Free Willow Spring by Toni Blake

felt because she didn’t even know them. Walls. She was so used to putting up walls to protect herself.
    But still she stood between them, soaking up their emotions for her, and she realized that it didn’t feel odd to have these two strangers hugging her. It didn’t feel weird at all. And she began to understand that deep down inside, she did feel a connection to them. Already. Or maybe . . . always?
    And without quite knowing what was happening, tears began to roll down her cheeks, too. For the lost life with these people that she would never know, never recover, never get back. For all the years and love she’d missed. For all the pain they’d suffered because of her. And though this wasn’t going to be easy, maybe Logan was right—maybe she belonged here.
    After that came the slightly awkward moment of separating, and reaching for tissues, and the slightly embarrassed laughter that somehow put her at ease to be standing around crying and wiping her eyes with people she didn’t know even though they’d given birth to her.
    But it wasn’t over yet—because that was when she made eye contact with the largest guy in the room, whose eyes yet looked unaccountably gentle. It was her other brother, Lucky. His hair was long and his arms covered with tattoos, and she knew from Mike that, though he was now settling down and getting married, he’d once been in an outlaw biker gang in California. And so he should have maybe scared her a little. But the truth was, she felt immediately drawn to him, immediately safe with him, and . . . and as if somehow she maybe almost remembered him. “Lucky,” she said softly when he looked too shy to speak.
    He nodded, swallowed visibly, and said, “Yeah.” And this time, on gut instinct, she was the one to initiate the hug, surprised once more to discover how right and pure it felt to be in his burly embrace.
    And after a long, warm moment, he whispered in her ear, “I’m so glad you’re home now. I have your name on my chest.”
    And it struck her as an awkward thing to say, and yet the earnestness in his voice negated that, along with finding out that this man holding her now had tattooed the memory of her onto his skin, that she’d been that important to him. As more tears threatened, she pulled back to say, “Can I see?”
    And though he looked a bit sheepish doing it, Lucky reached down to peel the black T-shirt he wore upward over a well-muscled stomach and chest until she saw two names tattooed in dark script across his flesh: Tessa’s and her own. And for some reason, seeing it there made her cry a little more. And more tissues were handed around, and more nervous laughter resonated until finally Mike said, “Lasagna’s done, so let’s eat.”
    The meal, to her surprise, was easier. Being an only child of a working single parent, Anna had spent her fair share of time at friends’ houses, with their families, and this felt like that . It was easy to sit and listen to them talk, and she found she liked drinking in the cadence of their voices, hearing how they interacted with each other. Sometimes they asked her questions, but thankfully it was simple stuff.
    “Anna,” her new mother said, “I haven’t even asked—where do you work? What do you do?”
    “I have a degree in hotel management,” she explained, “and I’ve been with the Hyatt chain since before I was out of college. But I’m taking some time off right now.” The truth was, she’d resigned. Her mother’s death had brought her a surprising inheritance, passed down from Claudia Karras’s parents and saved for Anna—it was way more than enough to buy her dream car and to take some time away from work. Not that she’d ever expected that she’d want or need so much time away. But her mother’s deathbed confession had turned her world upside down. And the car indulgence . . . well, she could blame that on temporary insanity, but the fact was, she didn’t regret it—she loved her