Amanda’s warm laughter surprised me. I gazed up to her, my chest aching at the love for her sister I saw in her eyes. Amanda had crushed me. Destroyed me. Torn me apart. Twice. But I still felt . . . something for her. Even if I didn’t want to. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure if that was the case either.
“It’s okay, Chase,” she said, cheek pressed to Tanner’s head. “I’d like him to stay. He did fly halfway around the world, after all.”
Chase grunted. A part of me wanted to go with her to discover what she’d intended to say to me as we bought coffee. Of course, that part suspected it would have been a warning of the highest order about how she was going to make me suffer if I wasn’t the best father ever. Chase would never hold back telling me what she thought.
With a quick grimace at me, she smiled at her sister. “Two sugars?”
“Three.”
I quirked an eyebrow. Three?
Have you ever noticed when you’re caught in a major upheaval, when your life feels like it’s a kite being tossed about in a major fucking storm, you react to small changes as if they were enormous ones? Amanda had never taken sugar in her coffee before.
She slid her gaze to me without lifting her cheek from Tanner’s. He wasn’t quite asleep. He watched me with heavy-lidded eyes, Optimus Prime clutched to his chest, his other hand resting on Amanda’s arm. “And that’s enough out of you, Bren,” she said with a small smile. “There’s nothing wrong with three sugars.”
I chuckled, rising to my feet as I did. “If you say so,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
She grew still, her eyes locked on mine, her smile fading.
Crap. What the hell was I doing? The action had been so unconscious, so . . . so . . . reflexive, I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until was done.
Fuck.
“Blech.” Chase pulled a face. “I’m out of here. Mom and Dad, you’re coming with me.”
I twisted to look over my shoulder at Charles and Jacqueline still in the doorway of the room.
Charles watched me with narrow eyes. Adjusting his folded arms over his chest, he shook his head. “Think I’ll stay here. Just to make sure Osmond does as well.”
“Dad,” Amanda groaned.
“Actually, Dad,” Chase said, snaring his arm by the hook of his elbow, “it wasn’t a question. Now the Wonder from Down Under is here, we should all let Amanda make up her own mind about what happens next and who’s with her when she does.”
Charles opened his mouth, but Chase didn’t let him utter a word. Instead, she jerked his arm and pulled him from the room.
I couldn’t help but smile a little at that. He may want to stay in the room and guard his eldest daughter from whatever hurt he feared I’d bring to her, but he loved his younger daughter just as much. And for all of Chase’s bravado, she was a tiny girl. If Charles had wanted to stay put and make my life a living hell, he could have.
“We’ll be back in a little while,” Jacqueline told us. Unlike her husband, she seemed completely okay with leaving Amanda and me alone together. Although, with the nurse still in the room, making notes on the pages of charts at the foot of Tanner’s bed, we weren’t really alone.
“’Kay, Mom,” Amanda answered.
Jacqueline left.
My heart thumped faster. I turned back to Amanda, suddenly at a complete loss for something to say.
She smiled up at me. “Want to hold him for a second? While I go to the bathroom?”
Every muscle in my body locked up.
She chuckled, and then kissed Tanner on the top of the head. “Daddy’s going to hold you for a second, tough guy,” she said, the words a whisper that sheared through me. “Okay?”
“Oppimus,” Tanner murmured, opening his eyes with sleepy languor before closing them again and holding his arms out to me.
The world roared. Spun. For a second – a heartbeat – I noticed the nurse studying me, waiting. And then I slid my hands under Tanner’s armpits and lifted him from Amanda’s lap, lowering myself to the side of the bed at the same time. He weighed nothing. So light. I’ve lifted some heavy weights in my time – my personal best is two hundred and twenty kilos in a deadlift – but as light as Tanner was, lifting him was like lifting the world. I felt his weight all the way through to my very core. Or maybe it was something more significant.
Optimus Prime thunked against my back as Tanner positioned himself half on my hip, half on my lap. His hot face pressed to my chest, his free hand bunched in the cotton of my shirt. “Tuck,” he said, giving the toy a tired shake.
“Autobots, roll out,” I quoted the only Transformer phrase I knew as I adjusted myself on the edge of the bed. I was nervous the oxygen tube in his nose would get tangled in my awkwardness, would tug on his face and hurt him. Was there a trick to holding him? To not hurting him?
“Bots . . .” Tanner mumbled.
I knew he was asleep when his weight grew heavy and still. For one horrible, horrific moment, I was sure the room was going to flood with doctors and nurses screaming and shouting things like “get a crash cart” and all the other stuff they yell on TV shows when a patient dies. For a horrible, horrific moment, any optimism I had was stripped away by the soul-crushing fear that I’d discovered I had a son only so I could hold him while he died.
And then my brain registered his breath heating my chest through my shirt like a warm fan, and I let out a silent chuckle and rested my cheek to his head.
I was holding my son. My son was in my arms, his heart beating in his tiny body so close to mine.
I was holding my son.
“I’ll be back in a second.” Soft fingers touched my shoulder and I looked up to find the nurse smiling at me. “To get him into bed.”
“Do you want to do that now?” I asked, praying she’d say no. It was too soon. I’d only just got him, it was too soon to let him go.
“In a little while.” She walked around the bed to the other side and then raised the railing until it clicked into place. “I think being held by his daddy is more beneficial right now. For you both.”
She left before I could thank her.
I didn’t move. I stayed perched on the edge of the hospital bed, listening to – and feeling – Tanner’s deep breath. Holding him while he slept.
A soft thud behind me told me Optimus had slipped from his fingers. I brushed my cheek over the top of his head. My brain wanted to point out why he’d lost his hair, wanted to dwell on it. Wanted to imagine the pain of the chemotherapy responsible for that hair loss, for the loss of his blond Mohawk.
I refused to let it.
Banishing the tormented fears, I breathed in his smell, enjoying the way the top of his head gently slid against my cheek as he moved with my intake of air.
“So, Tanner,” I murmured, reveling in the feel of his name on my tongue, “I’m thinking we need to get some ground rules sorted out. You need to continue to be wonderful and gorgeous and completely an Optimus Prime fan. And it’s very important you keep making your mother smile. That’s your number-one job, okay?”
I paused, closing my eyes and doing nothing but existing with him for a long, glorious moment. “And I,” I whispered, drawing him a little closer, my eyes still closed, “will give you everything you need, anything you need, to be healthy. To beat this thing trying to take you away from us. I promise. You keep being wonderful, I’ll keep you breathing, okay?”