Ball & Chain(118)

Nick didn’t answer. He was staring at Kelly, completely smitten, wondering why it had taken him so fucking long to realize he loved the man.

“I’d do anything with you, Kels. Anything you wanted.”

Kelly grasped Nick’s face in his hands. “I’ve been trying to figure something out. You see, I can tell you I love you, and it’s the same words I’ve always said to you from the first day I realized you’d have my back in a firefight. I love you, brother. Those are the same words I say to Six and Digger and Ozone. You know? They were the same words I said to Eli the last time he called. They were the same words my parents said the night they left and died in the rain.”

“Kelly,” Nick managed to say as tears began to fall for some reason. He pressed his hand to Kelly’s cheek. A tear hit his thumb and he realized they were both crying.

“But I don’t understand why those are the same words I have to use for a feeling that’s not the same anymore,” Kelly continued, his voice lower, more intimate and more confused. “I . . . I need you. I adore you. I want to wake up every morning and make you fix me breakfast so I can watch you cook. I want to . . . I want to spend the rest of my life with you doing things that make life worth living. I want to make you smile. I want you to take me to every baseball stadium out there and teach me every single little thing you know about the game because I love the way your eyes light up when you talk about it. I want to . . . what words do I use for this feeling if ‘I love you’ has already been used?”

Nick tried to swallow against the lump in his throat and couldn’t. He shook his head, at a loss. He stared into Kelly’s eyes for long moments before finally attempting to speak. “How about . . . marry me?”

Kelly smiled and wiped at his eyes. “Okay.”

Kelly bent to kiss him, his lips barely grazing Nick’s. Then he kissed him harder, stopping only to sniffle and wipe his cheeks again, using Nick’s hospital gown to do it. He rested his head on Nick’s shoulder, and Nick wrapped a clumsy arm around his neck.

“I love you, Nick,” Kelly whispered. “No matter what those words meant before, we know what they mean now. They’re ours now. Just ours.”

Nick whispered the words in Kelly’s ear, feeling a new weight to them. Instead of a sense of panic like he’d half expected, he felt nothing but calm. He could marry Kelly tomorrow and never look back, never regret the decision. He and Kelly could spend their lives together—as boyfriends, as husbands, as partners-in-crime, as any damn thing they wanted—and there wasn’t a thing about that prospect that made him nervous. He buried his nose in Kelly’s messy hair and closed his eyes, unable to keep them open any longer with Kelly’s scent engulfing him and lulling him to sleep.

Kelly kissed him gently one more time, then placed something in Nick’s hand and positioned his thumb over a button. “Rest, babe. Here’s your morphine drip. Enjoy it for me. I’m going to go get food with the others, okay?”

Nick managed a smile, and Kelly kissed him once more, but he still couldn’t drag his eyes open as Kelly left the room.

Marry me. It made him smile as he drifted off to sleep.

He floated in and out of awareness for a while. He wasn’t really in pain, but it wasn’t a restful sleep either. The beeps and shuffling footsteps and whispered words of the hospital were soothing in a way, and eventually even the steady breathing of his father in the next bed after they moved him into the room was something that eased Nick’s mind.

He wasn’t sure what it was that disturbed him, but his eyes were open before he realized he was awake. A male nurse stood next to his bed, checking his vitals and messing with the machines. Nick looked him up and down, moving nothing but his eyes to do it. Then, for some reason, his mind began casting around for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon.

He tossed his head like he was suffering through a restless sleep and then rolled, edging toward the table where Ty’s heavy crystal vase of joke cookies sat. A hand shot out and gripped his wrist, wrenching his arm until he whimpered. Another hand landed on his incision, making him cry out and curl into a protective ball. He grabbed at the man’s arm, trying to push it away, trying to get away from the agony.

He glared up into the eyes of the nurse, recognition dawning as he tried to gasp for air.

“Almost got the drop on me, O’Flaherty,” Liam Bell drawled. “Impressive.”

The bed on the other side of the curtain creaked as Nick’s father moved. “What’s going on over there?”