“Of course I did, you idiot,” I say through my tears. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”
“I told you to stay safe. To protect the boys.”
“And I told you I was coming back for you. I meant it.”
Something in his expression shifts. Softens. “Parker?—”
“Don’t.” I stand up, move to the edge of the bed where I can touch his face, careful of the oxygen cannula, the monitors. “Don’t you dare apologize for what happened. Don’t you dare try to take responsibility for Aria’s insanity. You’re alive. You’re here. That’s all that matters.”
“The boys,” he starts again.
“Are fine. Are perfect. Are right where they need to be.” I lean down and press my forehead to his carefully. “We’re all right where we need to be.”
His hand comes up, tangles in my hair, holds me there.
“I love you,” he whispers. “In case I didn’t say it enough before.”
“You didn’t,” I whisper back. “So you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life making up for it.”
“Deal.”
Behind us, Jace clears his throat. “We should probably get a doctor. Let them know he’s awake.”
“In a minute,” Cal says quietly. “Let them have this.”
So we stay like that. Me and Silas and our boys all tangled together on a hospital bed, Jace and Cal standing guard like they always do, and for the first time in four days, I let myself breathe.
He’s alive.
We’re together.
Everything else, we’ll figure out.
56
CAL
The living room of our guest house smells like coffee and the antiseptic from Silas’s bandage changes, a combination that’s become as familiar as breathing over the past two weeks. We’re all here—me on the couch, Jace in the armchair by the window, Parker perched on the arm of the sofa near me, and Silas in the recliner that’s become his throne since we got him home from the hospital.
He’s moving better now. Slower than his usual predator grace, but better. The chest wounds are healing clean, the doctors said. No infection. No complications. Just time and rest, and the kind of stubborn resilience that Silas has in spades.
Not that he makes it easy on anyone.
This morning, Parker tried to help him down the stairs and got a growled“I can walk down my own fucking stairs”for her trouble. Yesterday, Jace attempted to carry his laundry and received a string of profanity creative enough that I’m pretty sure he invented new curse words. I learned my lesson three days ago when I tried to bring him breakfast in bed, and he toldme if I treated him like an invalid one more time, he’d shoot me in the leg so we could be even.
The only people allowed to help him are Noah and Liam.
Watching those two five-year-olds bring Silas water, fluff his pillows, and generally fuss over him while he accepts it with patience and gratitude is both hilarious and somehow perfectly right. They’ve taken their caretaker roles seriously, drawing him get-well cards every day and insisting on sitting with him during his physical therapy exercises.
Right now, though, the boys are up the hill at Charles and Sienna’s house with Lottie and Jimmy. We made sure of that before we agreed to do this. Before Parker pulled up the email that’s been sitting in her inbox for three days, unopened, waiting.
The paternity results.
My stomach has been in knots since she mentioned it this morning. Not because I’m worried about the results—I know Noah is mine the same way I know my own heartbeat, have known it since the moment I saw him at the funeral with those amber eyes that are an exact copy of mine—but because of what it means.
What it changes.
What it confirms.
