Chapter 18 #2
Phantom and I sit and wait.
He looks at the ring on my finger again, and his face does something I've never seen on him.
"Tell me about the ring, sweetheart."
I look down at my hand on the blanket. "It's his mother's."
He nods slow. "Yeah?"
My thumb finds the band on my finger without thinking. "He gave it to me this morning."
Phantom is quiet for a moment, his eyes still on the ring.
"From what I know, his mother was a good woman, from everythin' he ever told me about her. I never met her. He came to us the year after she passed."
I turn the ring on my finger. "He told me about her."
Phantom's voice goes warmer than I've ever heard it. "That's good, sweetheart. That means you got her in this family too now."
The bathroom door opens.
Bex comes out in Marlena's clothes, the bloody shirt is balled up in her other hand.
She looks at Phantom. "I'm gonna take this and burn it."
"You do that, honey."
She crosses to the chair beside my bed and sits back down.
Her hand finds mine again, and she closes her eyes.
Phantom stays another twenty minutes.
Grace is at the clinic working on Diesel, and Shadow is watching Waylon.
Dakota's in the ICU with her stepmother and won't leave until Phantom relieves her.
Spur came in and went straight to Marlena's room to be with his woman.
The brothers spent the afternoon walking the perimeter and found three operators dead on the back fence line where Banshee shot two of them, and Roan and his men got the third before he could get to the bunkhouse.
All Hartley's men.
What's left of Hartley is being handled by Bullseye and Longhorn outside Brady.
My fiancé made it out of that warehouse.
Phantom doesn't tell me what Rogue did inside it.
I don't ask.
He kisses Bex on the forehead before he goes.
He squeezes my hand on the blanket. "Rogue should be pullin' in any minute."
I close my fingers around his. "Thank you, Phantom."
He pats the back of my hand. "Sweetheart. You're family. Don't thank me for bringin' you tacos. Tell Marlena I did it right when she wakes up."
He stands, and the hat goes back on his head at the doorway. Then he goes, and the door closes behind him.
Bex and I sit with our hands on the blanket and wait.
I count the minutes on the clock above the door because counting is something my brain can do.
Eight minutes.
Twelve.
Twenty.
Bex hasn't let go of my hand.
She's looking at the door.
I'm looking at the ceiling.
The forward-looking question my brain keeps asking is the only question that matters.
Am I going to be okay when he walks through that door?
Hell if I know, but I'm about to find out.
* * *
Another twenty minutes pass and Silas is in the doorway with Nash asleep against his shoulder.
Nash's small hand is in the back of Silas' t-shirt, fisted in the cotton the way a kid sleeps when he doesn't want to let go.
Silas is still in his cut.
There's dust on his boots from the warehouse lot in Brady.
His hands are clean, but the cuffs of his shirt aren't.
His eyes find me on the bed, and the breath I've been holding for hours leaves me all at once.
He doesn't speak.
He crosses the room slowly because our boy is asleep against him.
Bex stands up from the chair, crosses to him at the doorway, and puts her hand on Nash's back for a moment without speaking.
She squeezes Silas' forearm, then slips out of the room and closes the door behind her.
Silas comes to the bed.
He bends down and lowers Nash onto the mattress beside me with the careful weight of a man who carried a sleeping child for three hours and doesn't want to wake him.
Nash murmurs something I can't make out.
His face turns into the side of my hip. His hand comes off Silas' t-shirt, finds the hem of my hospital gown, and stays there.
My arm goes around him.
My hand cups the back of his head where his hair is matted with the sweat of a six-year-old who slept hard.
He's warm. He's breathing. He's whole.
The tears I haven't let come yet today come now.
They go into Nash's hair without making a sound.
Silas stands beside the bed without moving for a long moment, his eyes on the two of us.
I reach for him with my free hand.
He takes my hand, and the blood that's still dried under the ring goes against the warmth of his palm.
My ring goes up to his mouth, and he kisses the gold band, then the two emeralds, then the diamond, slowly, one after the other, the way a man kisses a promise he intends to keep.
He sits down on the edge of the bed.
His forehead comes to the side of my head.
He stays there.
He's shaking. Not visibly. The tremor comes through the hand that's still in his.
"You came home," I whisper into the small space between us.
His mouth presses against my hair. "I came home."
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his free hand coming up to my face. His thumb finds my jaw, then the soft place under my ear, then the corner of my mouth.
His eyes move across my face the way a man looks at a woman he wasn't sure he'd see again. "Baby."
The way he says it wrecks me.
He bends and kisses the stitches at my temple first, careful, his mouth barely touching me there.
Then he kisses the place under my ear where his thumb was a moment ago.
Then he tilts my chin up with his fingers and brings his mouth to mine.
The kiss is slow.
He kisses me the way a man kisses his woman after he's killed for her—without hurry, without question, with both hands on her face like he's relearning the shape of her mouth.
The taste of him has a road behind it.
Coffee and gas station water and the kind of tired a man comes back to himself with.
His thumb moves on my cheekbone.
My free hand comes up and finds the front of his t-shirt and fists in it the way Nash fisted his hand in the cotton at his shoulder.
He kisses me until I'm breathing through my nose against his mouth, until the heat under my skin reminds me my body still belongs to me, until my pulse comes up under his thumb at my jaw.
