Carter was the one to explain then, stepping forward to clutch my feet in his big hands, as if he needed to touch me to ground himself.
It filled me with something warm and liquid, like my blood had been replaced with champagne.
Carter fixed his dark eyes on me. “He’s in lockdown right now.”
Bianca shifted her head on my chest to peer up at me with those vivid blue eyes. She touched her fingertips to my lips and clasped her heart-shaped locket in her other hand.
“I wish men wore lockets too so you could wear it visibly every single day,” she whispered.
“What?”
“My heart,” she said softly, harkening back to the words I’d told her when I’d given her the locket. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Tiernan. Your fight is my fight. You bleed, I bled.”
Looking into her face then, I understood how dangerous love could be. Because she was right. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her, no line too far to cross, no price too step. I’d die and kill for her just as I lived for her now.
And I understood now that she felt the very same way.
That all the horror and pain I’d faced throughout my life was payment for this glorious woman. That I’d spend the rest of my life earning the gift of her.
“I love you,” I told her, and it didn’t feel like enough. “I’ll tattoo your heart on my chest so I can wear it every day like you wear mine.”
A slow, sweet smile like honey poured from an overturned jar. “I’d love that.”
So would I.
“He isn’t dead,” Carter continued. “We caged him in the house with our men and set up the monitoring system.”
“I’ll stay there,” Sarah said, leaning forward to pat my thigh, curling her hand around the muscle. “I-I want to stay. I’ll keep him calm, make sure he doesn’t get up to his old ways. You might have guards, but no one knows the old man like I do.”
“You don’t have to stay,” I argued. “This is your chance to get away from him.”
“I am,” she said. “I’m thanking you, now. And asking if you can ever forgive me for keeping your biological father a secret.”
My gaze skimmed over to Beckett who sat stiffly in the chair. His shirt sleeve was rolled up on one side, a bandage fixed around his elbow.
“If you want me to leave, I understand,” he offered reluctantly. “But I’d very much like to stay.”
“You were hurt.” I jerked my chin at his elbow. “You didn’t have to do what you did. I guess, now I know why you did it.”
“He also gave blood for you,” Bianca murmured. “There was a mass casualty on the interstate and they were running low on blood. One of the bullets hit your splenic artery and you’d lost so much blood.”
I blinked at Beckett, reluctant admiration trying to wiggle its way through the walls of my chest.
He shrugged. “I had surgery recently. I knew my blood type and we were a match. It’s not a big deal.”
I looked into those green eyes, just a few shades darker than my own and I swallowed thickly. Trying to reason with the basic impulse of all children to love their parents. I knew better now. That family was what you made, not what you were born with. That sometimes, the people who loved you best didn’t have to share the same blood as you, or even the same morals and outlooks.
Love transcended everything, if you let it. If you felt it.
But looking at Beckett, thinking about the years he’d been a patron of Inequity, the way he’d helped Bianca with Caroline and Lane’s will, the way he’d stepped up twice to help me, I knew if I gave him a chance, he’d love me.
Bryant had been my father all my life and he’d never ever tried.
So I jerked my chin up at the man. “You can stay, if you want. But don’t think this makes us best friends.”
Beckett’s lips twitched. “Never.”
“Tiernan?” Brando’s sleepy voice rose a moment before his head did, slumberous eyes blinking up at me. “Are you awake?”
“Are you?” I teased, pushing his hair back with one hand even though it hurt my shoulder. “Hey, buddy. I missed you.”
His lower lip quivered, eyes filling. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah, kid, I’m more than okay.”
“You got shot,” he informed me, as if I didn’t know. “Three times.”
“Yeah.”
“You were trying to save Anca,” he reasoned. “But if you do something like that again, I’m gonna have to be really mad because you can’t leave us, okay?” He swallowed thickly and fisted his hand in my hospital gown. “Please don’t leave us.”
My nose itched with the urge to cry as I stared into the gentlest face I knew. I wrapped one of his curls around my finger and tugged. “I promise, Brandon, I’m not going anywhere. You, me, and Bianca are going to be a family forever.”