Brave by Tammara Webber
I crept lower as he breathed deeply, letting me lead, probably doing math in his head to help prolong the moment and see where I was going with it. The thought of math brought another memory. “Mr. Maat, I love your slide rule.”
“Oh God.” He laughed quietly, abs tightening beneath my mouth.
“Will you teach me how you do those precise calculations now?”
He swept a firm, gentle hand from my waist to my breast, stroking, circling, pinching gently. All my Isaac fantasies scurried in malfunctioning circles, crashing into each other and going up in smoke. “As to not being horny. You were saying?”
I moaned and mumbled something incoherent.
“C’mere.” He took hold of my upper arms and towed me back up. “I wanna tell you something.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, and I waited for the question or comment he was mulling over before voicing it.
“That sounds serious.” I chewed my lip. I wasn’t an expert at waiting yet.
“I’m in love with you, you know.”
I had not known, or even suspected. “You love me? How? When?”
He exhaled a deep breath, as though he’d been holding it in for a very long time. “You dismantled me piece by piece, I think. When you asked me why I said your name like you were a Capulet and I was a Montague, that was when I knew. I fell asleep brooding over the aptness of My only love sprung from my only hate. I was furious with myself. How the hell could I fall in love with the daughter of a man I saw as my enemy? I said horrible things to you the next day. I apologize.”
“I said worse, completely untrue, things to you.”
His fingers caressed my face, inches from his. Our bodies were pressed together, two complementary puzzle pieces who’d found each other in this big wide world.
“I love you too. And I’m sorry for saying those mean things.”
“None of that matters now. There will be no poison draughts or daggers in our futures. Our stars are aligned, not crossed. And in case you’re ever unsure, I can’t hate the name McIntyre anymore. You’ve ruined that for me, or maybe helped fix it. That means you can’t hate it either.”
“It may take me a little while.”
“Maybe someday you’ll change it out for something else.”
“Maybe. But only if I don’t have to change my initials.”
He chuckled, dark lashes sweeping down and back up. “That your line in the sand?”
“I’m afraid so. I have a truly shocking amount of monogrammed things and as a practical grad student, I can’t afford to be wasteful.”
“I think I can work with that, Ms. McIntyre.”
“I’m sure you can, Mr. Maat.”
Epilogue
January 2015
I unfolded the map and it creaked with age. The advent of GPS systems and cell phone maps had made it a relic. Isaac stared at it, then at me.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a map.”
His smile was bemused. Indulgent. “Okay, smartass, I can see that. But…”
“I know—it’s probably ten years old.”
“I would say twenty?”
“Okay, yeah. I’m sure some of it has changed in the past few years, and we can use your GPS or our phones for actual navigation. But I’m pretty sure the cities and states haven’t moved and major highways are the same.” I smoothed it out on my lap and laid it between us. “Close your eyes.”
His brow swooped up.
I waited. He closed his eyes.
“Give me your hand.”
He did so, and I balanced it above the map.
“Use your finger, and without peeking, pick our destination.”
His eyes opened, hand still hovering between us. “What? I thought we were going to get breakfast, discuss our options. I made lists of possibilities and notes concerning cost of living and weather patterns and crime rates.”
“Close your eyes! Now I’m going to have to rotate the map around so you don’t cheat.”
“I could peek and you wouldn’t know.”
“But you wouldn’t.”
“You said I might cheat.”
“I meant accidentally. Because you are one of those people who probably not only know exactly where every state is in relation to the others, you know the capitals and the other major cities, too.”
“Possibly…” He laughed softly, and my heart melted as I stared at his face—smiling, relaxed, the planes and angles smoothed by the curve of full lips and the tiniest little lines at the corners of his eyes, which were closed.
“All right. It’s set. Choose.”
He rotated his finger around in an exaggerated show, finally stabbing down—in the Gulf of Mexico. He opened his eyes. “Unless you got a yacht or a rowboat or something, we’re in big trouble.”
I sighed. “Try again.”
This time, he took my hand in his, extended my index finger, and stared into my eyes as he rotated the map in awkward circles. “One. Two. Three,” he said, and down our hands went.
We stared at the city under my finger and then at each other.
“Ever been there?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither.” He was still holding my hand, our arms entwined. “You sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
He tugged my hand up to his mouth and laid a soft kiss against my wrist, and then his opposite hand slid across my lower jaw to cup my face, the pad of his thumb skimming the surface of my lower lip, pressing gently. Breathless, I watched the contemplations of everything and everyone we were leaving cross his furrowed brow and the dark eyes that stared at my mouth. When his eyes rose to mine, there was no indecision there. My own burned with tears that were all relief.
“I’m sure too.” Isaac did not make careless promises. He was offering his heart and soul in exchange for mine. “C’mere,” he said, and I obeyed. He swept a tear away and kissed me. “I love you.”
My heart ached from joy. Sliding my hand behind his neck, I kept him close. “I love you too.”
A cold, wet nose snuffled between us and we separated enough to assure Pete that he, too, was loved. His tail thwacked the seat in a joyful cadence and he woofed his love back at us.
“Pete, sit on your blankie.” That was the first time I’d ever given him an order. He angled his head left, then right, licked my chin, and hopped back on his blanket, tail still thump-thumping like a heartbeat. “Scamp,” I said. He took it as praise, judging by his answering yap.
I dug a red pen from my bag and drew a crimson heart around the city we’d chosen. Isaac chuckled—at the profound girliness of the gesture, I was certain. As I folded the map against the creases to display our destination and the surrounding areas only, it protested by creaking and throwing off dust that all paper eventually became. But it would survive to be framed and hung in our new place. And the one after that. And the one after that, where we would settle and make a home of our own.
