I know I should apologize—I am the one hovering over him like he’s a child, after all. It’s just, I was so worried for so long that I’m a little afraid to let him out of my sight now that I’ve finally got him back. A little afraid that if I’m not right here with him all the time, I’m going to wake up and find out that getting him back was just a dream. That the true nightmare is he’s still trapped in that hellhole, just out of reach.
But that’s not on him. That’s on me, and I owe it to Garrett to give him whatever space he needs right now. “I’m s—”
“Look,” he says at the same time. We both stop for a second, waiting for the other to continue before I finally gesture for him to go ahead.
“I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it. I do. I just…I just need a few days to wrap my head around all this, you know?” He’s still refusing to look at me, and his fists are clenched as he stares out the window at the gardens that were my mother’s pride and joy for her whole life here at the palace.
“I tho
ught I was going to die. Every day I woke up, positive that it was going to be the last day of my life. At first I fought it, but eventually I resigned myself to it. And now that I’m out…it’s just going to take me a little time to really accept that I’m not going to die.” His laugh sounds rusty. “At least for a while, anyway.”
“I thought you were going to die, too. A lot of our advisers told dad and me to accept that you were already dead, but I could still feel you, you know. I knew you weren’t dead—or at least, I thought I knew. But I was terrified pretty much every second of every day you were gone, so it’s going to take me a little while to adjust, too.”
“Kian—”
“I’m not done.” I hold up a hand to stop him. “But I’ll try to back off the whole playing-nurse routine. And if I forget and get a little crazy—which I’ll probably do—just slap me back again. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
My phone vibrates with a text and I pull it out, swipe it open. It’s from Savvy. I start to answer her back, but I can feel Garrett staring at me and it just doesn’t feel right to be texting her while he’s watching. At least not until I tell him about the two of us.
I shove the phone back in my pocket and stand up, just as one of his two day nurses bustles in with a tray of medicine. “You sure you don’t want me to get you anything?” I ask as I get shuffled off to the side. “The caramel pudding is really good.”
For a second it looks like Garrett’s going to lash out at me again and I brace myself for the explosion. But he just kind of smiles at me, instead, and says, “Okay, yeah. I’ll try the pudding.”
“Really?” I try not to get my hopes up.
Now he’s wearing a full-blown smile. “Yeah, absolutely. And make it a big bowl.”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll get it right now.” I’m so excited that he’s willing to eat, that he’s willing to try, that I’m halfway to the kitchen before it hits me that the pudding—that the trying—isn’t for him. It’s for me.
The knowledge breaks my heart all the fuck over again.
But I still get the pudding, because he needs to eat. And if I have to manipulate his emotions to make that happen, then so be it. Because now that I’ve got him back, nothing is going to take my brother away from me again. Not even his own demons…
Chapter 28
Savvy
He didn’t call. Or text. Or email. Hell, he could have sent a fucking SOS via smoke signal and I would have been okay with it. But he didn’t do that, either
It’s been four days and Kian hasn’t sent so much as a thought—or a fucking carrier pigeon—my way. And I don’t know what to do about it. Or what to think.
“I need a cranberry vodka and a coconut mojito, Savvy. And I need it fast. This table’s been waiting for a while, and the guy is pissed.” Carter leans over the bar and bats his extra-long eyelashes at me.
“I’m already on it,” I answer him, grabbing a bottle of vodka off the top shelf and pouring a healthy shot into a glass. “Tell him we upgraded on the house. That should calm him down.”
“So many reasons I love you!” he tells me as he delivers a smacking kiss to my cheek.
I’m too busy mixing up the coconut mojito to return the favor.
Samantha hits the bar just as I slide the drinks across the sleek wood to Carter, and I spend the next few minutes making specialty cocktails for her table of eight. But even as I make my third flaming dragon of the night—being careful not to set myself on fire along with the top of the drink—I can’t stop thinking about Kian.
I get it. I really do. Right now Garrett is the most important thing to him—and he should be. The man has just escaped a living hell, if what I’ve heard on the news is true. Of course Kian wants to spend all his time, all his energy, on his twin right now. I’m sure I’d feel exactly the same way.
Hell, I do feel the same way. It’s been years since Garrett and I dated, nearly as long since we tried being friends only to have that fizzle out, too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the guy, doesn’t mean I haven’t spent the last three months worrying about him and praying that he’s okay.
Now that he is, now that he’s safely back with his family, it’s only normal that they all take some time to adjust. To heal. To try to figure out what the new dynamic looks like. The only way for Kian to do that is to be there, in the palace, with his father and his brother.