“But he’s fine, mija.”
“I’ll feel better when I see him with my own eyes.”
“That’s them,” said my dad, pointing to a plane taxiing in our direction. When I glanced over at Tackle’s parents, my eyes met Alice’s. She smiled, almost as if she knew I was looking forward to seeing her son as much as my brother.
A crew was waiting to roll a stairway over to the plane after it came to a stop. When the cabin door opened, a man I recognized but wasn’t my brother or Tackle, was the first person to step off. His name was Razor Sharp, and he was one of the owners of the company Knox worked for. When he was almost to the bottom stair, an ambulance drove up and parked. Razor walked over to it at the same time I saw my brother come out the door.
“There he is!” squealed my mother. “¡Gracias a Dios!”
As I’d anticipated, my eyes filled with tears. He looked a little worse for wear, but not like he’d lived through a plane crash. I gasped when, moments later, Tackle joined him.
He was as battered and bruised as Knox, but he was as beautiful as I’d ever seen him.
He’d grown from a boy to a man in the fifteen years I’d known him. His shoulders were broader, his neck thicker, his arms and legs visibly sculpted even under his clothes and at a distance. One of my favorite things about him was how quickly and easily he smiled—like he was now. Even if he weren’t wearing sunglasses, I wouldn’t be able to tell who in our huddled group had caught his eye, but in my fantasies, his gaze belonged solely to me.
They’d told us not to, but my mother raced forward to hug my brother anyway. I looked up at my father. As always, the look on his face as he watched her conveyed his love. Like me, his eyes filled with tears as we watched her embrace my brother.
She motioned for us to come closer, and we did. My father hugged Knox while Tackle’s father did the same to his son. Over his dad’s shoulder, my eyes met the man’s I’d loved for as long as I could remember.
I could conjure endless silly fantasies about what his expression meant. Had coming so close to death made him realize he loved me as much as I loved him? Was he as impatient as I to finally feel my body next to his when we got our chance to embrace?
My father’s arm brushed mine when he let go of my brother.
“Come here, you,” Knox said, pulling me against him. “I love you, Sloane. You know that, right?”
“I love you too, Knox.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been a better brother to you.”
I squeezed him. “You’ve always been the best brother a girl could have.”
He pulled back and looked into my eyes. “I want us to spend more time together.”
“I’d like that.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother approach Tackle and, behind me, Alice waiting to embrace Knox.
I took a step back, unsure what I should do next. Should I hang around? Go inside and wait?
After my dad hugged Tackle and slapped his back, both men turned to me. “Go ahead, Sloane,” said Nils, who I hadn’t seen standing beside me. “He’s practically your brother too.”
I took a couple of steps forward and walked into the open arms of a man I’d never once viewed that way.
“Sloane,” he whispered, pulling me close and hugging me harder than Knox had. Every nerve ending, every hair, every cell of my body tingled as I sunk into his embrace. “We need to talk.”
When I pulled back to ask what about, I saw Knox watching us.
“Later,” Tackle added as I nodded, let go, and stepped away.
“I want you to come home for a while,” my mother said, putting her arm through Knox’s as we walked into the terminal.
“I will, soon, I promise.”
“What do you mean?”
My brother put his hands on our mother’s shoulders. “Right now, Onyx needs us.” He motioned with his head to where a gurney was being rolled over to the waiting ambulance.
Instead of arguing with him like I, and probably he, expected her to, my mother nodded and looked over at Tackle’s parents.