“I’m alright, too,” I say. “Not scared at all. Promise. Cause I got you, right?” I try to smile; I’m not sure if I succeed or not.
Chris doesn’t smile back.
I reach out, brushing my hand against his knee. “It’s okay,” I tell him.
Chris catches my hand and guides it back underneath the blankets. “Relax. Take deep breaths. Try to sleep.”
“Don’t feel guilty.” I can feel it in the air. I felt it with Mark, too, though it had mostly been gone by the time Mark left. “It’s not your fault.”
Chris is silent for a long pause, sitting rigid and tense. He looks down. “If I talked to him, he wouldn’t have gone after you like this.”
“Who wants to talk to Ronan? He’s unhinged.” I frown. “I wouldn’t have been happy if I knew you kept in contact with him.”
Chris shuts his eyes. “Even if I didn’t keep in contact, there were a dozen ways this could have been avoided. You should never have gotten hurt. I…” he cuts off with a sigh. “I’m not going to keep you awake with all the ‘should have’s’. Go to sleep, Kyle.”
“I don’t blame you at all.”
“I know you don’t. You never would.” Chris finally looks up. “And what you said to Ronan wasn’t true. About me not thinking about you when you were younger.” Chris reaches out, resting his hand on my shoulder. “I thought about you all the time. You were the only reason I came home once I moved out. I loved seeing your reaction to opening presents Christmas day,” his voice softens. “And I loved seeing your face light up whenever I’d come home. Nothing has ever made me feel as good. When you were a toddler, I’d walk into a room and you’d drop what you were doing and waddle over to me. Reaching up your hands, chanting my name, and you would giggle like crazy when I picked you up. Everyone could be sitting in the living room and it would be me you’d come up to asking to be held. You were never hard to please. I just had to talk to you about anything, and you’d be babbling back at me, smiling. Just…happy. Happy to be with me. You made me feel special from the moment you were born. And I’ve loved the hell out of you for your entire life.”
I blink. And blink. I really, really try to hold it back, but the tears fall anyway.
“I love you, too,” I say thickly. “Always have.”
“I know, Kyle. And it’s always meant the world to me.” Chris squeezes my shoulder. “Please go to sleep for me. The doctors want you to rest.”
“If you promise not to feel guilty.”
Chris sighs. I stubbornly keep my eyes open.
His expression softens. “Alright, Kyle. I promise.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I wake to voices humming around me, a throbbing in my leg, and unwanted coherency.
“Tone it down,” Mark’s voice comes from my right.
“It’s noon,” Bethany says back from further away in the room. “The doctor said she’d come back and try to wake him at twelve if he was still asleep.”
“He needs rest to heal,” Mark’s voice is threatening.
I raise a hand to scrub my face, head aching.
“Kyle,” Mark’s voice softens immediately. “Hey. How do you feel?”
I do a quick stock take of my body and am far from impressed at what I find. “Half asleep even though I’m awake,” I try to explain, and the words to form the sentence come slow. I drop my hand, see Bethany and Eddie on the couch opposite my bed, but I turn my attention to Mark at my side.
“Drowsy?” Mark says. “They upped your sedation during the night. You kept waking up and trying to get out of bed.”
I blink. “I did?”
“You told me I was super annoying.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Mark leans in, lips folding into a soft smile. “You said if I reallyloved you, I would kiss your dick.”
A snicker comes from the corner of the room and my face catches fire. “I did notsay that.”
