With a finger against her lips, Brandon shook his head. “You can’t fix this one, babe.”
Babe. He hadn’t called her that in a while. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.
“You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring me, too.”
“Is it cancer?”
Whatever was wrong, it was so awful that her husband didn’t know how to tell her about. So she’d help him. Guess all night if she had to. She’d said they’d get through it together and they would. She’d show him. She had enough faith for both of them. They just had to―
“No, it’s not cancer,” Brandon said, shifting so that no part of him was touching any part of her. The movement was subtle. Moving a knee. But she noticed. “I’m not sick,” he added.
“Then what?” His expression, no matter how hard she studied it, told her nothing. Except that he was hurting.
She racked her brain, trying to think of anything that had happened, anything she might have missed. Tried to figure out when the problem had started. And still drew blanks.
It had to have something to do with Kara. Everything had been fine...normal...until shortly before the baby was born.
The baby was fine. Not only had all the doctors said so, but as a nurse, Lynn would know if something was wrong with her infant daughter. Kara had a healthy appetite. Slept well. And, as her father had just pointed out, didn’t cry much at all.
She was fine. Kara was fine. Which, in her mind, only left one other possibility. “There’s another woman.” While she’d been fat and pregnant, and uncomfortable and unable to have sex, he’d met someone else....
“No! Whatever else happens, Lynnie, you always have been and always will be the only woman I ever wanted or had sex with.”
There was no mistaking the truth in those words. They spoke straight to her heart. Breathing a little easier, Lynn reached for his hand again. “Just tell me, hon.” They were a team. Partners. For better or worse. “Things always seem worse until you get them out.”
His family was close by. And hers had visited twice since the baby’s birth. They’d help with whatever the problem was.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he was tired of both sets of parents camping out on their doorstep now that Kara was there.
“Please, Brandon. You’re making me crazy with worry. What’s wrong?”
She braced herself. Knew, when he met and held her gaze, that her life was about to change forever. And still wasn’t prepared for his reply.
“I’m gay.”
Present
THIRTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Grant Bishop wasn’t an emotional guy. He was a busy guy—too busy to get tangled up in things he couldn’t control. Except for the things he couldn’t let go.
He couldn’t let go of Darin’s condition.
Sitting in the silence of his older brother’s hospital room that balmy February morning, he rested one ankle on his knee and beat out the rhythm playing over and over in his brain. Da da dah. Da da dah. Da da dah. Da da dah.
Dr. Zimmer’s Tuesday-morning rounds were at seven-thirty. Grant wanted to be at a job site across town by nine so he could be back to make sure Darin got up in his chair for lunch. As long as his brother cooperated, he should be able to have Darin back home the next day.
Assuming the doctor told him the previous day’s surgery had gone as well as he’d thought. That Darin was responding as expected. His forty-four-year-old brother had still been groggy from the anesthetic the night before when Grant, after spending fourteen hours at the hospital, had finally gone home to shower and get some sleep.
Darin, with a big patch of gauze taped over one side of his head, didn’t look much different nine hours later.
More than two nights in the hospital was going to be a financial hardship. But if Darin wasn’t ready to go home Wednesday morning, they’d manage. He’d paid off the loan against his landscaping business and could borrow again if he had to.
And if there was a long-term problem? If the surgery hadn’t been successful? If the infection that had formed around the bit of irremovable stingray barb lodged in his brother’s brain was still active?
If Darin experienced any of the numerous side effects that could have resulted from the craniotomy itself?
Hands clasped, he pounded his thumbs together, keeping the beat with the rhythm rocking his foot.
Darin was going to be just fine. The brothers had been dealing with this—Darin’s accident—for seventeen years, and things always worked out.
Maura, the sixty-year-old widow next door, checked in on Darin for Grant on the rare days his brother couldn’t accompany him to the job site, in exchange for handyman work whenever anything needed fixing at her place. She was all set to nurse Darin through the two weeks postsurgery the doc had said it would take before his brother was able to return to work.
Arrangements had been made. Details tended to.
It was 7:40 and the doctor was late. Standing, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans, Grant walked to the door of his brother’s room, pulled it open and stood in the entryway, watching the hallway. Nurses went to and from rooms; an orderly pushed a cart with breakfast trays up the hall, stopping at doors, delivering trays and moving on.
Darin was still on IV. He should have progressed to a liquid diet the night before but hadn’t cooperated enough to sit up and drink. He’d barely regained consciousness and hadn’t known Grant was even in the room, prodding him.
Running his fingers through thick black hair that hadn’t yet begun to show the gray that had started to appear on his older brother’s head, Grant rolled his shoulders and sat back down. He’d built extra time into his schedule in case the doctor was late. This wasn’t his first hospital run. He knew how things worked.
And Santa Raquel, the coastal California town where he and Darin had settled after Darin’s accident, wasn’t all that big. He could make it across town and to his job site in less than twenty.
“Grant?” The deep voice had Grant out of his chair and at the bedside in one second flat.
“Right here, bro,” he said, pushing the hair off from his brother’s forehead as he took Darin’s right hand in his and held on. “Just like always.”
Darin studied him with eyes that appeared to hold recognition—and more.
“How you feeling?” He started out small, not sure what kind of cognition Darin would have left. Or what further damage might have been done.
“Head hurts.”
“You just had surgery.”
“Not just. I had a night since then.”
With a grin, Grant nudged his brother’s shoulder. “You’re right, bro, you did. And if you’ll cooperate with the nurses today, tonight will be your last one here. You ready to come home?”
Darin made a face, scrunching his lips up toward his nose. And did it again.
What the hell was that?
The covers moved above Darin’s left hand. And then moved again. Darin made that face again.
“Nose itches.” Pulling his right hand free from Grant’s clasp, he scratched.
And Grant grinned a second time, letting go of a deep breath.