I blinked and glanced around at the hospital room that was vastly different to the surgical hub I’d woken upin. “Oh.”
“Don’t freak. You’re going to be drowsy for a few hours yet, but I’ll be here everysecond,okay?”
“I’m notfreaking.”
Pete leaned over the bed and peered at me. “You’re not,areyou?”
“No.” And I wasn’t. At some point in my adult life, I’d become informed enough to know that having your appendix out wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it was far from the worst thing that could happen to you. I’d seen Pete endure terrible pain after his accident a few years ago, and that combined with the week we’d spent with Max and Jed had gifted me a perspective I might not have had otherwise. My only fear had been of the standard issue narcotics, but Glenn had fought my corner. Whatever drug was filtering through my blood now had nothing on the sweet hit of heroin I’d left behind all those years ago. “Pete, I’m fine.Honest.”
“Good. I should probably tell you the news, then, if you’re really awakethistime?”
My brain clicked again. Danni. Fuck. “Did she havethebaby?”
Pete grinned broadly. “Yup. A boy. He was born right before you went totheOR.”
“And you didn’ttellme?”
“Nah, I kinda pushed it to the back of my mind. Too busyhyperventilating.”
Pete wasn’t prone to panic—brooding was more his style—but having walked in his shoes when he’d had surgery, I could well imagine his stress. “IsDanniokay?”
“Yeah. It was a long labor, but she kicked ass and thebaby’sfine.”
“Have you seen him? What’s his name? What did heweigh?”
Pete held up his hands. “Easy. I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you. Joe went back upstairs before you were taken to the OR, and I wanted to wait for you before I saw the baby for thefirsttime.”
“You’resweet.”
“No, I’m an asshole. But this is special, so we gotta do it together. Besides, it’s going to take both of us to stop them naming the poor little bug something totally fuckingridiculous.”
I loved him so much, even if the expression on his face made me laugh hard enough to make my eyes water. “You’re not an asshole. Iloveyou.”
Pete eased himself gently onto the hospital bed and slipped his arm around my shoulders. “I love you too. Now rest up so we can take this party home, yeah? We got a family to takecareof.”
Family. Pete. Family. Pete. For a long time, it had just been me and him and Maggie. But life kept moving and the circle kept turning, and I drifted back to sleep, safe in the knowledge that our patchwork clan was strongerthanever.
Epilogue
Ash
August
Pete liked the smell of babies. He’d been denying it since Cosmo was born, but everyone knew it was true. I watched him carry Billy down to the water and dip his toes in the lake, all the while keeping his nose buried in the baby’s white-blond curls, and my chest felt like it would fuckingburst.
Max dropped down beside me, digging his toes into the dirt just like Cosmo always did. “Your sister isbeautiful.”
“Thanks. So isyours.”
“When she’s nottalking.”
I laughed. I’d finally been cornered by Max’s art-collector sister a few weeks ago, and I’d barely got a word in, though I’d somehow sold her the paintings gathering dust in the van, and come away with an agreement to facilitate several exhibitions this fall. Nicola would be pleased. Me? I still didn’t care. The money looked after my family, and there wasnothingelse.
Sun in my face, I lay back on the ground and surveyed the scene before me. Pete, Billy, and Liam were playing in the lake, chasing the tiny fish with the net Pete had built from scratch, Zola hovering close by. Liam had been scared of the water when we’d first brought him here, but not now. Early summer had found Pete teaching him how to swim and fish and steer the tiny, wooden boat Max had given us. All the things his own father had taught him. Our part-time life by the lake had promised so much, but the holistic power it would have on Pete and Liam, I hadn’t seencoming.
“I hear you met Raffi,” Max said. “Quite acharacter,eh?”
I tore my gaze from Pete’s shirtless torso, his tanned skin glowing in the rare Oregon sunshine, and focused on Max and the memory of the quiet Brazilian man I’d met in Chicago last weekend. “It was hard to tell. He didn’tsaymuch.”