For now, Isaac wedged the ancient map between the dash and the center console, the heart-encased spot in the center, facing us, and then he fired up the GPS and got more current routes and directions.
“We’ll take shifts and stop for the night when we get tired, but we can be there by tomorrow afternoon.” He kissed me again, and we were off.
I chose “Heads Carolina, Tails California” from my phone’s playlist, dancing and singing in my seat and proving beyond any doubt my months-ago claim to tone deafness. Pete howled along in delight—or agony—and Isaac laughed at the both of us until he had to wipe tears from his eyes.
Reconciliations would be made here and there with some, but not all, of my family members. Some immediate, some years in coming. Some surprising, some not.
Isaac and I would calm each other’s nightmares and support each other’s dreams. We would shape our futures into what they were meant to be. We would take risks and stand our ground and learn and grow and be brave, because love is a tenacious, powerful, infinite force, and it can change the world, one he
Books by Tammara Webber
CONTOURS OF THE HEART® series
Easy
Breakable
Sweet
Brave
BETWEEN THE LINES series
Between the Lines
Where You Are
Good For You
Here Without You
Acknowledgments
Since 2012, Erin has been the secondary character most requested for a spinoff romance. Readers connected with her fierce, protective heart in Easy and wanted more of her, but I didn’t see the right partner for her until Isaac arrived, as heroes do, with baggage of his own. If there is one thread running through my novels, it is that love heals at the deepest connection point between people, and these two had a doozie. It has taken me three years to bring this book to fruition. Thank you for your patience, dear long-time readers. Brave exists because of you.
Special appreciation is due to those who helped make this book better and/or held me accountable (in encouraging, supportive ways!) for putting my butt in the seat and doing the work: Tracey Garvis Graves, Catherine-Rose Thollet, Aimee Salter, Liza Weimer, Elizabeth Reyes, Jamie Wesley, Carmen Pacheco, Robin Deeslie, Kay Miles, Lori Norris, and Anne Victory. Thanks, too, for careful, regular nudges from my wonderful agents, Jane Dystel and Lauren Abramo, and the whole team at Dystel, Goderich and Bourret.
To my husband, Paul, my real-life hero—I could not have survived the past two years without you. When you promised “for better or worse,” you meant it. Zachary, Hannah, and Keith, I adore each of you to the moon and back and am so proud to be your mom. To my parents, in-laws, and birthmom, I love and appreciate each of you and what you’ve meant to my life. I wouldn’t be who I am without you.
A few years ago, a brilliant oncologist-hematologist, Dr. Gregory Friess, told me that the more he knew about the human body, the more he realized what he—and medical science—didn’t know. “Thinking we know everything is when we fail,” he said. That sums up my experience as a published author and as a writer trying to get Isaac Maat down faithfully. The more I studied race relations and the more I thought I understood, the more aware I became of my infinite shortcomings. I was running toward a goal that was moving into the distance. I would never be able to portray him flawlessly.
Then I remembered a favorite writing quote from Margaret Atwood: “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word,” and a wise tidbit from my undergrad creative writing professor, Patrick Murphy: “You can’t edit a blank page.” So I wrote, and I kept reading, and I revised, and I passed the manuscript to others, and I listened, and I revised some more. The novelist John McGahern said that the reader, not the writer, completes the novel. Thank you for being part of that process as my reader. I apologize for what I got wrong or miscommunicated, and I intend to keep listening and learning with the full comprehension that this will be a lifelong process.
In previous Acknowledgments, I’ve asked you to realize that violations inflicted on you or someone you cared about were not your fault. I’ve asked you to not let that thing—whatever it was—define you. I’ve asked you to let go of love that was less than you deserved. I’m not asking you to face something I haven’t, though the circumstances are different for each of us. I have made myself small and taken blame that was not mine. I have been silent and allowed others to define me. I have accepted love that was less than I was worthy of because I was afraid to be alone or lose someone I had outgrown but still carried in my heart.
What I’ve learned: You can love people and let them go. You can love people and leave. You can love people and refuse to accept (or pretend to accept) their ideologies just so they will continue to care about you. Dear reader, do not make yourself into someone you are not for someone else. It’s okay to be flawed, to be unhappy, to need help. It’s also okay to know exactly who you are, what you want, and what you will no longer endure. Telling your truth can mean therapy or the world. Defining yourself can be out loud or in your heart. Leaving a person, a past, or a set of values can be a confrontation or walking silently out the door when you are able. If you need to be loud, be loud. If you need to act in silence, for safety or mental health, be silent. But act. This is your life. Be brave, and live it on your terms.
The following are my favorite Black contemporary romance novelists. If you aren’t already familiar with these ladies, please check out their work—you won’t be disappointed: Nia Forrester, Christina C. Jones, Brittainy Cherry, Delaney Diamond, Jacinta Howard, and Jamie Wesley.
Further Reading
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Random House, 1963.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Penguin Random House, 2015.
Golden, Marita, and Threve, Susan Richards, eds. Skin Deep. Doubleday, 1995.
Rae, Issa. The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Shawl, Nisi, and Ward, Cynthia. Writing the Other. Aqueduct Press, 2005.
Writing With Color, http://www.writingwithcolor.tumblr.com
About the Author
I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life. Before writing full time, I was an undergraduate academic advisor, economics tutor, planetarium office manager, radiology call center rep, and the palest person to ever work at a tanning salon. I married my high school sweetheart, and I'm Mom to three adult kids and four very immature cats.
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Tammara Webber, Brave
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