I'd Rather Not (KPD Motorcycle Patrol 3)

In fact, I had the same one on my own lock screen right now.

Had been for nearly five years.

I loved it.

It wasn’t often that I got to see my baby brother smile like that. And next to me, at that.

“That’s awesome,” I admitted. “But still…” I looked at him, studying his scars up close now. That had been why he had so many tattoos. They were covering his scars. “You’ve gone through so much.”

“Are you trying to talk me out of saving your life?” he asked, sounding amused.

I let my eyes move from his scar-covered, tattooed arms, and moved up to his face. My gaze caught his hazel eyes, which were the color of champagne right now, and for a second, everything stilled.

Nothing was wrong with me. He wasn’t about to go through a dangerous surgery to save my life. I wasn’t in a hospital room, and he wasn’t sitting there, looking at me at my worst.

We were just Pace and Oakley.

A man and a woman.

He blinked, and that moment passed. But that moment had irrevocably changed my life.

If we lived through this, I was going to make sure that I stayed in his life—at least as long as I could, anyway.

Which made me mention the next thing aloud.

“Organ donation only lasts for about five to ten years,” I said softly. “And based on how long dialysis worked for me, I could ruin your kidney in possibly five years.”

He looked at me with an honest, sincere look on his face as he said, “And in five years, I’ll help you find another one.”

I would’ve cried had he not caught my hand.

“I promise,” he said softly. “I promise that I’m not giving anything up. I researched it before I did it. I have a friend who has one kidney. He’s a doctor. I talked to him for an hour last night about it. Trust me when I say, I know everything that could possibly go wrong. I know everything there is to know about it. I’m not going into this blind.”

The sincerity in his words had what felt like a concrete pillar being lifted from my chest.

I drew in a breath, smelling the lovely smell that was Pace, and breathed out.

“I never thought I cared about five more years,” I told him, squeezing his hand. “Not until they told me you were giving me them.”

He squeezed my hand back. “That’s kind of how I felt when I lost my legs. I never thought I cared about much of anything until my life was on the line. When I was lying in that bed, fighting for my life, I knew that I wanted to live, even if it was a shitty life.”

I frowned. “You’re living a shitty life?”

He shrugged. “I definitely wasn’t being very careful with it. I guess I just took life for granted…but now? Now I’m overly cautious about everything. I work a job that I despise, and refuse to quit even though my supervisor is a dick, all because I made a goal when I was in the hospital. I would walk again, and then I would do what I set out to do after I got out of the military—become a cop like my father.”

“You’re a cop?” I asked.

He nodded.

“So is my dad,” I murmured.

“I know.” He grinned. “I was deployed with your brother, remember?”

I smiled then.

“What else do you know about me?” I wondered, thinking of all the things that my brother could’ve said about me.

He laughed. “You don’t want to know.”

I felt my face flush, and I decided to let it go for now. There would be plenty of time to worry about the rest later.

“I guess we only have one thing to settle now,” he said with amusement lacing his tone. “Do you want my right kidney or my left kidney?”

I burst out laughing, shaking my head as I did.

“I don’t know,” I teased. “Which one is better?”

He seemed to think about that for a moment.

“I’m left-handed,” he began. “If I give you my left kidney, I bet it’ll work better for you.”

I snickered then, finding that I really adored this man.

“You’re a really great person, Pace Vineyard,” I whispered.

Pace shrugged, then shifted in his seat to pull something out of his pockets.

He unearthed a familiar looking stuffed rabbit, and something inside of me stilled.

“Hey, I remember that!” I said, smiling. “How did you get it?”

I’d bought it for Ford as a gag gift when he was in basic training, I’d read that when the men or women got care packages, they were checked out thoroughly first to make sure there was no contraband. And I also read in one of the groups that I was in that stuffed animals were not allowed, and when they did get sent, they were given a whole lot of shit about them.