41. Caroline
CAROLINE
The hospital smells like bleach and old grief. We finally got Kellan stable enough to bring him here, and now I wish we could just bring him home.
Home. It is home now. It’s technically safe. The monster under the bed has been defeated. Declan and Rian are dealing with Fionn Crowley’s body, doing God knows what to send the Valacchis a message. Cutting his hands off, his head? I shake the thought away.
Too many people have died here, at this mafia hospital, for it not to cling to the walls. It lingers in the tile grout, seeps into the curtains, settles deep into the corners where nobody cleans well enough. It coats my tongue, thick and bitter, like something I’ll never swallow down.
I sit beside Kellan’s bed and wrap my fingers around the cold metal rail like it might anchor me to the now.
He’s asleep. Or pretending. His face is slack, mouth slightly open, lashes casting faint shadows beneath his eyes.
The monitors beside him beep with unnerving calm.
That sound should be comforting. Instead, it makes my skin itch.
His torso is wrapped in thick gauze. Layers and layers of it.
The bandages are clean now, the bloody ones replaced after he was stitched up, but I can still see where the white has turned faintly pink along the edges.
I watched them do it. Watched strangers tape him back together like a broken doll while I stood beside his unconscious body and tried not to throw up.
It didn’t work. I did anyway.
There’s still blood on my dress. It’s dried stiff across my front, pressed into the fabric like he meant to leave a mark. I haven’t changed. It feels wrong to do anything but grieve and worry.
I think Rian drove us here. Or maybe Declan.
The ride was fast and loud and too quiet all at once.
Panic, then stillness. I remember pressing my hand to Kellan’s wound so tightly I couldn’t feel my own fingers.
I remember his blood soaking my thighs. I remember screaming his name like it might keep his heart beating. Everything else is a blur.
The beeping is steady now. Not frantic. Not flat. Just the rhythmic, mechanical reassurance that Kellan is still breathing. Still fighting.
I sit beside him in the dim hospital room, one hand on the blanket draped over his thigh. His eyes flutter open now and then, then drift shut again like the pain meds are pulling him under a warm tide.
He doesn’t speak, but he squeezes my fingers when I curl them through his. He stirs, barely. A twitch of fingers. A soft sound in his throat. Then his voice, low and raspy. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I be?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light. It wobbles at the end anyway. I don’t feel strong. I feel like if I let go of this bed rail, I’ll dissolve into pieces and scatter across the floor.
His eyes stay closed. He swallows hard. “Could’ve gone home.”
I could have. But I didn’t.
“You’re not that lucky.” A soft, shaky laugh escapes me, and I drape over him, hugging him around the neck. “I thought you were going to die,” I whisper.
“You always did take my dramatic flair too seriously,” he murmurs back.
God, I missed that voice.
“I’m still mad at you,” I tell him, wiping at my tear-soaked face with his blankets. “For almost bleeding out on a floor right in front of me.”
“Ah,” he exhales. “Unavoidable, I’m afraid.”
We fall into silence again, and I let him rest, feeding him from a little plastic cup of ice chips. He lets it melt on his tongue, watching me like I’m some kind of miracle. “I didn’t expect mafia hospitals to be set up like this,” he says.
“You’ve never been?” I ask in surprise, pushing his hair off his forehead.
“Happily, I can say no. I’m the only one of us brothers who’s never been stabbed or shot.”
“Well, you are the baby of the family,” I say with a smile.
“That’s what I always say. I really just play the best defense.” He chuckles weakly, half wincing. “So. You killed him.”
“I know.” The words catch in my throat, and I try clearing them out. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t plan it. I just moved.”
He nods slightly, keeping his head still. “That’s how it happens. First time’s always a reflex.”
I think back to the moment. The weight of the gun. The heat in my palms. The way Fionn’s eyes barely registered surprise before they went still. And then Kellan’s blood was…everywhere. Pouring out faster than I could stop it.
My heart claws against my ribs like it’s trying to escape me. I want to tell Kellan the truth. It wasn’t my first time. But I don’t. Instead, I wipe my palms on my jeans. They’re clammy and useless. “I keep expecting guilt to hit me. Or…something. But I don’t feel bad. Not about him.”
“Don’t.” His eyes crack open now. They’re duller than usual, unfocused, but he’s present. “He deserved worse than you gave him. He was a monster. We were just his tools. You didn’t kill a father, Caroline. You broke a weapon.”
I nod, but I can’t keep the tears from coming. I’m sobbing, emptying myself out on the bed in front of him. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I saw you fall. And I thought…God, Kellan, I thought that was it. I thought you were already gone.”
His jaw flexes. “It was close,” he murmurs. “Closer than I like.” He shifts a little, testing the boundaries of the pain. A sharp inhale tells me he’s found them.
