***
Three hours later, I had Catori, my five-year-old niece, in my lap as I watched her parents fight.
“You what?” Winter yelled.
“I swear to God, Winter, I didn’t fuckin’ mean to do it!” Jack growled, throwing his hands up in the air.
“You can’t just go and do this shit without freakin’ telling me! I’m your wife, I deserve to know if you’re going to go do something life-changing like this,” Winter spat.
I grinned.
“I would hardly call a tattoo life-changing, Winter. I would probably call it more of a…,” he hesitated, looking over at his daughter that was in my lap.
“Call it more of a what?” Winter asked, not realizing that her daughter was listening avidly.
“A sexual enhancement,” he said, looking over at his child once again.
Winter burst out laughing.
“Honey, you could wear a damn sack over your head, and I’d still fuck you,” Winter teased.
“What is fuck?” Catori asked.
Jack shot Winter a dirty look.
She shrugged unabashedly.
“So, what did you come over here to talk about?” Winter asked, plopping down onto the couch right next to me.
She growled and leaned towards me, pulling a naked Barbie doll out from under her ass and tossing it to the already-cluttered-with-cars-and-Barbie-shoes coffee table.
“You get a call from the doctor yet?” I asked.
“No. Why?” My brother questioned.
I shifted Catori until she was on the couch next to me and wrapped my free arm around Winter.
Winter leaned into my shoulder and laid her head against my chest.
My brother ignored that, instead pulling out his phone from his pocket and scanning it.
“Yeah, I got a call from a number I don’t know. Why?” He pushed.
Instead of listening to the voicemail he knew I would explain, he waited to hear it from me.
“You’re a match for that little boy,” I said.
He blinked, then his face became contemplative.
“That’s good. What’s the time frame here?” He asked.
No backing out for my brother.
He was always the hero.
He had to be when it came to me.
I was the bad boy. The one who couldn’t take care of himself. Jack, however, cared for me when nobody, not even I, could.
And, unfortunately, I’d been too caught up in my own crap to save. I had to want to be saved, and I hadn’t been ready to do that until after Adam had died.
My mind, however, shied away from thinking about Adam.
The man I was supposed to protect but didn’t.
My firefighter partner.
My brother’s best friend.
The man I’d watched blow apart into tiny fleshy pieces…
“Tai!” Winter said. “What are you thinking about? Your heart is racing.”
I shook my head, hoping the shaking would physically force those wayward thoughts from my brain.
“Nothing. The doc told me that on Monday you’ll go in for the testing to confirm that you are the perfect match.” I said. Once that’s all done, he said we’d move on to scheduling the donation and transplantation procedures,”
“You do realize, right, that you’re going to have to take it easy for at least a week. You’ll probably have some pain for that first week or so, and you might be tired, too. You can forget going to the gym for a while, too, buddy. It’ll be a month and a half at least before your body replaces that marrow. While you’re recovering from that, I’ll have my eyes on you,” Winter said, pulling her knees to her chest while leaning her head in my direction in a silent request for me to scratch it.
I did.
Winter and I had a weird relationship.
I’d begun to be a lot more open with my feelings for Winter.
I’d thought I’d lost her once, and I wasn’t going to waste life’s precious moments anymore.
If she liked it when I played with her hair – and I wasn’t special here, she liked it when her husband and son played with her hair, too – then I’d do it.
Why?
Because a little over six years ago, I’d thought she was dead.
For all intents and purposes, she had been.
She’d lost her memory and then was assumed dead when a body had been found that they thought was her.
Without going into all of the reasons why that whole situation was beyond fucked up, I’d learned two things.
One, I needed to get my head out of my ass and step up to the plate of life.
And two, I owed it to my family to start living my life the way I should have been doing from the very start.
“It won’t be that bad, baby. I’ll be good to go in week, tops,” Jack said.
I grinned.
“That’s not quite what the doctor said,” I offered.
He sneered at me.
“Nobody asked you, baby brother,” he snapped. “So, you never told me about the woman. She had to be hot to illicit this sort of a reaction from you.”
I flipped him off, and Catori repeated the gesture, causing Winter to snort.
“Seriously,” Jack said. “Y’all need to stop. The bus driver sent a note home with her today telling me that she was cursing out the kids in the back seats.”
I laughed.
“Catori, are you saying bad names?” Winter asked, ignoring me.
“No, mommy. I’m not,” Catori lied.
“Alright,” Winter said, believing her. “What does everyone want for dinner?”
I shook my head and stood up, dislodging Winter and Catori at the same time.
“I can’t. I have to be on shift tomorrow morning, and I’ve been up a solid forty-eight hours trying to drum up donors,” I said. “Which, as it turns out I didn’t need to do since you’ve magically produced the correct perfectness without me having to go further than a couple feet.”
“That’s because I am perfect,” Jack said, standing now as well.
“Whatever,” Winter snorted. “Go check on that other kid of yours.”
“That other kid?” I asked.
Winter shrugged.
“I’m mad at him,” she said.
I raised a brow at her.
“Why?” I asked.
“Mommy doesn’t like it when Adam calls her ‘mom’ instead of ‘mommy’, so she’s mad at him,” Catori explained in that way that only a five-year-old could.
“What’s wrong with him calling you mom?” I asked.
Winter glared.
“You don’t have kids. You wouldn’t understand,” she challenged.
I held up my hands in a placating gesture.
“Okay. You have my permission to bring this up in fifteen years,” I teased.
“Don’t worry,” Jack said, coming into the room with Adam on his hip. “She likes to bring up things that happened ten years ago. Shit I can’t even remember happening, and she doesn’t need permission.”
Winter punched him in the stomach, causing him to laugh.
“Shut up!” She yelled.
Jack grinned unrepentantly.
With that, I left.
I had to be at work early in the morning, and the Kilgore Fire Department had a little boy to go see.