“You look like shit,” Nash rasped.
The lights were on low in the room. My brother was propped up in his hospital bed, chest bare to reveal bandages and gauze over his left shoulder.
Machines beeped, screens glowed.
He looked pale. Vulnerable.
My hands clenched into fists at my sides.
“I could say the same about you,” I said, rounding the bed slowly to sink into the chair by the dark window.
“Looks worse than it is.” His voice was barely a whisper.
I rested my elbows on my knees and tried to look relaxed. But inside, a rage simmered in my gut. Someone had tried to end Nash’s life. You didn’t mess with a Morgan and walk away from it.
“Some asshole tried to kill you tonight.”
“You mad someone almost beat you to it?”
“They know who did it?” I asked.
The corner of his mouth lifted as if it were too much effort to smile.
“Why? You gonna get him back?”
“You almost died, Nash. Grave said you came this close to bleeding out before the ambulance got there.” The truth of it had bile rising in my throat.
“It’s gonna take more than a couple of bullets and a wrestling match to end me,” he assured me.
I ran my palms over my knees. Back and forth, trying to tamp down the anger. The need to break something.
“Naomi was here.” Even as I said it, I didn’t know why. Maybe just saying her name out loud made everything feel a little more bearable.
“Of course she was. She thinks I’m hot.”
“I don’t care how many bullet holes you’ve got in you. I’m moving on that,” I told him.
Nash’s sigh was closer to a wheeze. “About damn time. Quicker you screw it up, the quicker I can swoop in and be the good guy.”
“Fuck off, dick.”
“Hey, who’s the one in the hospital bed, asshole? I’m a damn hero.
Women can’t resist a hero with bullet holes.”
The hero in question winced when he shifted in the bed, his hand reaching for the tray then falling back to the mattress.
I rose and poured the water bottle into the waiting cup. “Yeah, well, maybe you should stay in here out of my way for a couple of days. Give me a shot at fucking it all up.”
I pushed the cup and straw to the edge of the tray and watched him reach for it with his good arm. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, and his hand shook as his fingers closed around the plastic.
I’d never seen him like this. I’d seen him every other way. Hungover, wrung out from the flu bug of 1996, exhausted after pouring his heart out in the homecoming football game his senior year. But I’d never seen him look weak.
Another nurse pulled back the curtain with an apologetic smile. “Just checking the fluids,” he said.
Nash gave him a thumbs-up, and we lapsed into silence while the nurse busied himself with IVs. My brother was hooked to a half dozen machines in the ICU. And I’d gone years with barely speaking to him.
“How’s your pain?” the nurse asked.
“Fine. Practically non-existent.”
His answer was too quick. His mouth too tight. My brother had played the second half of that homecoming game with a broken wrist. Because he might be the nice brother, the good brother. But he didn’t like showing weakness any more than I did.
“He’s in it,” I tattled to the nurse.
“Don’t listen to him,” Nash insisted. But he couldn’t hide the grimace when he shifted on the mattress.
“A bullet just ripped its way through your torso, chief. You don’t have to be in pain to heal,” he said.
“Yeah. You do,” he countered. “Pain is what tells you you’re alive. You numb that, and how do you know you’re still here?”
“She thinks we’re both idiots,” I said when the nurse left.
Nash gave a wheeze followed by a wracking cough that looked like it was going to tear him apart before collapsing back on the bed. I watched the green spikes on his heart rate monitor slowly settle. “Who?” he said, finally.
“Naomi.”
“Why would Naomi think I’m an idiot?” he asked wearily.
“Told her why things are the way they are.”
“She wasn’t impressed with your Robin Hood routine or my manly independence?”
“Not even a little. She may have made a few points.”
“About what?”
“About how she thought it was over a woman. Not money.”
Nash’s head was slowly lolling to the side, his eyelids getting heavier.
“So love is worth a family feud but a few million isn’t?”
“That was the gist of it.”
“Can’t say she’s wrong.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you just suck it up and make it right?” I snapped.
Nash’s smile was a ghost. His eyes were closed. “You’re the big brother.
And you were the one trying to make me beholden to you by shoving cash down my throat.”
“The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is you’re attached to too many machines.”
He gave me a weak middle finger.
“Jesus,” I grumbled. “I didn’t want you to be beholden or whatever the fuck to me. We’re family. We’re brothers. One of us wins, we both win.” It also meant if one of us lost, we both did. And that was what the last few years had been. A loss.
Fuck. I hated losing.
“Didn’t want the money,” he said, his words slurring. “Wanted to build things on my own.”
“You could’ve put it away for retirement or some shit,” I complained.
The same old cocktail of feelings was trying to rise in me. Rejection. Failure.
Righteous fury. “You deserved some good. After the shit we went through, then Liza J losing Pop. You deserved more than a cop salary from some shitty town.”
“Our shitty town,” he corrected. “Made it ours. You in your way. Me in mine.”
