Chapter 35 Liam
LIAM
Groggy and still stuck breathing with the oxygen mask over my face, I struggled to pass out instead of listening to the yelling going on in my room.
“But where have you been all this time?” Ma asked Michael.
“I was working.”
“Where? Surely, you could have at least called me.”
“I kept in touch with Lizzy. You know this.”
“Yes, you talked to your sister instead of your mother. Apparently, she has more rights to know how you’re doing than your own mother!”
“Mrs. Parker,” a woman stepped in. “I can assure you, your son had every intention of contacting you as soon as he could. We were dealing with a lot—”
“Too much to call home?”
“Well…sort of. National security issues and—”
“And that outranks his family?”
Tugging the mask down from my face, I tried to speak above the noise. “Any chance you could take this outside?”
Not that anyone heard me. My voice was still just a crackle of beaten words that sounded like nothing more than a whisper.
Besides, what did it matter if they were disturbing the sleep of a man who had just nearly died in a fire when the prodigal son had finally returned?
“I have a family just like Parker, and I had to do the same thing—”
“Like Parker? His name is Michael,” Ma snapped.
“And I’m sleeping,” I muttered.
“He was saving the world!”
“Oh, please. No one saves the world. He’s not a superhero.”
“If you only knew about what he was doing—”
“I would have if he had called!”
“Seriously,” I croaked out. “Don’t worry about me. It’s just a headache and severe lung inflammation. I’ll be better in no time.”
“I always knew my big brother would have to save the world someday,” Lizzy grinned, tucking herself into my brother’s side.
“Oh, please,” Jeff scoffed. “I could save the world and you wouldn’t give two shits about it.”
“You can’t save the world by flirting with all the girls in town,” Lizzy retorted.
“No, but I would save them from heartbreak. What’s wrong with that?”
“Look, I came home to tell you good news,” Michael snapped.
“Oh, so you’ll come home for good news, and then I suppose you’ll leave us once again.”
“Pop, talk to her.”
Dad lounged back in his chair, his cowboy hat tugged down over his eyes. “Like I have any say in what she does.”
“You know I would have been home—”
“No, that’s the problem, Michael. We didn’t know you would be home. Ever since that nasty business with the military—”
“My dishonorable discharge,” he corrected.
“None of us believed a word of it, but you just couldn’t be here with us. Why is that?”
“Because you all were trying so damn hard to make it all better when it couldn’t be!” Michael shouted.
Tugging the oxygen mask back over my face, I realized there was no point in arguing with any of them. Rest needed or not, they would continue to argue as if I weren’t here, just as they had for days now. At least before I was sedated.
“You walked out on us, Michael. Your own family. All we wanted was to be here for you, and you left.”
In tears, Ma raced out of the room, followed quickly by Lizzy. Pop sighed heavily and got to his feet, jerking his thumb in her direction.
“Guess that means I have to follow. Otherwise, I’m gonna be sleeping on the couch tonight.”
That left just Michael, Jeff, and the woman I still hadn’t been introduced to. Not that anyone seemed to care at all that I was lying in this bed. And I really didn’t want them here anyway. I was getting no sleep with all of them arguing at the drop of a hat.
“She’ll come around,” the woman said, rubbing my brother’s shoulders. “She just needs time.”
“Actually, she’ll hold this against you for the next ten years. Then, after you’ve given her grandkids, she’ll think about forgiving you,” Jeff grinned. “Maybe come back after that task has been accomplished.”
“She’s not too far off,” Michael grumbled.
Surprised, I tugged the oxygen mask from my face. “Is she pregnant?” I whispered.
“Not yet,” Michael grinned, “but I plan to knock her up as soon as possible.”
He tugged the woman into his lap, brushing the hair off her face. The way he was looking at her…
Fuck, that’s just how I looked at Bailey. Except, she was gone, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“Do I get to actually meet this woman?” I asked.
A coughing fit overtook me, and Jeff brought over a cup of water, thankfully, helping me sit upright to drink it. The cool water soothed the sandpaper feeling in my throat, but not much. From what the doctor said, it would take at least another few days.
When I was finally done, I laid back, closing my eyes as I replaced the oxygen mask. Fuck, I just wanted to get out of here and away from all the people surrounding me.
“I had planned on introducing you the night of the fire,” Michael said, his face twisted in a smile I hadn’t seen in years.
“Yeah, nice of him to choose you to visit first. Now I know where I rank on his list.”
“Well, your house wasn’t on fire.”
“Oh, so now I have to get myself into trouble in order to rank anywhere special on this imaginary list of yours?”
