Chapter 15

15

He’d been caught.

Gene didn’t have a moment’s regret.

Chad had found him sleeping against the wall in the hallway outside Chantal’s hospital room. He’d held a hand out to Gene and helped him from the floor.

Chantal’s mother had taken pity on him and let him sleep in the chair in Chantal’s room. Her mother had taken the other bed, at Chad’s insistence. Genny had taken the other chair.

He doubted he’d be able to get his baby sister out of there for anything. She was hovering almost as badly as Chantal’s mother.

They could have lost Chantal.

They were all aware of that.

Gene would never forget.

He had woken a few minutes earlier. Now he stood at the window, looking out at the north side of Barratt County.

“She’ll be okay.”

It was a common refrain.

He turned toward the man who had spoken. Chad stood there, a contemplative look on his face as he looked down at his little sister.

Gene’s little sister... not Chad’s.

Chad reached out and straightened the blanket over Genesis. “Neither one of these two grew very big, did they? I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed that before. They seem to be... elf-sized compared to the rest of us. Not sure how I really missed it.”

“No. I think Chantal is an inch or so taller, maybe. Twenty or so pounds heavier. Greer and Gia are a lot bigger. Stronger.” Genesis was the runt of the Hiller litter. Chantal, the Fields’s. “She felt so... damned... fragile when I was carrying her. I kept remembering how she had been as a kid and regretting how I don’t really know her as a woman now. I mostly remember them annoying the hell out of us. I was so damned afraid she was going to die in my arms out there.”

“But she didn’t. Thank God you were there. And Lacy Deane.”

“Lacy is the one who saved her. Not me.” The other woman had kept her alive. Gene knew that. Somehow.

They had gotten damned lucky a doctor was the one who had found them.

“Bullshit. Lacy couldn’t have saved her if you hadn’t gotten her there in the first place. If you hadn’t been there... I’d have lost my sister. I’ll never forget that.”

“I think we can do better.” Gene went to the space between the chair where his sister slept and Chantal. “With them. I think we have been idiots where the girls—all the girls—have been concerned. It occurred to me out there that I really don’t know them at all. Any of them, at all. Greer is keeping secrets right now, Gia is afraid of every guy who gets close, Genesis...”

He hadn’t even known what name his sister wanted to be called. Because he had kept that wall between them.

The time for walls was over now.

He was opening up in a way he hadn’t in a long time. But... this man was his closest friend on the planet. One of them, anyway—Chad and Hudson Hanan.

Those two other men understood him. Without him having to say the words.

“I had the same realization while I was with your sister, just waiting. I never want to feel that way again.” Chad’s hand almost lingered over Genesis’s braid.

“We make a deal right now. We do a better damned job of taking care of the women who matter most. No matter what.”

“No matter what.” Then Chad slung an arm over Gene’s shoulder and hugged him. “Thank you. I have my sister back because you were with her. I’ll owe you for that forever.”

Were there any other words they could say?

Gene made his sisters and Chantal a silent vow as the hours dragged on.

He was going to keep them safe from that moment on—no matter what.

As he watched Chantal for the longest time, he knew he would never feel the same about her ever again.

She’d taken his soul out there on that highway, and he was never going to try to take it back. Now he just had to make up to her for all the ways he’d screwed up before.

When Chad was gone, and Chantal woke hours later, Gene was there. He just talked to her softly until she drifted back to sleep, her free hand held in his.

He never wanted to let her go. Now he had to figure out how to show her the kind of man he’d become. He’d changed. He wasn’t the same man he’d been that morning.

And he never would be again.