Maybe he was right. But that didn’t matter. What did matter was the fact that if he would have taken the cash, he wouldn’t be here in this hospital room. My little brother would be making a difference some other way.
Without toeing the line. Without paying the price.
“Should have kept the money. If you had, you wouldn’t be lying here like roadkill.”
Nash shook his head slowly against the pillow. “I was always gonna be the good guy.”
“Shut up and go to sleep,” I told him.
“We went through some shit. But I always had my big brother. Always knew I could count on you. Didn’t need your money on top of that.”
Nash’s shoulders sagged. Sleep took him under its spell, leaving me to sit in silent vigil.
THE AUTOMATIC DOORS OPENED, spilling me and a cloud of air conditioning into the humidity of the breaking dawn. I’d stayed by Nash’s bedside, letting my rage simmer. Knowing what came next.
I wanted to punch a hole through the building’s facade. I wanted to bring a tidal wave of retribution down on the person responsible.
Idly, I picked up one of the smooth rocks from a flower bed and ran my fingers over it, wanting to send it flying. To break something on the outside instead of feeling all the cracks on the inside.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I closed my fingers around the rock and squeezed.
“What are you doing here, Lucy?”
Lucian leaned against the limestone column just beyond the hospital entrance, the end of a cigarette glowing brighter as he sucked in a drag.
He only allowed himself one cigarette a day. I guess this counted.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Holding up the building? Hitting on sexy surgeons?”
He flicked ash to the ground, eyes locked on me. “How is he?”
I thought of the pain, the exhaustion. The side of my brother I’d never seen before. “Okay. Or at least he’s gonna be.”
“Who did it?” The cool, dispassionate tone didn’t fool me.
We were down to business now. Lucian may not have been blood, but he was a Morgan in every way that counted. And he wanted justice as badly as I did.
“Cops don’t know. Grave said the car was stolen. Nash hasn’t given them a description of the suspect yet.”
“Does he remember what happened?”
I shrugged and squinted up at the sky that was turning pink and purple as the sun worked its way off the horizon. “I don’t know, man. He was pretty fucked up on anesthesia and whatever they put in his IV.”
“I’ll start digging,” Lucian assured me.
“Let me know what you find. I’m not getting cut out of this.”
“Of course not.” He studied me for a beat. “You look like shit. You should get some sleep.”
“People keep telling me that.”
Lucian, on the other hand, looked like he’d just walked out of the board room in a slick suit sans tie.
“Maybe you should listen,” he said.
“He almost died, Luce. After I was an asshole to him, he almost bled out in a fucking ditch.”
Lucian stubbed out his cigarette in the concrete ashtray. “We’ll make it right.”
I nodded. I knew we would. This wouldn’t stand. And the man who’d put a bullet in my brother would pay.
“And you’ll make the rest of it right too,” he said, words clipped. “You both wasted enough fucking time. It’s done now.” Only Lucian Rollins could make a statement like that and will it into reality.
I thought of Naomi’s proclamation. Maybe we had been idiots wasting time we thought we’d had. “It’s done,” I agreed.
“Good. I was tired of my childhood best friends acting like they were still children.”
“Is that why you came back?”
His expression darkened. “One of the reasons.”
“One of those other reasons have anything to do with a pretty little librarian who hates your guts?”
He sighed, absently patting his pockets.
“Already had your one,” I reminded him.
“Fuck,” he muttered. It was as flustered as he allowed himself to get.
I had the temper. Nash had the good nature. And Lucian had the self-control of a fucking monk.
“Whatever happened with you two anyway?” I asked, enjoying the distraction of his discomfort.
“Your brother is in an ICU bed,” Lucian said. “That’s the only reason I’m not knocking your teeth out right now.”
As close as we’d all been, the one thing Lucian never shared was what made Sloane hate him. Up until last night, I’d thought the feeling was mutual.
But I’d seen his face when he saw her, when she walked away. I didn’t know much about feelings, but whatever was written all over his face didn’t look like hate to me.
“You probably don’t even remember how to throw a punch,” I teased.
“All those conference room negotiations. You just sic your lawyers on people instead of delivering a nice right cross to the face. Bet it’s less satisfying.”
“You can take the boy out of Knockemout but you can’t take the Knockemout out of the boy,” he said.
I hoped it was true. “Appreciate you bein’ here.”
He nodded. “I’ll stay with him until Liza comes back in.”
“That’d be good,” I said.
We stood in silence, legs braced as the sun rose, adding gold to the pink and purple. A new day had officially begun. A lot of things were gonna change, and I was keyed up to make it all happen.
“Get some sleep.” Lucian dug into his pocket and tossed me his keys.
“Take my car.”
I caught them midair and hit the unlock button. A shiny Jaguar blinked its headlights at me from a primo parking spot.
“Always did have good taste.”
“Some things never change.”
But some things had to.
“I’ll see you later, man.”
He nodded. And then I surprised the hell out of us both by wrapping him in a hard one-armed hug.
