For the last twelve hours, I’d been alternating pacing in the waiting room, the hallway, and my grandfather’s room. I would’ve loved to go outside and get some air that didn’t stink of disinfectant and illness, but the doctor’s words kept echoing in my head, and with them came a host of memories I didn’t want.

I’d been eight when the accident happened. Like Cai and Slade, I’d been with friends, and we’d stayed there while Grandfather had taken care of things. It hadn’t been until years later that I learned what happened that night. That my dad hadn’t been killed right away like Mom and Aimee but had been unconscious when he reached the hospital. He and Blake had both been taken to the hospital. Dad had never woken up, but Grandfather had still seen him.

I hadn’t. In fact, my last memory of the family I’d lost that night had been me getting reprimanded for teasing the twins. I’d never seen my parents or sister again. They’d been cremated, their ashes placed in the family vault. The funeral had been formal, completely planned by my grandparents. They’d been so worried about what we’d lost, they hadn’t asked us if we’d wanted to see our parents one last time, so we could say goodbye.

As much as I struggled with resenting my grandfather for not giving me the opportunity to see my dad one last time, I didn’t want the same thing to happen with him. I planned on being here until the end.

“Is there anything else you need?”

Blossom’s voice pulled me out of the past, and I was grateful for it. This was bad, but that was worse.

“No, thank you, Blossom.” I gave her a polite smile. “This is good for now, but I may need you to run things back and forth until…”

I let my voice trail off, unable to say it yet.

She reached over and put her hand on my arm. “Whatever you need, I’m here for you. No matter when you need me.”

“Thank you.”

She didn’t ask if I was thanking her for the offer, or for bringing me my work laptop and files, and I was glad because I honestly didn’t know how I would’ve answered that. But I was still glad she was there. I didn’t have many people in my life I could count on, and with her, I always knew where I stood.

I went back into Grandfather’s room and took the uncomfortable seat in the corner. He was sleeping again, or rather, still. He’d been awake for about ten minutes the first time I’d seen him, but since then, every time I’d come into the room, he’d been out.

I could barely look at him, which made me even more grateful that I had something to do. Except I couldn’t concentrate. I’d start to read a sentence, then get distracted by his heart monitor. Or how still he was laying. Or how old he looked.

Or the fact that he was never going to leave that bed.

And that was always when I started looking at my phone to see if I had any messages from my brothers. As tense as things were sure to be between us, it’d be better than sitting here by myself.

It was well into mid-afternoon when I heard someone enter the room. It’d been three years since I’d last seen him, but I recognized the sound of his footsteps. Cai and I were thirteen months apart in age, and I didn’t have a single childhood memory that didn’t have him in it.

I looked up, and for a moment, the child I’d known and the man he’d become overlapped. The golden blond hair and bright blue eyes were the same. Cai had always been tall, but his freshman year of college, he’d gone from matching me at six feet, two inches, to passing me up by three inches, making him the tallest of us four.

“Jax.” His voice was still as calm and even as always.

I’d always loved trying to make him mad when we were growing up, but I’d rarely ever managed it.

“Cai.” I stood and quickly crossed the space between us. I held out a hand, and we had a moment of awkward hug-or-shake before he shook my hand. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t had a private plane ready for me.” He shrugged off the bag he was carrying and walked over to the bed. “What happened?”

“His heart.” I stuck my hands in my pockets and went to stand next to Cai. “We had a meeting Thursday afternoon, and he was fine.”

My brother gave me a sharp look, and I prepared myself for the reprimand.

“Don’t you live in the same house?”

I rubbed my forehead, but it didn’t make a difference to the headache I’d had almost since I’d first gotten here. “You know how huge that house is, and how independent he is. Do you think he’d tolerate me keeping tabs on him?”

Cai didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. I already knew the list I’d get from my brothers of how I’d fucked up.

“It came out of nowhere,” I said. “Dr. Kassum said there was nothing in Grandfather’s medical history that could’ve predicted this.”

A moment of awkward silence fell, and I tried to figure out something I could say. Things hadn’t always been easy between us, but after the accident, Cai had disappeared on me. I’d needed his help with Slade and Blake, but he’d gone off and done his own thing. He was still doing that. He was questioning how often I’d seen Grandfather, but Cai hadn’t even been back to Boston in three years. I was the one who’d stayed, who’d taken over the family business.

“How’s business?” Cai asked, almost as if he’d known where my thoughts had gone.

“Good,” I said. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about my ideas for a club, but I held back. He was just being polite. He’d never cared about Hunter Enterprises. Hell, I didn’t think he even cared about his dividend check. “How’s work?”

He shrugged. “Dealing with epidemics isn’t exactly as glamorous as traveling around on the company jet.”

