“Mom and Dad are talking with the doctor right now,” Owen said. “They should be back soon.”
Chad hoped he could keep his emotions in check when he saw them. If he fell apart, his Mom would get upset, and he couldn’t stomach her pain, so his thoughts turned to the calmest person he knew—a guy who could hold it together in the darkest of hours.
“Is Kellen coming?” Chad could scarcely remember a time when Owen and Kellen hadn’t been joined at the elbow.
“I didn’t invite him.”
Odd. But before Chad could question Owen about the absence of his best friend, their parents entered the room.
“Oh, baby,” Mom squeaked. “You’re awake.”
She rushed to his side, and Owen scrambled out of the way. Dad stood in the doorway doing a piss-poor job of reeling in his emotions. Chad wasn’t sure he could handle seeing his father cry on top of everything else that had his guts churning, so he closed his eye and held on to his quaking mother with the arm that didn’t hurt too much.
After a long moment—he admitted that she was the first to let go—she leaned back and cupped the less injured side of his face.
“I’ve missed you. When I thought . . . when I thought we had . . . lost you . . .” She shook her head, fresh tears flowing down her face.
“Mom, you’re making a scene,” he said, realizing that he’d never once wondered if his family loved him. They were good people. He was lucky to have them. And it wasn’t fair that they now had a cripple for a son.
“I’ll make a scene if I want to make a scene,” she said, the fierceness in her blue eyes part mama bear, part strict mother. “James,” she said, holding a hand out toward Dad, who had yet to move. “He looks good, doesn’t he? So alert.”
Dad took a few steps closer and stopped, his eyes searching Chad’s broken body. He bit his trembling lip and nodded. He’d always been a man of few words. Chad could relate. Owen had always been a jabber-mouth like their mother.
“I’m so glad you’re awake,” Mom said. “When we first arrived, we couldn’t get you to open your eyes. We tried, but . . .”
But feared the worst. She didn’t have to say it. He knew how bad he looked. How numb he felt.
“That’s all the drugs they keep pumping into me. And we wonder why our country has an opioid problem.”
“You take those drugs if you need them,” Mom said, stroking his hair. “I don’t want you in any pain.”
He preferred pain over the dulling of his senses. At least he figured he would. Before the medics had gotten him out from under that Humvee, he’d been praying for death to stop the pain. Mercifully, he’d passed out and didn’t regain consciousness until after they’d decided they couldn’t save his leg and had removed it on the field to free him. He tried to be grateful for his life being spared, but he was bitter and angry. The head shrink who’d stopped in to see him somewhere along his journey home told him those were normal emotions, but nothing felt normal about any facet of his life. Nothing.
Unable to stand that all attention was currently centered on him, Chad looked up at Owen, who was worrying his lip between his teeth. “You have a concert tonight, don’t you?” he asked.
Owen winced and glanced at Lindsey. “Uh, the tour has been canceled. The band . . . broke up.”
“What the hell?” Surely Chad’s ringing ears had heard that incorrectly.
“Jacob and Adam had a huge falling-out.”
“Those fucking morons. As soon as I’m back on my feet . . .” Chad growled. “As soon as I’m back on my foot, I’m going to knock some sense into the both of them.”
“Language, Chad,” Mom said.
It took Chad a second to realize he’d used the f-word in front of his mother, something he’d never done before.
“Sorry,” he said.
“If you want to cuss,” Dad said, “you fucking cuss, son. Why aren’t we all fucking cussing? This fucking sucks.”
“We’ll get through it,” Mom said, squeezing Chad’s shoulder.
“Of course, we’ll get through it,” Dad said. “We don’t have any other choice. And that’s the part that fucking sucks.”
Chad snorted as laughing was a bitch on his injured ribs. He found his dad’s swearing hilarious. He’d heard his dad cuss on numerous occasions, but never in front of Mom.
“It does fucking suck,” Owen said.
“It fucking sucks big time,” Lindsey piped in.
“Not you too,” Mom said, thrusting both hands into the air. “I’m obviously going to have to pull the swear jar out of the cupboard.”
“You don’t think this sucks?” Chad asked.
“Yes, it fucking sucks,” Mom said, “but you’ll be okay, Chad. You will figure this out, and we will support you through it all. We’re here for you.”
Dad, Owen, and even Lindsey nodded in agreement. Chad smiled, recognizing that his little brother wasn’t the only rock star in the room. He was surrounded by them.
Chapter Three
Lindsey stood peering into a vending machine, wanting something sweet to go with the cheez-with-a-Z crackers she’d already purchased, when her cellphone rang. Not many people had her new number—not even her so-called best friend Vanessa or the parents who’d turned their backs on her. Owen had bought her a prepaid phone since her previous number had long since been disconnected for lack of payment. After she’d refused his numerous offers to buy her a top-of-the-line smartphone, he made the important point that she might have an emergency that could put the baby at risk, and she needed a way to contact him and her doctor. That was the only reason she’d relented. She’d insisted he get her the el-cheapo phone at a discount store, figuring she might be able to pay him back sooner if she settled for the least expensive model possible; she didn’t need a fancy data plan to call the hospital. She hauled the little phone out of her purse, but not recognizing the number, she let the call go to voice mail.
