He left and I was alone with the two souls who’d made my existence fun again. Who’d loved the damaged parts of me enough to bring me to life. To make me a better father. A better brother. A better friend.
A lover who could offer something real.
Orla sat on my knee, fussing with Hope’s dark curls. “You look so good with that baby I could eat you both whole.”
Nash snorted. “Leave some for the rest of us.”
“Someone’s feeling better.” Orla flicked him.
Nash grinned a little wider. “I took a nap on Locke.”
“That’ll do it.” Orla hit Nash with a smile that transfixed him. He gazed back, love in every fibre of his sweet soul, and I was happy to exist in their orbit.
I shifted Hope to lie in my arms. She was growing fast, but I had big arms.Strongarms. My body had been tired for years, but these last few days, watching Nash haul himself from the ashes, had sparked something in me. I had some years on him, but I was done letting the past weigh me down. I loved these young fuckers, and I’d keep up with them for the rest of my fuckin’ life.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Orla traced my lips with the tip of her finger.
I thought about biting it.
Remembered I had a baby.
“I’m thinking about how I’ve been worried all this time about being broken physically when it was my head all along.”
“You’re not broken,” Nash countered. “Give yourself more credit.”
“I am—I do. It’s just hard to believe you deserve that side of me sometimes, and I know you understand that.”
They both did, but it was Nash who reached for his phone.
He tapped a blunt nail to the black and white image of his leg before he’d had surgery to put it back together. Seven shades of horrific, but I’d seen it before. Accepted it, cos what else was there?
“What’s your point?”
Nash swiped the screen and another image popped up, less familiar, less clear.
“My fallopian tube.” Orla pointed at the shadows blurring the image. “It’s blocked by endo, and my other one isn’t reliably functional.”
“And that’s my point.” Nash switched back to the X-Ray of his smashed bones. “You love us here, right? All this mess and destruction? Why would how we love you be any different?”
The real question was how could I love themmore? Every time I thought I knew the answer, something else happened to prove me fuckin’ wrong. “Can I tell you the truth?”
“You’re not a liar, brother.”
“Not anymore. But I had to be for the longest time, and that changed because of everything you two have ever done for me. Every moment you’ve loved me, even when I threw it back in your face, and I need you to know that I’m waking up these days feeling eternally fuckin’ blessed, and no damn scars, yours or mine, are ever going to take that away from us.”
“Not even my crocked dick?”
“Imaginarycrocked dick.”
“Crocked dicks?” Orla’s sharp gaze darted between us. “What have I missed?”
“Daddy Locke fixing me.”
Nash’s boyish smirk ruined me, a belly laugh searing my lungs as I held it in for the sake of the child in my arms. “Babe, you were never broken. None of us were.”
Orla kissed me. “Finally. Some logic.”
30
