Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 114284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
The sheer concern in his eyes was a reminder of how close they’d once been. Another reason I’d been so fucking angry to hear about them sleeping together. It’d been grief. Grief because I hadn’t been there to… I didn’t even know. It wasn’t fucking about sex. I’d just missed them both. We’d been family. We’d had dinners and Trivial Pursuit nights. We’d been neighbors. My two most important people had been within reach every day.
I took over and held the can closer, forcing the tip of the straw between Dean’s lips.
“Drink, brother,” I demanded quietly. “Come on.”
Over the next few minutes, I managed to get him to drink half the Coke, and it felt like he was becoming a bit more alert. At least enough to eat a bite of the banana and a couple cranberries.
And yeah, I dipped those tiny berries in honey. Whatever worked.
“Can you go out and ask Tate if he knows when Dean arrived?” I asked. “I wanna figure out when he took his glucose tablet. He said he took it when he got here.”
Macklin nodded and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
I checked my watch. Still too soon to check his levels again. I’d give him another five minutes.
I blew out a heavy breath and pinched off another piece of the banana, and I fed it to Dean.
“I’m fifty-four years old,” he grumbled drowsily.
“Then fuckin’ act like it,” I whispered. “Quit scarin’ me and eat.”
He was strong enough to lean away from me and give me a weak-ass scowl, and that was when I knew he’d be okay.
Half an hour later, or twenty-eight minutes if you kept count, we were on the right path. Dean was tired as hell and struggling to stay awake, but he could eat without me feeding him, and he could lift the soda can himself.
He leaned back against the cushions, his head resting against the wall.
I’d found out he’d forgotten to eat lunch, which meant he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, nor taken his insulin.
Fucking idiot. Didn’t he fucking know he wasn’t allowed to worry me like that?
Macklin was off to do damage control, so I didn’t feel bad about sitting here scowling at my brother. The worst had passed. If anything, Dean’s biggest concern was that nobody talked—hence Macklin’s current errand.
For several dumb reasons, Dean didn’t want his diagnosis to be public knowledge. He never had.
I, on the other hand, wanted everyone to know. Hell, give him one of those diabetes bracelets. Because when these things happened, he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t get his levels up if he was passed out somewhere.
“I can feel you glarin’,” he muttered with his eyes closed.
“How do you forget lunch?” I snapped under my breath. “And your insulin? For chrissakes, Dean.”
He smacked his lips as if his mouth was too dry, another indicator that his levels were way too low and he was hypoglycemic. Unquenchable thirst. So I nudged the soda toward him, and he drank some more.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
I quirked a brow. “Work-related? New semester?” I assumed it’d started by now. He was a tenured professor at GW, recently back from teaching a few quarters at Stanford, during which I’d missed having him around. But at the same time, I’d let work consume me to distract me from everything that was wrong in my life.
“No. Well, yes, but no.” He furrowed his brow and opened his eyes.
Those blue eyes still held the youth we’d shared in Tennessee. He’d always been as wise and mellow as he was wicked and calculating. Dean never lost his composure. Not back then, not now. He remained infuriatingly calm in the worst of storms.
In other words, he’d been my rock, all while…I’d fretted plenty. Much of it obviously had to do with his diabetes and how he’d concealed it. For starters, the diagnosis was a disqualifiable condition in each military branch, and he’d served in the Navy for over a decade.
Someone had seen something in my brother and decided it was worth covering up blood test results. In many cases, I’d be thankful. The condition shouldn’t automatically be dismissed. I found it just as discriminatory as Dean did—but occasionally? Occasionally, it was valid. Granted, the position Dean had held in the Navy hadn’t put those around him in danger, but he’d been on his own. If he’d passed out, nobody would’ve known why—possibly before it was too late.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. My chest felt tight, and I was torn between hugging the life out of him and raising my voice.
The kid brother had a different temper.
Say something.
He let out a breath and glanced at me wearily. Then he closed his mouth around the straw and drank noisily while maintaining eye contact, effectively forcing humor into the situation long before I was ready.