I clear my throat. “I’m here. Are you okay?”
“Mm-hmm,” she hums, stretching her limbs. “Just ready for bed.”
“You hear that?” Loren intones behind us. “She wants you to take her to bed, Lando.”
I glare at Ethan when he laughs. “Shut up, Lo.”
Daisy finally opens her eyes and reaches out to cup my cheek, making me swallow hard. “It’s okay. She’s just teasing.”
“I know,” I say, clenching my jaw as she caresses it.
“Are you sure you didn’t miss me?” she asks quietly, but I’m frozen. Her expression falls when she realizes I’m not going to answer her the way she wants. “I’m sorry. Can we go home now?”
“Yeah,” I say on a sigh, but we’re interrupted by the sound of my sister squealing behind me.
I turn in time to see Blake sweeping her up into his arms. “That’s it. I’m done,” he declares.
“What are you doing?” Loren asks, giggling.
“Taking you to bed, woman,” Blake replies plainly. “You’ve been teasing me all night. Hell, you’ve been teasing me for the past ten months, and then eighteen years before that.” He leans in and plants a sloppy, tongue-heavy kiss on her, and I choke back my disgust. “And I might just drop dead before I get the chance to bury myself in your?—”
“Okay, I’ll be taking that,” JD steps in and pulls Loren from his arms while Ethan snickers nearby.
“Nooo,” Blake whimpers and stomps his feet. “It’s mine!”
“Not yet,” JD tells him like he’s talking to a child. “One more week before you can open your big-boy gifts, remember?”
Loren snorts from her place in JD’s arms now, and I’m a little jealous. I’m supposed to be the big brother helping her make good decisions. Then I look down into Daisy’s sad eyes, and I realize my sister can’t be my priority anymore. She doesn’t need me the way Daisy does.
“I’ll take her,” JD says to Ethan. “You got Blake?”
Ethan nods and steers Blake in the direction of his own bedroom, his protests growing more muffled as they disappear from sight.
“But I’m not dressed for a Coach JD tuck-in,” Loren whines.
“I’ll find you a flannel nightgown when we get to your room … and a chastity belt,” he mumbles and takes her down the hallway.
I offer a hand to Daisy once we’re alone. But she only stares at it, her eyelids drooping. “I’m sorry. It was getting late, so I took my medicine,” she slurs. “I think I might be stuck here.”
I sigh and lean down to scoop her up, and she struggles to wrap her arms around my neck. I don’t wait for the others to return before I carry her out to my Jeep. I lay her across the backseat, and she rolls over to her side, making it impossible for me to buckle her in. So I take my time driving us home.
Getting her out proves more difficult than I planned. From the way her head flops limply over my arm as we walk inside, I suspect the alcohol strengthened the effects of her medication. I bring her straight to her bed, pull the sheets back, and place her down gently before I drag the covers up over her.
She rolls to her side again and grunts when her hair seemingly gets caught beneath her shoulder, so I reach in to draw the full length of it out behind her. I don’t think she drank enough to make herself sick, but just in case, I quickly pull her hair back into a makeshift braid and secure it with a hair tie I find on her nightstand.
She smiles and sighs in her sleep, and I turn to leave her there when something shiny catches my eye. I creep closer and reach out to examine the ring dangling from a ribbon on the wall, my chest expanding the second I realize it’s her wedding band—the one I placed on her finger the day I married her.
I’d wait a lifetime for her, because she’s it for me. She’s my person.
I scoff when Blake’s words echo in my head once more. Then I drop the ring before I hurry off to my own bedroom.
CHAPTER 19
daisy
“Landry … your face,”I whisper and nudge him in the shoulder, and his expression softens a second later. But I can almost hear him grinding his teeth as he watches his sister pose for a group picture around a baptismal font with her soon-to-be in-laws. Blake holds baby Jake up proudly, and JD pulls Charley’s bonnet back to kiss the top of her head, then he turns and does the same to Penny from her spot in Tenley’s arms.
Landry clears his throat. “He shouldn’t be kissing the babies like that. Who knows what he could be passing on to the girls, especially with their preemie immune systems?”