I gritted my teeth. He had to go there. I’d rented private planes for him and Blake, so I could send the company jet to pick up Slade in Texas. It hadn’t been a slight. But that was Cai. Always picking at the way I did things.

“Well, we can’t all be doctors.” That came out a lot glibber than I’d meant it, but that was how it’d been between Cai and me for more than twenty years.

“Some things never change.”

Grandfather’s hoarse voice cut through the tension.

“You’re awake.” I tried not to let the relief bleed into my voice, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded.

“Don’t worry, Jax, I’ll stick around until the rest of the boys get here.” His eyes were calm as they met mine, and I wondered if he’d always known how I’d felt about not saying goodbye to my dad.

“I’d like to speak to your doctor,” Cai said, squeezing his hand. “I want to make sure they’ve thought of all possible treatments. It’s always good to have second opinions.”

I wanted to remind him that his area of expertise was infectious diseases, which worked great at the CDC but wouldn’t do shit for Grandfather’s heart, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I wasn’t about to waste what little time we had with Grandfather arguing with my brother.

“Dr. Kassum is one of the premier cardiac specialists in the country,” Grandfather said.

I recognized the stubborn set of Cai’s jaw because all of us Hunter men had it. He wasn’t going to let it go.

“There’s nothing more to be done.”

And there was the voice of the Hunter patriarch. When he said things were finished, they were finished.

I just never imagined that he’d be talking about himself.

* * *

Grandfather was sleeping again, and Cai had left, muttering something about coffee. I was certain he was going to try to hunt down Dr. Kassum, or one of the senior staff. Once he got something in his head, he didn’t give up for anything. I wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it though. A small part of me even hoped that he’d prove all of us wrong and come up with a solution that made all this worry and waiting for nothing.

But I didn’t believe it would happen any more than I believed Grandfather would miraculously get better. I saw it in his eyes. He was done fighting.

“How is he?”

I pushed myself out of the chair as Slade and Blake came into the room. Slade had texted me when he arrived, letting me know that Blake was only a few minutes behind him and that the two of them would be coming in together.

Of all of us, Slade was the only one who looked like Mom. He had her dark brown hair, easy smile, and a lot of the same features just morphed into something a bit more masculine. His eyes were the only thing of Dad he had, but his baby blues sparkled the same way Mom’s always had when she laughed.

With a start, I realized that this year, he’d be the same age Mom had been when she died. I wondered if he knew it.

“He’s been awake on and off,” I said quietly. “But when he’s awake, his mind’s clear.”

Slade nodded, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “You know, I think a part of me thought he’d outlive us all.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

Of all my brothers, Slade was the easiest to get along with. Maybe that was why he’d chosen to move to Texas, so he wouldn’t get caught in the middle like he had so often as a kid. It hadn’t been fair of us to do that to him, especially me. I’d been the oldest, and I should’ve looked out for him more, but this wasn’t the time or place to discuss old grievances and open old wounds.

I gave Slade a half-hug, trying to remember the last person I’d hugged before this, and I couldn’t think of anyone. Blossom had done the sympathetic arm squeeze thing, and that was rare for her. It wasn’t so much a professional thing with her as it was her personality. The women I slept with never hugged me. We kissed, fucked, and sometimes laid next to each other, but we didn’t hug.

When I stepped back, I turned my attention to my youngest brother. We wouldn’t hug. By the time he was ten, he’d declared that he was too old to be ‘hugged like a baby’ and that had been that. Like all of us, he had blue eyes and was tall, but he was muscular too, making him look even bigger. His light brown hair was scruffy, longer than when I’d last seen him, and he had at least three days’ growth of a beard on his face. He looked more like someone we’d dragged from the mountains than part of one of Boston’s most prominent families.

The sullen glower on his face didn’t help matters much.

The circumstances being what they were, however, made me focus on what was important.

“I’m glad you guys made it.”

The in-time part of my sentence hung in the air between us.

I stepped aside and let my brothers walk over to the bed while I hung back. I’d had my time, and it was now their turn.

Slade had been only five when our parents died, but he had a few memories of them. Blake had been four, but he didn’t have any memories of anything before the accident. He’d been in the car, conscious and crying until the paramedics had arrived. We’d all lost our parents and a sister, but Aimee had been his twin, and they’d been inseparable.

This was going to be hard on all of us, but I suspected it would be the worst for Blake. We were losing our grandfather, but Blake was losing the closest thing to a father that he remembered. With our own relationships so…distant, I doubted Grandfather’s death would bring us together. If anything, it would tear us even further apart. I needed to accept the fact that, barring a miracle, this would probably be the last time I saw my brothers, maybe ever.