He was at the foot of the bed, probably to position himself somewhere where he wouldn’t be tempted to put his hands on my brother.

Brian was sitting up, red-faced and infuriated, leaning toward Boone.

But he must have heard Mom and me because he was looking directly at me.

“Saint Kathryn wakes,” he said snidely.

Boone shifted to the side so my brother couldn’t see me.

He also said, “Christ, you’re still drunk.”

“I just had a few and this is not that big of a fuckin’ deal.”

“You’re in a fuckin’ hospital.”

“I had an accident!”

“Wise up, you made an accident happen, bro. And you’re are so motherfuckin’ lucky, you have no clue. You hit somebody, after you got out of prison, there’d be no hope, you’re so goddamned weak, the guilt would annihilate you and you’d spend the rest of your life at the bottom of a goddamn bottle.”

Mom winced.

I opened my mouth to call out to Boone.

Mom shook her head.

I closed my mouth.

“You know, I didn’t ask you in here,” Brian said.

“Your sister did.”

“Are you not gettin’ that I don’t give a fuck what my sister wants?”

“Yeah, I got that before your sister did.”

I winced.

Mom held tight to my hand.

“You know, bud,” Boone started, “I don’t know what it is that brought you to this place, but you better take stock. Because those two women dropped everything to be here when they heard what happened to you. No, what you did to yourself. They dropped everything to get here to see you were okay and take your back. I will never in my life forget the look on Ryn’s face when she looked up at me and told me her brother had been in an accident. Never forget it. Because that look tore a hole in my goddamned soul.”

I squeezed my eyes tight.

Brian had no response to that.

I opened my eyes again when Boone kept talking.

“And if you don’t sort your shit out, the next time this or something like it goes down, if it doesn’t end in tragedy one way or another, they aren’t gonna bother. And you can try to convince yourself you won’t miss it, but if you make that shit happen, you’ll torture yourself for losing them for the rest of your goddamn days.”

With that, he turned and scorched me with his eyes.

“Baby, I would really like you to leave this room with me,” he said.

“Go,” Mom encouraged. “I’ll talk to your brother.”

I did not want to leave my mother alone with Brian.

But at the expression on her face, and the emotion I felt coming from Boone, I nodded and stood.

Boone held out his hand.

I moved to him and took it but stopped and looked to Brian.

“I love you so fucking much,” I whispered.

Brian’s head jerked to the side with the power of his flinch.

“Please, get yourself well,” I finished.

And then Boone pulled me out of the room.

* * *

“Porter bought me a Samsung. It talks to me. He thinks it’s everything. But I don’t know why a fridge needs to talk to you,” Anne-Marie said to my mother.

“I really don’t understand what a fridge needs to do outside keeping food cold,” Mom said to Anne-Marie. “A friend of mine bought one of these, it costs over five thousand dollars. And it doesn’t even dispense water.”

“Lunacy,” Anne-Marie murmured.

“But Maria tells me they’re the greatest thing in fridges,” Mom said. “I’m sure Ryn knows what she’s doing, putting one of these in here. People think they’re so amazing, she might just sell this house because of the fridge.”

“Well, I could see that. If it was a wine fridge,” Anne-Marie replied.

They both started cackling.

Boone, who had his arm around my shoulders and was holding me tucked with my front against his side (and that would be tucked close), tensed his arm to give me an affectionate squeeze.

I put my head on his shoulder and gave him one back with my arms that were around his waist.

Neither of us shared that fridge was not bought by me.

“Annie! New plan!” Porter shouted from somewhere deep in the house. “We’re not going to Savannah on vacation next month. We’re comin’ to Denver. Ryn needs an extra pair of hands.”

“Told you,” Boone muttered.

“Porter Sadler, we have our flights and all the tours booked!” Anne-Marie shouted back.

“Like I wanna look at a bunch of old houses!” he yelled.

“Well, I do!” she yelled back.

“The curse of an enlightened man!” he bellowed.

“Jesus,” Boone said under his breath.

I started silently laughing.

“He’s crazy. I’d love to go to Savannah,” Mom said.

“Well, it looks like I’m gonna have an extra ticket,” Anne-Marie replied.

They started cackling again.

Boone took us on the move, skirting them wide, to get me out the back door.

He then guided me to the middle of the backyard.

And there, he turned me to him and rested his forearms on my shoulders but dipped his face super close to mine.

“So this control issue you got, that extend to you holding your breath until you pass out so shit that’s fucking you up will stop coming at you?”

Here we go.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Baby, you were out. If I didn’t know you were holding your breath so I was primed to catch you, you could have hurt yourself.”

“That’s only happened once before,” I assured him.

“Let me guess, with your father.”

“Yeah.”

His mouth got tight.

Yeah.

There we went.

I dropped my forehead to his chest, and when I did, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

I wrapped mine around his middle.

“For my peace of mind, Rynnie, you gotta be mindful and stop doin’ that,” he murmured over my head.

“Your mom and dad know my brother has an alcohol problem.”

“Yeah.”

“And my mom met you, and them, going to the hospital to check on her son who was cuffed to a hospital bed.”

“And?”

I tipped my head back and caught his eyes.

“Boone, put yourself in my shoes.”

“Your mother would no sooner think badly of me because one of my brothers had an issue that was beyond my control than she’d poke out her own eye.”

Good point.

And this was true.

He kept going.

“And what my parents saw today was a sister who loves her brother so much, regardless of his problems, she was messed right the fuck up at the thought of him being hurt and in trouble. Messed up so bad, she could barely talk.”

Hmm.

“And they saw she had a mother who had it together and dropped everything to get to her boy.”

Well, that was a better way to look at it.

“And your mom saw you had a man and his family who are going to have your back.”

Another better way.

“In other words,” he kept at it, “would I rather those two met to giggle about expensive fridges and shit while my mom and dad shouted the house down? Maybe. But the way they met didn’t suck either.”