Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,76

she said.

“I think I better give you a chance to reconnect first.”

As she considered the particulars, she saw the logic to that. Her showing up here with a “mate”? Yeah, that was one more layer of complication this “reunion” didn’t need.

“I’ll come back and get you.”

“Perfect.” There was a pause. Then he came in for a quick hug. “You’ve got this. You can do this.”

Holding on to his strong body, she was struck by how important it was for her to have him with her. Trez was like a bridge between what had gone before and where she was now. So even though she hadn’t known him for long, he seemed more permanent than a friend, more intimate than a lover.

Family, in a way.

“Thank you for being here.” She’d told him that before. But she needed to say it again. “I won’t be long.”

Probably because her brother was going to toss her out on her ass.

Breaking off from him, she walked down the hall and refused to allow herself to look back. She was liable to lose her nerve.

The corridor was wide enough for two emergency gurneys with associated medical staff and monitoring equipment to race into surgery side by side. Or something like that. As she went along, it was impossible for her to think in any other terms than Marcus Welby, M.D. scenarios involving life-or-death rushes. Or maybe she needed to be more current. ER. Wait, that was like a decade ago.

Fine, Grey’s Anatomy.

The TV Guide debate was what was on her mind as she walked by so many rooms, all of which had glass doors that were shut, most of which had drapes pulled closed for privacy. From time to time, however, she was able to see inside to family members at a bedside, cloistered around a very sick patient, holding hands. Holding each other.

Inevitably, the ill or dying were hooked up to a lot of machines.

What did she expect, though. This wasn’t even a general floor. You were not here unless you were really, really sick.

Room 1313 was down at the end, on the left.

And she had to stop at 1311 for a minute and catch her breath.

Thank God she had taken Trez’s vein. She wouldn’t have had the strength for this otherwise.

Clearing her throat in anticipation of saying something coherent, she walked forward… and looked in through parted drapes.

Therese covered her mouth with her hand as her eyes filled with tears.

Her mahmen was lying so small and pale in a bed that was surrounded by equipment. The males of the family, son and hellren, were sitting on either side of her, each cradling one of her hands in their palm. The arrangement of them all, the pervasive sadness, the obvious sickness… they formed a tableau of grief and suffering, the emotions and dying process eternal even in the face of so much technology and medical advancement.

Standing on the outside looking in, Therese greeted the three people she knew best in the world by reacquainting herself with their appearances, overlaying the present sight of them across the composite memory of the decades she’d known them. Her father looked older, much older. His hair, once salt-and-pepper gray, was now fully white, and his face was lined deeply, not wrinkles any longer but gouges around his mouth and at the corners of both his eyes. He had lost a great deal of weight, his plaid shirt hanging off his shoulders, his khaki pants pooling at his feet, and maybe that was part of the aging thing. But he was also exhausted, great bags under his eyes, his skin sallow and pasty.

Her brother, on the other hand, looked bigger and more vital. Gareth had nearly shaved off his hair, and his throat, shoulders, and chest had swollen up, the breadth of him not only so much greater than she recalled, but so much greater than his clothes could handle. His Michigan sweatshirt was stretching at the seams, and his jeans, though loose at his waist, seemed to be having trouble with the girth of his thighs and then his calves.

He had obviously been angry and had taken his emotions out in the gym. And he was obviously still angry. As he stared down at the female in the bed, his eyes were narrowed, his brows tight. The expression seemed like a permanent part of him, something he had been born with—except she knew that not to be true. He had been happy when she had known him. The life