Total pages in book: 178
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
I needed him to bend before he broke.
“Honey.” I took a step forward.
He didn’t respond.
“Honey.” I touched his arm, and he looked down at the spot I’d touched before resting his turbulent gaze on mine. I smiled and softened my voice. “He’s breathing.” I sniffled. My eyes blurred with unshed tears before I laughed out, “He’s breathing.”
“He’s breathing,” confirmed an ecstatic-looking Doctor Prahesh. “He’s off the ventilator and breathing on his own.” He twisted back to look at us. “That’s the best we could ask for.”
“Why—?” Twitch tried to speak but cut himself off. He tried again, slower this time, and the thick emotion I heard in his voice had me moving toward him, pressing myself into his side. “Why isn’t he awake?”
It was something I wanted to ask but had been too frightened to.
I listened intently at the response Doctor Prahesh gave. “Well, sometimes, when people have experienced a trauma as Antonio has, the body isn’t the only thing that needs to take time to heal. The mind is delicate. A child’s mind, even more so.” He looked back at our son. “He’s healing. I think your son will wake when he’s good and ready.”
“I think” wasn’t something I wanted to hear, but I’d take it.
Doctor Prahesh was a smart man.
And nine hours later, the little monster opened his eyes and woke from his prolonged slumber like the sleeping beauty he was.
Chapter
Forty-Five
Twitch
In the days after we got A.J. home, our house was full, for days, for hours on end, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t mind the company. It kept me thinking about the could-haves, the would-haves, the should-haves. It kept me from thinking about the things that might have been, and I was grateful for the reprieve from my thoughts.
Gifts came by the carload, and although A.J. was having a hard time speaking after the removal of his breathing tube, he was getting better by the minute and damned if he didn’t love being spoiled.
I couldn’t believe how resilient this child of mine was.
There he was, smiling and laughing, playing on the floor with Happy and Ana while I fought the urge to cry. I fought that urge so hard, but it hadn’t left me for days.
Every smile he threw my way shot me in the heart. Every excited look, every happy gasp, every hug he gave as he passed me wrecked me. Wrecked my soul in a way I couldn’t comprehend. Breathing in a full breath hadn’t happened since he was taken from us, and I still couldn’t manage one. Because we might not have been so lucky, and I silently vowed that I would spend the rest of my life being the father he deserved. I would be the kind of father I wished for as a child, the involved, loving kind. The kind of dad who instinctively knew something was wrong with his kid. The kind of father who knew his child that well.
Something had happened to me over the past week. Something had changed. I felt myself softening in a way that felt unnatural, in a way I wanted to fight it, but I was tired of fighting. Maybe it was time for a change. And as I sat down next to my ailing father, I spoke without a trace of malice. “You’re coming back to visit, right, Pops?”
Antonio Falco Senior didn’t have a lot of life left in him, but he wanted to spend what little time he had left making up for the mistake he’d made a lifetime ago. And, right now, as I looked over at my recovering son, I could appreciate that. I could respect that.
His voice was rough. “You want that?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
He blinked at me in stunned disbelief. He was waiting for the shoe to drop. But there was no shoe to drop. I said what I said.
When enough time had passed, I uttered, “So, is that a yes?”
He spoke cautiously. “Maybe you could bring my grandson to visit me in Vegas?”
No hesitance. “Okay. I mean, it might not be for a while. Depends on how he recovers and all, but yeah. I think Lexi would be down for that.”
My father’s lip tilted up at the corner. His lip twitched then stretched as he smiled. That smile pulled into a grin, and when he lifted his shaking hands, I realized he was sicker than I thought. Without warning, he roughly grabbed my cheeks and pulled me in. When he kissed my cheeks as hard as he did, wheezing out a laugh, something I’d never felt flowed through me, slowly. Languidly. It was liquid warmth in my veins.
It was a father’s love.
Something I’d never had before.
And as I fought the emotion I was feeling, I took one of my dad’s trembling hands and kissed his thick, aged knuckles as he continued to smile down at me like I was breathing life into him. With one hand in his and the other on his shoulder, I gently shook him and uttered, “Don’t up and die on me, okay?” My tone was as steady as I could make it. “We got shit to catch up on.”