God, if the kid lost another ounce, he’d be able to see light through Josh’s paper-thin frame.
“How long until his next round?” Carl asked, stomach knotting.
“A week, and then a final round,” Lucius said. “Then the bone marrow transplant to replace what all the chemo destroyed.”
Carl took a deep breath, and next to him, Michael did the same. Michael had a good heart. He may not have been close to Josh Salinger, but he was a father, and he seemed to understand what everybody was so upset about.
Suddenly the object of everybody’s attention spoke up. “He’d better not be off his game,” Josh said, his voice rusty. “He’s got some serious work to do in the next two weeks. Did you hear that, Grace? Pay attention!”
Grace pulled back from the kiss, obviously centered by Hunter’s presence enough to resume the snark that made them brothers.
“I don’t know what you think I’m doing while you’re in the hospital, Cancer Boy. We all know you have control of my cortex. If you’re not in the field, I’m not in the field.”
Josh gave a snort that looked like it might launch him off his chair. “Oh no. There will be no sitting here watching Josh die. I’m getting the chemo and sleeping and barfing without any company, thank you. And you all are going to go out and take care of the family business.”
“You’re not dying,” Stirling snapped, surprising Carl. “You’re between healthy spurts.”
Molly nodded solidly at her brother and held out a fist to bump. “He never speaks out at the table,” she said. “You can’t contradict him.”
“Okay,” Josh said with a thin smile. “Not dying. Particularly not if my long-lost Uncle Leon shows up in a week and gives up his bone marrow. Then I’ll just sleep for four-to-six months and hate you all for partying without me.”
“Hate us now,” Chuck drawled. “’Cause you missed Carl landing a plane for the first time, and whoo-ee if that wasn’t a party.”
“That was a party in my pants,” Carl argued, “and not the fun kind. I’ll never get those shorts clean.”
Grace’s eyes locked on Carl and Chuck with undisguised gratitude. Josh and Grace had been brothers of the heart since grade school. If Josh didn’t get better, only Hunter had any chance at all of pulling Grace back from the spiral Carl could see him descending into without Josh Salinger to anchor his heart.
“You landed a plane?” Grace asked suspiciously. “I’m not sure I believe that. Tell me why you’re not dead?”
“Mostly because Chuck here was sitting in the passenger compartment screaming, ‘Pull up and circle around and try again or we’re all gonna die,’” Carl told him honestly. “But also because Hunter spent a good hour explaining how to land the plane before we got to the airfield. I just didn’t think I was going to get a pop quiz.”
Grace turned his head and scowled at his boyfriend. “Wait—where were you?”
Hunter gazed at him without compunction. “The bathroom.”
“You are the stupidest asshole on the face of the planet!” Grace yelled. “Why would you leave Mr. Suit Man to crash the plane and kill you just so you could go to the bathroom?”
“Two reasons,” Hunter replied, unperturbed. “One, the bathroom is the safest place to be in case of a crash, and two, with Mr. Suit Man behind the stick, I wanted the option of not shitting my pants!”
There was a stunned silence around the table while people tried to decide whether or not they got to laugh at that, until a rusty cackle issued from Josh.
“Now that’s my kind of party!”
“No,” Julia Salinger said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered. “If you didn’t look like death, I’d smack you for that. That’s insane. Hunter, Chuck, you’re grounded!” She turned to Carl, her wide blue eyes gentle. “I don’t know what to tell you, Carl. That’s reprehensible. I’m ashamed of you, Chuck! Hunter, how could you?”
Both men were looking down at the table like errant schoolboys and not full-grown men.
“Aw, Julia,” Chuck said in his best twang. “You know we wouldn’t have let him crash the plane. Hell, we were on the plane! He needed a little instruction, that’s all. We thought, you know, it was a long flight. Having one more person who could fly would give us more sleep time.”
Julia narrowed her eyes. “You just wanted to haze Carl so he didn’t get too confident because he absolutely ruled that job!”
Chuck shrugged. “Awkward sincerity is his schtick!”
“Besides,” Hunter said, “he beat the hell out of me with his roller board—”
“It was my briefcase!” Carl defended.
“He’s completely one of us now. He didn’t try to get me arrested or anything.”
“Please,” Carl snapped back, trying to hide how warmed he was. “If I was going to get you idiots arrested, I would have done it months ago.”
“Yeah,” Hunter said as though this hadn’t occurred to him. “Live and learn.”
“Well,” Danny said from between Julia and Felix, “We’re so very glad you all lived.”
“Are we?” Felix asked, his dry humor making an appearance. “Are we really?”
Felix Salinger had dark blond hair that hid any silver at the temples and piercing blue eyes. He was a lion of a man, tall, distinguished, easily the most eye-catching person in the room. He and the exquisite Julia really had looked to be a perfect couple while married, and if Carl hadn’t seen that brief touch of hands between Felix and Danny at the very beginning, he would have made the same assumption.
But part of that believability lay in that Danny wasn’t golden or leonine or anything close, which for Carl was the root of his appeal. A slight, slender man with curly brown hair, a vulpine face, and the golden-brown eyes of a fox, Danny “Lightfingers,” aka Benjamin Morgan, didn’t look particularly imposing. But given enough conversation and a mission, he could definitely dominate a room.
Carl watched him speak with a quiet ache, their meeting in the rehab clinic nine years earlier haunting him still. He wasn’t in love with Danny Lightfingers anymore, but he did hold a deep pocket of gratitude for the man because he’d taught Carl how to care about something beyond his own needs, how to love someone more than himself.
Seeing him pull the disparate parts of his makeshift family together, Carl was reminded of Danny’s appeal, but with Michael sitting close enough to bump knees with him, Carl experienced a deeper, stronger tug toward this one unassuming man.
In nine years he’d never known anything that trumped his hopeless crush on Danny Lightfingers—until now.
“Thank you, Carl,” Danny said, tired eyes twinkling kindly. “I mean, I knew you had it in you, but it’s nice to see you’ve proved yourself to these other assholes, because I’m sure it was your life’s goal.”
Chuck and Hunter snickered, and Carl hid his own laugh behind his hand. This moment here actually made the whole ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna die!’ moment sort of worth it.
Danny paused, allowing the laughter to soothe and to heal, and then went on. “And I’m sure you’ll all be happy to know that we spoke with Josh’s doctor, and if the transplant goes well, his prognosis improves dramatically.” His voice cracked on the word “prognosis,” and Carl knew his eyes weren’t the only ones that burned, but Danny wasn’t done.