Chapter 10

You got in trouble for saying crap? That’s not a fucking swear word!

-Dante to his eight-year-old niece.

Dante

I walked into the office, and the first person I saw was my brother.

He looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, looking as dumbfounded as he sounded.

“I own this shit hole,” I muttered, passing him by without slowing.

“Can I hold her?”

I paused, turned, and then hesitated.

Travis narrowed his eyes.

I handed Mary over, and then turned and walked away.

If I stopped, then I’d have to go back and take her away from him.

It was hard for me to give her up. In fact, the only person I’d willingly given her to at this point was Krisney, my brother Reed’s soon-to-be wife, and that was it.

Krisney and I had kept up some over the years since she and Reed had broken up, and when they’d gotten back together, I’d found that she was one of the only people who I didn’t feel threatened by.

Why that was, I didn’t know, but it was what it was.

I couldn’t help my irrational fears.

In reality, I knew that my brothers wouldn’t do my daughter any harm. Then again, when I’d sent my children and wife with my sister, Amy, that day, I hadn’t thought that she was going to kill them, either.

Jaw clenched, I pushed the door to my office open and winced when I saw it exactly as I’d left it.

Had Travis been in here at all since I’d left?

“I haven’t been in here at all since you left. I didn’t want to touch anything.”

I looked around the office. At the stacks of papers on my desk. The picture frames that Lily had put there our last Christmas together, replacing the older, outdated pictures with the newer ones. Hell, even a coffee cup, one that proclaimed me a ‘Papa Bear’ still sat on the edge of the desk. That, and there was dust fuckin’ everywhere.

“I can have the cleaning lady clean if you want.”

I swallowed.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “I think that would be good.”

I took a step into the room, and the first thing I saw was the wall of fuckin’ pictures.

Lily loved pictures.

She loved them so much, in fact, that she put a cork board wall up in my office. Then, when she found the time, she had hundreds of pictures developed. Each picture would somehow find their way to the wall.

The entire wall was covered in mine and Lily’s life.

Our children.

Travis and his daughter.

All of my brothers.

My parents.

Lily’s best friend, Ruthie.

I rubbed my chest absently when one picture, in particular, hurt a little too much to see. A photo of my girls and Amy, laughing as they painted their nails.

“I…” Travis stopped when I wiped my eye. “Dante…”

I cleared my throat. “I’m not going to hide anymore.”

Travis didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry for putting you into the position that I did,” I told him, still studying the wall. “I don’t know that I figured out what to do yet, but I’m going to try.”

Travis’ hand came down on my shoulder.

“Dante, we all understood,” he growled. “We all understood, and we all are here for you, no matter what you decide. Hannah picked up a lot of the slack, and honestly, at this point, you’re just icing on the cake.”

Pretty much, I was no longer needed. Travis had taken over with his new wife, Hannah, taking over for what Lily and I used to do. Where Travis had been the extra hand in the background, now that was me. The place that Lily and I built together was no longer ours, and instead, it was theirs.

But I’d done that to myself.

By disappearing when my wife and children had died, I’d essentially forced Travis to make that decision. I’d made him do something he’d never wanted to do, and for that, I’d have to deal.

A loud smack of skin against skin had my head turning in the direction of my daughter and Travis.

Mary reared back and then struck the palm of her hand against her uncle’s hand once again.

“She’s beautiful, D.”

I studied my daughter and agreed wholeheartedly.

“She saved me.”

Travis’ eyes met mine. “I know. And she’ll never know this, but I thank the lucky stars every single night for her bringing you back to us.”

Before I could reply, though, my phone rang.

I reached for it, never too far from it since the accident, even if I never answered all of the calls.

Placing the phone against my ear, I answered with a short, “Hello?”

“Mr. Hail?”

I frowned.

“Yes?”

“This is Risa Carver, a nurse at the Medical Plaza in Longview?”

I frowned. “Yeah?”

Travis caught Mary’s hand in his and studied me as I listened.

“I’m calling to let you know about Cobie?”

My entire world froze.

“Is she… is she okay?”

God, if she died, I’d feel fuckin’ terrible.

I’d thought about nothing but her over the last four days, which had prompted my trip into the office. I needed something to take my mind off of the woman, and appease the guilt that I was feeling.

Guilt that never went away.

Lily, my wife, was dead.

And I’d only made promises to her for when she was alive. But my heart didn’t agree with that.

That time that I’d slept with Marianne… it’d been a fuckin’ crazy night.

I’d been drinking. Marianne had been drinking. It’d gotten quickly out of hand.

The next morning when I’d woken up in her bed with the mother of all hangovers, the guilt had set in.

I’d slept with another woman who wasn’t my wife for the first time in almost ten years.

And now, my mind was so occupied with everything that had to do with Cobie that I could barely function.

“Oh,” the nurse apologized. “Cobie is perfectly fine. It’s just routine that we call about halfway through surgery to let loved ones know that the surgery is going okay.”

“Surgery?”

I sounded like a goddamned parrot.

“Yes, Cobie’s surgery that started at seven this morning?” the nurse said. “The double mastectomy?”

Double Mastectomy. What. The. Fuck?

She was having surgery?

“Oh, yes,” I lied. “Do they expect her out of surgery soon?”