“Jesus, you two bicker like old ladies. It’s no wonder Michael stayed away.” The woman walked over to the side of my bed and smiled down at me. “I’m Blake. I met him while I was investigating a case and…well, I threw him out a window.”
Slowly, I tugged down the mask again. “You threw him out a window,” I repeated.
“He deserved it. He was trying to kill me.”
“Not kill you,” Michael corrected. “I just wanted your information.”
“And he tried to kill me,” Blake grinned. “So, I—”
“Threw him out a window,” I concluded. “And did he get your information?”
“Sort of, but not because I handed it over to him. Long story short, I had to get the big baby help because he had glass sticking out of his stomach, and that led me to the men he was working for. From there, we went on to save the world after both of us were tortured by evil men in the government.”
With that, she plopped down on Michael’s lap and grinned.
My eyes flicked to Jeff’s just to see if he was having the same reaction as me. Yep, he was eyeing her suspiciously, but also a little in awe of the woman who handed my brother his ass.
“Well…I guess I should thank you for getting him help after you tried to kill him,” I said slowly.
“Oh, he got his revenge. He shot me.”
I thought about it a moment, but what was there to say? “You know, I don’t know where to go with this. Welcome to the family?”
“Thanks,” she beamed. “I hope I can help you someday.”
“Where were you when I had a psychopath trying to kill me?”
“Hey, I arrived in time to pull your ass out of the fire,” Michael snarled.
“Again,” Jeff remarked, “because you chose to visit him before me.”
“And thankfully, dragged his ass out of a burning building,” Michael stressed.
“I’m just saying, you wouldn’t have had all that drama if you had seen me first.”
“Yes, and your brother would be dead,” Blake said matter-of-factly.
“But you would have seen the more charming brother first. All this one knows how to do is fuck everything up. Take Bailey, for instance—”
“Yeah, the girl you’ve loved since the first grade.”
“Third,” I sighed, wishing someone would get it right.
“Why isn’t she here now?”
“Because this dumb shit slept with another woman.”
Michael’s eyes darkened as he stared at me. “You did what?”
“Can we talk about this later? I’m supposed to be resting.”
“You really know how to fuck shit up,” Michael scoffed.
“Says the man who ran away from everyone who was trying to help him.”
“For a good reason. You’d better have a damn good reason for sleeping with another woman. Were you saving the world?” he snarled.
“Just saving her life,” I snapped. “Which you would know if you had been here. While you were off doing your own shit, the rest of us were back here, trying to keep the ranch going while fending off attacks from Austin left and right.”
“I had to leave.”
“You fucking chose to leave,” I yelled, scratching the hell out of my throat and sending myself into another coughing fit.
This time, the nurse came running in, shooting everyone dirty looks as she rushed to my side. “All of you out. Mr. Parker is supposed to be resting, and if you can’t make that happen, then you need to leave.”
“Yeah, Michael. Stop riling up the burn victim,” Jeff grinned.
“Fuck off.” Shoving to his feet, he shook his head at me. “Let me know when you get out. I’ll pick you up and you can yell at me some more.”
“He will not be yelling at anyone,” the nurse snapped. Then she turned to me with ridicule. “Keep this on, or I’ll have them intubate you again.”
As she stormed out of the room, Jeff waggled his eyebrows at me. “Intubate. It sounds so dirty. Think she’d do it to me?”
Ma tucked the blankets around me for the fifth time this morning, but I’d lost count of the number of times she’d fussed over me during the past five days in the hospital.
Too much more of this, and I might start my own fire and take us all out just to put the nurses out of their misery.
“It’s not that hard. You’re a patient.”
“Ma, tucking me in is not something they’re supposed to be doing.” My words might have been more effective if they hadn’t ended with a round of coughing that had her reaching for the oxygen mask I no longer needed.
“Your health is all that’s important right now,” she chastised.
“Ma,” I said, shoving it away. “I’m fine.”
“You’re still coughing.”
“Because I was in a fire. I’m not going to heal overnight.”
Pursing her lips, her eyebrow did that half-raise thing where I knew she was deciding how much she wanted to yell at me. In the end, the eyebrow went down and her concern took over, saving me from a lecture that could have lasted upwards of ten minutes.
“Exactly. You’re not going to heal overnight, and that is something they should be on top of. Honestly, those nurses—” she started in again just as my nurse walked in the room.
Thankfully, it was a friendly face. Caroline.
“Thank God. Caroline, will you please tell Ma that I’m fine?”