“You mean if one of us gets hurt too bad to go back?”he asked gently.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not the only one with a pointy brain, Joey,” he said.“When we say we have ‘skills,’ it’s not all throwing knives or goring fuckers in the liver.Remember Chester Schumer?”
How could anybody forget Chester Schumer?
Joey snorted.“’Course.”
“Think you’d see him on paper now?”
Joey nodded slowly.“Yeah,” he said softly.“Yeah.”
“Think you could talk to a victim now?And know that somewhere inside you, you knew how that person felt?”
Joey closed his eyes, remembering almost losing Gideon, of being so afraid of his father, thinking he was invincible.“Yeah,” he said.“It sucks.Being a victim.”
“We got skills, Joey.If one day we can’t go back in the field, we’ve got things we can do.You don’t fight this hard, learn this much, for nothing.I mean, not a lot ofmoneyin it, but that’s not what we’re here for, right?”
Joey nodded slowly and took what felt like his first deep breath in two months.
“Still,” he said, “I can’t wait until you’re back at work.Even if you’re not out there with me, I know you’re with me, you know?”
Gideon nodded and kissed his temple.“Always, kid,” he murmured.“Always.”
And even if they knew there was no “always,” they both knew that trying for always counted.
AT THEend of the weekend, when he got back to the apartment, he found Crosby waiting patiently on the steps, reading a book on his phone, an overnight bag at his feet.
Joey stared at him for a moment, and it hit him, fast, like a shuffling deck of cards going from one hand to the other, that he hadn’t spent a night alone since Gideon had gone into the hospital.
Emily had brought her kids.
Crosby and Garcia had claimed that the cat needed him to come play.
Blodgett had claimed that Clint was working late at the office.
Clint had claimed Blodgett was working a night shift at the hospital.
Pearson hadn’t made any excuses.She’d just been there with pizza.
Swan had said the new apartment was great, but it was too perfect and creeping him out.
Henderson said he’d heard there were no plants there.He’d brought a succulent that he claimed not even Joey could kill.(So far so good.)
Doba had brought a deck of cards and no excuses.
Natalia had said Emily and the kids were out of town at the in-laws and she didn’t want to drive all the way out of the city.
Night after night, unless Joey was in New Jersey, somebody had been there, and he’d been too busy holding on to his own shit to notice.
But he noticed now, and it almost undid him.
“Wow,” he said, his knees giving out so that he folded on the stairs next to Crosby.Crosby leaned into him, and Joey realized, with a sense of wonder, that this was what a brother did.
“Wow what?”
“You guys.Gideon told me my pack would take care of me.I… it just hit me.Youbeentaking care of me.I… how could I not notice?That’s fuckingbonkers.”
