It was the honest truth, delivered teasingly.
To his credit, he laughed. “May I have permission to finish my thought?”
She nodded.
“I want to encourage you to keep an open mind where Ben’s concerned. I mean, it couldn’t hurt to go out to dinner with him, could it? What’s the worst that could happen?”
“A, I could end up ruining my relationship with my closest friend at work. B, and far more chilling, I could fall for him.”
“That would be great.”
“That would be a catastrophe.”
“You’re smart enough to keep it from becoming a catastrophe.”
“I’m book smart, not romance smart.” She looked toward Jenna, who’d moved to the side to wait for her drink. The attorney wore her auburn hair in a short pixie cut that flattered approximately one percent of women. Jenna was in that one percent.
Leah straightened her short-sleeved crewneck sweater—raspberry in color with dark pink flowers stitched across it in horizontal rows. She’d paired it with narrow gray pants and heels.
“You can learn to be romance smart,” Sebastian said.
She sighed. Ever since Sebastian had told her Ben liked her, that knowledge hadn’t been sitting well. “I’ve actually been considering going out to dinner with Ben,” she admitted.
“Hmm?”
“I’ve been considering it,” she repeated. When Leah glanced at Sebastian, she found him watching her. Dinner with Ben would give her a private, unhurried setting in which she could ask about his feelings and ensure that he wasn’t holding out false hope where she was concerned.
“You’ll go out with him?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He swallowed, and his jaw appeared to harden.
“Which is what you’ve been lobbying for. So I’m confused as to why you don’t look pleased.”
He shook himself slightly. “Sorry. I got distracted for a second.” A wide smile overtook his mouth. “I’m pleased.”
“Then that’s settled. Dylan and I are leaving in a few days on our trip. When I get back, I’ll have dinner with Ben.”
“Is it time for your doomed road trip to New England?”
“It is, but I take exception to your choice of the word doomed.”
“Right, because you’ll be taking a teenager and an Airstream trailer on a three-week-long road trip across the country. What could go wrong?”
“Many things. But the laws of probability suggest that none of those things will come to fruition.”
“Your trip’s as doomed as Han Solo’s trip in A New Hope, when he was supposed to transport Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan to Alderaan.”
She grinned. “I admire the blunt way you just shoved that Han Solo reference into the discussion.”
“I used force instead of skill.”
“I’ll have to think of skillful ways to reference aviation in conversation. Because of you, I read a book on the basics. Thrust, lift, drag. I was instantly enamored. I love physics.”
“What’s not to love about physics?”
“Nothing,” she said earnestly.
His soap smelled so wonderful that she’d like to stockpile candles in that fragrance. All of a sudden, she could hear her pulse in her ears—
The click of high heels intruded. Jenna broke the bubble that had enclosed Leah and Sebastian by commenting on her preference for coffee beans from Tanzania.
The three of them made their way to the administrative offices. This time, they were shown into a boardroom. Leah’s group arranged themselves on one side of the table. Donna McKelvey and the director of medical records sat on the opposite side.
After a brief conversation, the director produced an army green file folder containing Baby Girl Brookside’s original records. At Jenna’s request, he’d also made photocopies of the file and scanned images of it onto a flash drive—both of which Leah could take home with her.
“On behalf of the hospital,” Donna said to Leah, “I’d like to apologize once again for what happened to you. I sincerely wish you the best.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you’d like in order to look through the original paperwork.”
The hospital employees and Jenna excused themselves, leaving Leah alone with Sebastian in a room that smelled of new carpeting. The only sound: air whirring through vents.
“And you?” Leah asked Sebastian. “Do you have other commitments? If so, I don’t want you to feel obligated to stay.”
His eyes flashed a gray as lustrous as moonstones. “I’m sticking around. I only have one commitment this afternoon. And it’s to you.”