When he pulls back, his forehead stays against mine.
His eyes are closed. His breath is shallow.
He swallows once. "I love you, Hadley Cross."
The name on his mouth, the whole woman he's calling, the first time he's said it.
My hand on his t-shirt tightens. "I love you, Silas McCrae."
He breathes out like a man setting something heavy down for the first time in a long time.
He kisses me once more, softly, his mouth lingering at the corner of mine.
Then his mouth finds Nash's hair where it spills across my hip, and then my hand again.
"How is he?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
Silas' hand stays on Nash's back. "He talked a little on the drive. Said Hartley didn't touch him. Said he was scared of the loud noise."
I look down at my son's face turned into my side. "What loud noise?"
"The way Hartley took him out of the kitchen.
The way Marlena fired. The bunkhouse goin' up around him.
" Silas' thumb moves once across Nash's back.
"He'll have nightmares for a while, baby.
He's six years old, and he watched a man with a gun take him out of a kitchen full of women he loves.
He'll remember today for the rest of his life. "
I nod into the pillow. "We'll be there for it."
His hand finds mine again on the blanket. "We will."
* * *
I tell him what Phantom told me.
I go through it in the order Phantom went through it.
Marlena.
Thunder.
Banshee.
Diesel.
Mama Cross.
His hand stays on Nash's back the whole time.
At the part about Marlena making it through surgery, his hand tightens on Nash's back once and then loosens.
At Thunder and the limp, he closes his eyes for a moment.
When I get to Mama Cross and the call Phantom made, his eyes come open and find mine, and they don't leave my face for the rest of it.
"That's mercy from Phantom," he says when I'm done, his voice gone rough. "She's a good woman. Garrett's people deserved to hear it from somebody who could carry it."
I turn my face toward him on the pillow. "I'm sure she wants to see Nash when everything settles down."
His eyes close for a moment. "We'll take him to see his granny, no problem."
I squeeze his hand. "I know we will."
He bends down, kisses Nash's hair, and stays there for a few moments.
When he comes back up, his eyes are wet at the lashes. He doesn't wipe them.
His thumb moves on my hand again. "It's done, baby."
"I know."
"Hartley's not comin' back. Nobody from his crew is comin' back. Bullseye and Longhorn handled the cleanup. The firm doesn't know what happened in Brady today and they won't find out."
My free hand finds the side of his face. "I know."
He turns into my palm and kisses the inside of my wrist. "It's done."
I nod into the pillow. "It's done."
I reach up.
My fingers find the stitches at my temple and then his face.
His jaw is rough.
He hasn't shaved since yesterday.
My thumb moves across the line of his beard. "Silas?"
He turns into my palm. "Yeah, baby?"
I keep my eyes on him. "I want to get married soon."
He goes very still under my hand. His eyes search mine. "Yeah?"
I nod against the pillow. "As soon as Marlena's home from this hospital and Thunder can stand at the front. I want this family to see us get married. I want Nash to see us get married. I don't want to wait."
His hand tightens on mine. "Then we won't wait."
My thumb stays on his jaw. "A few weeks. At the ranch, because that's where everything changed for us."
He bends and kisses the inside of my wrist where his mouth was a few moments ago. "As soon as we can, baby."
He kisses my forehead and stays there with his mouth against my hairline.
His hand finds Nash's back again.
He's looking down at the boy in my arms when he speaks. "Whatever you want, baby. We'll have it ready."
My voice comes out shaky and sure at the same time.
"I want Marlena in a chair if she has to be.
I want Thunder walkin' himself down the aisle even if it takes him an hour.
I want Diesel on the porch with a bandage on his shoulder.
I want every brother and every woman and every kid on this property under that oak tree when I say yes to you in front of God. "
He nods against my hairline. "Yes."
I pull back just enough to see his face. "And I want you to wear that cut."
He breathes in. His eyes hold mine. "I'll wear the cut."
My hand tightens on his t-shirt. "Promise me."
His mouth comes to mine for one more slow kiss before he answers. "I promise you."
The hospital room goes quiet around the three of us.
Silas takes his cut off slowly and lays it over the back of the chair where Bex was sitting.
He doesn't lay it on the bed. He's not taking the work back into bed with us. He pulls his boots off and sets them under the chair. He climbs into the hospital bed on my other side.
The bed is meant for one person.
It holds all three of us.
Nash on one side of me with his small hand in my hospital gown.
Silas on my other side with his arm coming around my shoulders and his hand finding the place where the blood dried on the side of my head.
He kisses the top of my head and doesn't speak. He doesn't have to.
The IV ticks.
Nash breathes.
Silas' chest rises and falls against my shoulder.
This morning I sat at a kitchen table with women who folded around me when they saw the ring on my finger.
A few weeks from now I'll be walking under an oak tree to a man who came back to me with my son in his arms.
Whatever comes after that comes after that.
For tonight, my family is breathing in this hospital, in the rooms down the hall, at a vet clinic where a wounded dog is sleeping, and at a ranch where the women I love are watching over the people I love.
This is my family.
This is my job.
To love them and feed them and stand at the door for them the rest of my life.
That's the woman I am.