“Don’t move.” The words are sharper than I mean. My hand moves on instinct, reaching for his. He catches it, wraps his fingers around mine like he never wants to let go.
His grip is firm. Not desperate. Not possessive. Just…warm.
“You cried over me,” he says, like it still surprises him.
“Don’t get smug,” I reply sarcastically, but I lift his hand, rubbing my lips softly against his knuckles.
He smiles faintly. “I’m not. I just didn’t think I mattered…to you…like that.”
I glance at him, then back to our hands. “Well, I didn’t really think so either. I mean, I knew I cared, but not that I cared…like this. Not until I saw blood.”
He squeezes my fingers gently and hums, low in his throat. “I’ve never had this before.”
Neither have I. It settles in the pit of my stomach like heat.
We sit in silence for a while. The room hums around us—machines, distant nurses, the occasional overhead page. Outside the window, a helicopter cuts across the sky, barely audible through the double glass.
I don’t say anything until I have to.
“I thought you hated me. After that night. When I killed that man. You wouldn’t even look at me.
” I think back to it, the way I lay in bed and curled up inside myself.
That first night, though, right after it happened…
Kellan had told me to do it, but I still saw shock in his eyes.
Something that looked like disgust. It’s part of why I unraveled.
“I didn’t hate you,” he says. “I hated that you had to do it. That we didn’t protect you from it.”
“I wasn’t exactly protectable,” I mutter.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “You were still ours.”
The word hits different now than it did all those weeks ago. Ours.
Before, it meant possession. Prison. Control.
Now it sounds like belonging.
“I keep choosing this,” I say quietly. “Even when I could run.”
He nods. “That’s why it means something.”
We’re quiet again. Then he says, softly, “You don’t have to do it alone.”
“I know.”
He shifts again, slower this time. “If I don’t make it?—”
“You will.”
“Let me finish.” His voice is dry, but stern. “If I don’t, I want a real funeral. None of that cold Catholic misery. I want music. I want the good whiskey. No cheap shit.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re not dying.”
“Just covering my bases.”
I drop my head, resting my forehead against his hand. “You scared the hell out of me, Kellan.”
He strokes the back of my palm with his thumb. “Good. Then maybe you’ll stay. I’ve been telling you what I want, haven’t I?”
“To be a family?”
“That’s right.” He shifts, forcing me to look him in the eyes.
He stretches out his neck to kiss me, and it’s desperate, uncontrolled.
His tongue flicks across my bottom lip, and he bites at it.
I gasp into his mouth. “Is that to much to ask? To let us all have you, Caroline? To be touched like this by all of us every night?”
My heart stills in my chest. I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t have to think too hard about it, though, because after a few minutes, his breath steadies. His grip loosens slightly, but he doesn’t let go.
After a long time of watching him sleep, I slip out of the room into the hallway where I find Declan sitting on a chair by the vending machine and staring at a wall.
He isn’t reading a book or passing the time on his phone.
He’s just…staring. Busying himself with nothingness the way only Declan can. “You ready?” he asks me gently.
I nod. “He woke up for a few minutes.” I wrap my arm around his shoulders and let him rest his cheek against my side. “You should go rest,” I say.
“We both should,” he agrees numbly. But he doesn’t move. He looks up at me from his chair. “You okay?”
“No,” I say simply and laugh, and the laugh turns into a ragged cry.
He nods like he understands too well. “Well, you will be.” He shrugs like it’s that easy. Then gestures toward the vending machine alcove with the two lonely chairs, one for him and one for me. “Come sit.”
I move away from him, and his arm drops away from me as I slump into the plastic chair, kicking my shoes off even though we’ve both said we need to get going. Declan reaches across the distance between us and takes my hand.
Surprise jolts through me. Declan isn’t really the kind of guy you go to for comfort. He’s the kind of guy you go to in a crisis, the one that won’t judge your fucked-up choices. But he has his moments.
Then he says, “You fucked me up, you know.”
I blink at him. “Excuse me?”
He sways my hand between us, the way I used to see parents swaying their kids between them and think, I’ll never have anyone to sway them with . “I used to be able to live with the monster in me. Kept him leashed. Fed him just enough to stay in line. Then you showed up.”
I stare at him, and he keeps going, voice low. “And suddenly I wanted to be more than sharp teeth and loyalty. You made me want things that aren’t safe.”
“Like what?”
“Hope. Peace. You. ”
“I didn’t mean to change you,” I say.
He glances over. “I know. That’s why it stuck.”
I sway my hand with his, embracing the cracked skin between his fingers, feeling the fine hair on his knuckles, the callouses on the pads of his fingers. His hands tell a story of a guy who gets shit done when no one else wants to. “I don’t know what comes next,” I whisper.
He shrugs. “You’ll figure it out.” Then he looks over at me with a hard smile. “And then you tell us so we can follow.”