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I continue to kiss her. He can wait a sec.
“Bobby? What’s up?”
Kit’s tongue brushes across mine, and I let out a half sob, half groan at what I worried I might never know again.
“Bobby! I can hear you breathing! Wake up, motherfucker.”
Kit pulls back with a giggle, which is all he needs. “Kit? Is that Kit? Can I hear Kit giggling?” This just makes her giggle more. “Holy shit! Kitty Kat? You’re awake? JACK! Let’s go!”
“I remember him,” she whispers against my lips. “From when I was asleep.”
“Yeah?” I toss my phone onto the bedside table and press another kiss to her lips. “He was here a lot. I think he’s attached to you.”
She smirks and makes me want to weep. She gifts me with the things I’ve already mourned. Her lips. Her smile. Her laughter. Her love. “Yeah. He said something about waking up to make him a sandwich.” She chuckles at the memory. I wasn’t here for that one, but it doesn’t surprise me. “He also wanted to kiss me. I remember. He was saying something about Sleeping Beauty and how you tried to wake me, but how he should give it a go, because he’s the better man.”
I laugh and swipe a tear from beneath my eye. “He’s such an asshole.”
“Yeah, but he’s funny.”
Thundering steps echo in the hallway, but we don’t have to wonder for long, because Jim and Jack start fighting at the door. They shove each other out of the way and jockey to be the first through.
I help Kit sit a little higher in the bed, but at a gasp of pain, every man in the room freezes. Jimmy and Jack are a tangled mess of limbs – two very large, very broad-shouldered men are stuck in a doorway while they stare at their sister as though she’s the Holy Grail, the Ultima Thule, an oasis in a desert.
And well, they’re not wrong, because as far as I’m concerned, she is.
Jack’s desperate grin has his dimple popping, but tears ruin it as they fall freely. He walks into the room and stops at the side of her bed. “Kit?” He doesn’t touch. Doesn’t reach out. His voice is soft. He’s terrified of hurting her. Or of breaking the spell.
With her own soft tears, she nods and reaches out with her good hand, and when he leans into her palm, he lets out a sob as she pulls him down to rest his face on her belly. His shoulders bounce and his wails echo in the room as he purges his body of the worry he’s carried for almost a month.
She threads her fingers in his hair the way she did for me. “Shh. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
She’s so amazing. So brave and selfless and perfect. She’s the one who’s hurt, but these men, these warriors that surround her, we fall to our knees and worship her, and she’s the one soothing us as we cry from fear.
Jimmy watches the siblings and bows his head low. When we watch a brother hurt like that, it cuts us deep. Brother by blood or brother by choice, it hurts.
I let them have their moment, and while I wait, grab my phone and open a group chat.
To: Aiden; Jon; Mom; Tink; Izzy;
She’s awake!