“She has another four hours or so, they presume. You have plenty of time.”

Plenty of time for what?

“I just wanted you to know how she was doing. If anything happens between now and when they’re done, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Okay, thank you for calling.”

And then she was gone, leaving me standing there, the phone still to my ear, looking at my wall of pictures as my mind raced.

“Who was that?” Travis asked worriedly. “Surgery? What surgery? Is someone having surgery?”

I held my hand up to calm Travis’ worries. “No one you know.”

“No one I know?” he parroted. “But I know everyone you know.”

My brows rose, and I started to chuckle. “Not this girl.”

“Girl?”

My eyes met his, and once again I saw the look of shock on his face.

“Girl,” I confirmed. “Woman. She’s got cancer. I met her… I met her a few days ago.”

It would be too hard to explain to him why I knew this girl. And honestly, I didn’t feel like explaining anything more to him than I already did.

“You met a girl who has cancer a few days ago, she’s having surgery today, and they called you?” He looked confused. “If you just met her, why would they be calling you?”

That was a good question. Yet, I somehow knew why they were calling me.

Most likely, she’d put me down as an emergency contact thinking they wouldn’t call me at all. Wasn’t that usually what happened? But I knew for a fact she wouldn’t have put me down if she thought they were going to call me just for an update.

“Guess that’s a good question,” I muttered, taking one more glance around the room. Taking a deep breath, I turned my back on the wall of pictures and the emotion that was bubbling up inside of me and walked toward my brother. “We’re gonna go.”

Travis held onto Mary when I went to remove her from his arms. “I’ll keep her. I know you’re going to go. And a hospital is no place for a toddler to be.”

I didn’t know what to say.

On one hand, he was right. A hospital was a terrible place for a toddler. Hell, my office was a terrible place for Mary to be. Yet, I couldn’t quite make myself let go. She’d been my saving grace. My hail Mary. The idea of leaving her with Travis had a cold sweat blooming all over my body.

“I swear,” Travis said, reading my mood. “I’d never, not ever, put her in any danger.”

I swallowed, then took a step back.

Travis watched me. “Give her a kiss, man.”

Those words sent me into a tailspin. A memory slammed into me so hard that I gasped in a breath.

***

“Give her a kiss, man,” Travis growled. “We gotta go!”

I grinned and turned to my wife, who was bent over, strapping our kids into my sister’s car.

I walked up behind her and smacked her on the ass, laughing when she yelped and turned.

I caught her head before she could slam it on the roof of the car, and she glowered at me.

“I’m sorry,” I lied. “I don’t know how that happened.”

She snorted, then turned to finish buckling Toni into her car seat even though Toni had been able to do it herself for a while now. At her age, she was well on her way to doing a lot of things on her own. Her momma still doted on her. Then again, her daddy did, too.

Toni was my girl. My mini-me. The little bit of a girl who would always love her daddy more than her mommy.

Which sucked for Lily. Me, not so much.

I walked forward until my hips were pressed against Lily’s backside, and pulled her back by her hips so that she could feel the erection that was clearly evident.

“You’re terrible,” she muttered, backing up.

I let her come, and then grinned when she turned around and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I’m terrible,” I agreed. “But sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

Lily grinned, her bright eyes shining with happiness. “I love you, Dan-Dan.”

I snorted at her pet name for me and wrapped her up tightly. “I’ll be back late. Don’t wait up for me.”

She returned the kiss, and then I let her go before pushing her to the side and leaning into the car. “Y’all be good for Mommy tonight, do you hear?”

“Yes, Daddy,” both girls said like the angels they were.

I snorted. “Love ya!”

Both girls blew me kisses, and I backed out of the car, turning around to see Lily staring at where my ass had once been.

“Now which of us is terrible?”

Lily grinned. “I didn’t smack your ass, which is more than I can say for you.”

I snorted and smacked her ass again as I started to walk away.

“I love you, Dan-Dan!”

I waved at her over my shoulder and took the shotgun seat in Travis’ truck.

“Let’s go.”

We pulled away before Amy had even gotten behind the wheel of the car, and she waved as we made our way out of the parking lot.

Travis and I waved back, passing over the huge bridge that spanned the length of the river.

My eyes went down, and I grinned over at Travis. “We should go fishing. With the river up like it is, the trees won’t stop us from going downstream.”

Travis grunted. “What does it matter? The last time we went fishing in that river, you made me get out and wade over the fallen trees. Even when you said the same damn thing that time, too.”

I chuckled, then sat back in my seat and closed my eyes.

The river was completely forgotten as I thought about all the paperwork that we were going to have to do for this recovery.

It was going to be a long damn day.

***

“D?”

I swallowed and looked up to find not just Travis in the room, but Rafe, Evander, and Parker—another new hire—there as well.

Parker and Rafe had been working there for a while now, but this was my first time actually meeting Parker.

And what I saw in his eyes matched mine.

He’d lost someone, too.

Fuck.

We both looked away from the other’s pain, and I turned to Travis. “If you’re sure about keeping her, I would like you to hang on to her. I don’t know how long I’ll be, though.”

Travis hitched Mary up higher onto his hip, and then walked forward and waited.

I dropped a kiss to Mary’s forehead, once again wishing I could kiss my other two babies one more time, and headed out the door without another word to anyone there.