Frowning, Danny looked down at the woman softly snoring in his arms. “You drugged her?”
“Put it in her apple juice,” his father said with a shrug. “She was in pain and refused to take anything for it, so I drugged her.”
“I see,” Danny mumbled and just like that, the silence became awkward.
That is until his father decided to pick up where they’d left off.
“I’d raised you to face your mistakes, Danny.”
“Don’t start this shit again,” Danny said, grinding his jaw as he looked up to face his father.
“You ran off, Danny,” his father said, rubbing the back of his neck as he shook his head, looking a little lost. “You just ran.”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” Danny said evenly.
His father met his gaze as he said, “No, I didn’t. I kept pushing you when I should have just accepted the fact that you weren’t perfect, Danny.”
“I never said that I was.”
“No,” his father said softly, “you didn’t, but in my eyes, you were. You were a smart kid, a great brother, a wonderful son, a cocky little bastard, but to me you were perfect. When you proved me wrong, I lost it. I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was that morning, Danny. I thought I was going to lose you and when you pulled through and I thought about just how easily I could have lost you over something so stupid,” he paused, shaking his head, “I just lost it.”
“Things worked out,” Danny said, surprised by just how much it hurt him to hear his father admit that he’d fucked up. For years, he’d imagined this moment, imagined his father taking the blame, but right now, for the first time since he’d come out of that coma, he wished that his father would stop talking.
His father nodded. “For the most part, they did. The Marines did for you what I never could but at a cost.”
“Why did you stop talking to me?” Danny forced himself to ask.
“Because I didn’t know what to say to you without pushing you away again, Danny. I just…” he shook his head, looking away, “I just didn’t know what to say that would make what I did to you okay.”
“You didn’t do anything to me,” Danny said, sighing because his father wasn’t to blame for how his life turned out. “You were right. I was cocky and when I fucked up. I acted like a spoiled brat and ran off, thinking that I was taking the easy way out with the Marines. They taught me a great deal and helped me grow up.”
“I still pushed you away,” his father said, looking tormented. “I never should have done that.
“Yes, you did, but so did I. We both fucked this up.”
His father raised his hand and laid it over his where it rested on Jodi’s hip. “I won’t make that mistake again,” his father promised, giving his hand a squeeze.
He opened his mouth to promise his father the same when the small woman in his arms cut him off.
“If you girls are done talking, I could really use a double chocolate donut.”
He looked up at his father just in time to catch the panicked expression on his face. “Oh, shit…” his father mumbled, swallowing nervously as he released his hand and stumbled back away from the bed as Danny sighed, resigning himself to the next twelve hours of hell with the woman that he loved.
Epilogue
Five Months Later…
“Do you need anything else?” Jodi asked, absently rubbing her large belly.
Danny rolled his eyes playfully as he rolled away from the table. “I’m fine, Tinkerbelle.”
“Are you sure?” Jodi asked, walking over to the refrigerator so that she could make sure that everything was within his reach. Once she’d made sure that he could reach the beer and soda to watch his game, she moved onto the counters and double-checked that he could reach all his favorite snacks.
“Tinkerbelle…” Danny said in a chiding tone with a touch of exasperation. “I’m fine. Go take your shower.”
She glanced around the large country kitchen in their new house and sighed at the stacks of boxes that she still needed to go through and nearly groaned. She should go through a few more of these boxes before she even thought about taking a shower, but she was so tired. All she wanted to do was take a shower and curl up in bed and sleep for the next two days, but there was just too much to do.
They’d been back for almost two months, but it felt like only two days. It seemed like she’d been going non-stop since the moment that she came out of her drug-induced haze. Danny had broken his back in three places and had needed around-the-clock care and two additional surgeries to fix everything. A week after her surgery to fix her hand, she’d made the choice to stay with him in Florida while he recovered.