She decided on a chocolate bar and inserted coins into the slot, only to press a wrong button and end up with fruit chews. Story of her life—nothing ever went as planned. With a heavy sigh, she sorted through her change and finding she was a dime short, left without anything to satisfy her chocolate craving.
When she returned to Chad’s room, she was surprised to find the Mitchells had left Chad to himself. His gaze shifted from the television, and he smiled the best he could with half of his face taped and bandaged. He looked a lot like Owen—same clear blue eyes, same soft lips, same straight nose—but Chad’s jaw was stronger and more pronounced, which would probably classify Chad as handsome where Owen would be considered cute. Even all bandaged up and peppered with cuts, scrapes, and bruises, he was an attractive man. Strong. Virile. Sexy. So sexy.
Lindsey gulped down the sudden flood of saliva in her mouth.
God, she thought. The man has been through so much and the last thing on his mind is getting it on with some desperate floozy his brother probably knocked up. Get your hormones under control, woman!
The last time she’d let her hormones control her life, she’d ended up pregnant. It obviously wasn’t a good life strategy for her.
“Hello, angel,” Chad said. “My family is having a meeting about me.”
Probably because he refused to talk about what had happened to him to anyone. But Lindsey understood why. She didn’t like busybodies snooping into her business either. Not even her once well-meaning family.
“Families.” Chad rolled his unbandaged eye, though Lindsey knew his family meant the world to him, and he patted the bed beside him. “Did you bring me a snack?”
“Do you like Starbursts?” She wasn’t a fan.
“I don’t think my jaw can handle that much chewing.”
“Of course.” She hid the brightly colored candy behind her back. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“How about Cheez-Its?” She was definitely a fan of those, and wished the bag wasn’t so damned small.
“Sounds great.”
She settled onto the bed beside him and handed him the yet-to-be-opened package. Her stomach rumbled in protest of her relinquishing her snack. Chad chuckled and squirmed over a bit to give her more room on the bed.
“Are you sure you want to share?” he asked.
“You can have them,” she said, happy to be able to offer him a small kindness.
He gripped the bag in the hand he didn’t move much.
“Oh,” she said, reaching for the bag. “Let me—”
“If you help me open a fucking bag of crackers, I will shove you off the bed.”
Her eyes widened. She wasn’t sure if he’d go through with the threat, but she dropped her hand.
“I can do it.”
It took him several tries to open the small red wrapper, while she clung to the sheet to keep herself from helping him. A moment later, he fished out a violently orange square cracker.
“Here. One for you.”
She popped it into her mouth.
“One, two, three for me.” He tossed three little crackers into his mouth.
She couldn’t stop herself from teasing him. “Selfish.”
He grinned, his smile as disarming as his dreamy younger brother’s, and dropped two more crackers into her hand. “Even Steven.”
To keep herself from staring at him, she turned her attention to the television on the wall across from the foot of the bed. “What are you watching?”
“You.”
Her face went hot—those crazy pregnancy hormones, she was sure. “Not very interesting.”
“I disagree,” he said. “Also a lot easier on the eyes than Arnold.” He said the name in a perfect Schwarzenegger impersonation.
Lindsey giggled.
“Get to dah choppah!” Another great impression of the muscular action star.
Lindsey turned to stare at him. “What are you doing?”
“I eat Green Berets for breakfast.”
She’d seen the movie Commando plenty of times, so she added the next line in her own very poor impersonation of the master of cheesy one-liners, “And right now, I’m very hungry.”
Chad crunched into a cracker and turned his attention back to the television. After a minute, very seriously he said, “Give those people air.” He had Schwarzenegger’s accent down perfectly.
Lindsey snorted and broke into a full belly laugh. “Stop. You’re going to make me pee.”
“There is no bathroom!”
Now he was quoting Kindergarten Cop. “I mean it, Chad. Stop.”
“No problemo.”
They watched the current action film on TV—which had Arnold married to Jamie Lee Curtis—in silence until a commercial came on.
“Have you seen every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie ever made?” she asked.
“About a hundred times each.” He’d reached the bottom of the bag of Cheez-Its and handed her one of the remaining crackers. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to eat them all. I haven’t had any of these for years. I forgot how good they are.”
“I’ll bring you a whole box the next time I visit.”
“So there’s going to be a next time?” he asked.
She smiled. “I hope so.”
“It’s not because you feel sorry for me, is it?”
“Nope. It gets me out of going on more hopeless job interviews.” Being rejected over and over again was hard on the ego.