The best friend he’d ever had.
“You’re good, Ryan,” she whispered. “Rest, brah. Yeah?”
He tried to nod.
He didn’t succeed.
He fell back to sleep.
* * * * *
Garrett
Three Days Later
“Well, fuck yeah, of course. Because I am,” Cher declared loudly.
Garrett stood at the door, shoulder to the jamb, and watched his woman move away from the hospital bed. She rounded it and gave Lissa a hug. She went to the chair Alexis was curled into, bent, and kissed her cheek.
Then she moved to Garrett.
Garrett nodded to Lissa, smiled at Alexis, and looked at Ryker in the bed.
When he caught Ryker’s eyes, Ryker lifted his hand, tubes stuck in it.
It took him time, but he finally executed his badass salute.
Lissa ruined it when she grabbed his hand on its descent and tucked it to her belly.
Ryker shook his head on the pillow.
Garrett bit back laughter.
Then he mouthed, I owe you.
After which Ryker did not mouth, “I know.”
That was when Garrett shook his head.
Cher made it to him, grabbed his hand irately, and yanked on it.
He took that and the fact she didn’t stop moving as indication she wanted him to follow.
He held tight to her hand and followed.
He also bit back his smile as they walked and he watched her annoyed profile.
“What are you?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “What?”
“What are you?”
“What am I?”
“You said to Ryker, ‘of course I am.’ Of course you are what?”
She rolled her eyes and faced forward, still moving.
He tugged her hand and stopped.
She had no choice but to stop with him.
“What are you?” he pushed.
“Mom and Ethan are at your place. It’s been three days. I bought ready-made Christmas cookie dough. I gotta bake that shit, then we got a tree to decorate. But before that, we’re going to the fucking phone store. I’m getting you a new phone and no back talk. It’s your Christmas present. You can use it between now and the big day. I’ll swipe it Christmas Eve, wrap it, and…surprise.”
He ignored all that, though they definitely were hitting the phone store on the way home. Cher just wasn’t buying his new phone. She could buy him something else for Christmas that didn’t cost hundreds of dollars.
Instead, he kept at her.
“What are you?”
She looked at him a beat then looked away. “Colt has a big mouth.”
He tugged her hand again. “Cher.”
Her eyes came back to him. “It was that dare to dream stuff,” she snapped. “Colt told him. Ryker thinks it’s hilarious. He called me a girl.”
He gave another tug on her hand until his girl was close enough to let her hand go so he could wrap his arms around her.
“And I am,” she declared. “I am a girl.”
“Thank Christ,” Garrett muttered, feeling one side of his mouth hitch up.
She lifted her chin.
“I’m also a girl who’s moving into your house. Invite or not. Crappy bathrooms or not. We can use my furniture, which is comfortable, even if half of it’s from a garage sale. If you say no, we’re moving in with Mom. But no way am I makin’ my kid egg goo in a kitchen where Ryker nearly bled out on the floor.”
“Babe, have you been anywhere outside my bed, my house, or my sight unless you’re at work for the last three days?”
“No.”
“You think I’m gonna let you make dude food in a kitchen where Ryker nearly bled out on the floor?”
Her lips started curving up. “No.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Why?” she asked back.
“Why wouldn’t I do that?”
It didn’t take long for the answer to come to her.
When it did, she melted into him.
“You take care of me,” she said softly.
“Yeah. And Ethan. So yeah. Ask for time off. We’ll pack up all Janis Joplin’s shit that lunatic didn’t smash and move it to my place. But first, tonight, we’re putting fuckin’ pink ornaments on our first Christmas tree.”
She drifted her hand from his chest up to curl around his neck and rolled up on her toes.
She did this, staring into his eyes.
“Thanks for shooting a man in the face for me,” she whispered, her brown eyes dancing.
It hurt a fuckuva lot, but seeing as they were in a hospital corridor, Garrett managed to force his roar of laughter down to just a chuckle.
“You’re welcome, Cherie.”
“I love you, Garrett Merrick,” she told him.
“I know you do and I love you too, but just to repeat during this gooey moment where you might think you can get in there, Ryan is not recuperating in our guest room.”
The warmth in her brown eyes turned partially flinty at the ongoing argument they were having about her friend who was recovering in a hospital in Indy.
He’d lost a lot of blood.
He’d taken shots to worse parts of his body.
And he’d been left longer.
He’d also been taken off the critical list that morning.
“His mother is a ball-breaker,” Cher told him.
“So are you.”
He had her there. It was written all over her.
It took her a few beats, but she finally found her comeback.
“She’s not the good kind.”
And she had him there.
He tried a different tack. “Babe, I don’t have a bed in either guest room.”
“You will if we use my old one.”