Give Me Grace(178)

I couldn’t resist a quick brush of my lips against her hair. It was still the same deep vivid red, hanging down her back in soft waves. “I thought your hair fell out with chemo?”

“I only needed a low dose,” she managed to say as I twisted a lock of it between my fingers. It was so soft. “My hair thinned some but not much.”

The door opened and Casey slipped inside.

“Grace! Fuck,” he bit out.

“Where the hell were you?” I dropped the lock of hair and glared up at him, feeding that rage Quinn talked about. “Out there having a goddamn party while your woman is layin’ in here half dead!”

“You sonofabitch!” he ground out as he dropped beside me. I passed Grace over carefully, smoothing the hair from her face. He wrapped her up in his arms, his anger at me contrasting with the tender way he took hold of her. “You don’t know shit. I didn’t want this fucking party,” he told me, his voice cracking. “Dammit. She was in bed when I left to get some ginger ale for her stomach. When I came back to the bedroom she was gone.”

“’s my fault,” Grace mumbled, burrowing herself into Casey’s chest. “The party. Everyone was home from the tour and I missed them all so much. Felt fine this morning.”

“How could you miss Henry?” Casey asked as I stood up and wet a washcloth with cold water. “He flew back every five minutes just to check on you.”

I crouched and ran it over Grace’s forehead. She looked like she’d passed out. Casey didn’t seem to mind that I was wiping down her face so I kept going, pausing briefly to look at him. “Is this how it’s been these past three months?”

Casey’s jaw ticked. “Yeah. I fucking hate it. We got her a great doctor here in Sydney. Made the appointment and went and saw him a couple of days after all the shit that went down. I sat in that office of his and listened to him talking about injecting her with poison. I had to sit on my hands because I wanted to grab him by the throat, drag him across his desk, and toss him out the window.”

“I’m sorry, Casey,” I told him, because I was. They were dealing with all that and me being a jackass on top of it.

I’m not sure he heard me, his eyes were on Grace, his fingers tangled in her hair as he brushed it from her face.

“I cried,” he choked out as he sat back on the tiles, Grace in his arms. “I fucking cried myself sick the first time they put that needle in her and I watched it drip slowly into her veins.”

“But she’s gonna be okay, right?” I stood, re-wetting the washcloth. “That’s what she told me.”

Casey nodded, his nostrils flaring as he drew a deep breath in. “Yeah. She is. She should start getting better from here on out. The original surgeon cut out the cancer before she arrived in Sydney. The chemo was done as a precautionary measure to kill off any cancer cells that might’ve been left behind.”

“Told you I’m fine,” Grace mumbled, her eyes fluttering open.

“Hey!” Casey protested when she tried pushing her way up off of the floor. She fell back against him. “Let me carry you.”

“No,” she replied stubbornly. “I’m fine. There’s nothing like a good puke to make you feel better, right, Kelly?” She winked up at me. The effort was puny at best, but it felt nice to be included.

“Right on, babe,” I replied smoothly, winking back.

Casey narrowed his eyes on me. I shrugged and grinned.

Grace sighed.

“What?” he asked her.

“You and Kelly. You both have the same pretty dimples.”

“Pretty?” we both said at the same time with disgust.

“Yeah.” She giggled, starting to sound drunk. The exhaustion must have well and truly set in. Tilting her head back, she looked up at Casey, taking his face in her hands. She smiled sweetly. “I love you so much, Batman.”

It felt like I was intruding on a private moment, but really? “Batman?”

“Don’t you know?” Grace looked at me, tired and pale, but happiness shone in her eyes. “Casey’s my hero.”

I knew right then, in that one single fuckin’ second, that I wanted what my brother had. It must have felt real damn nice to be someone’s hero, for them to look at you the way she looked at my brother. We might’ve had a shit start to life, Casey and I, but he had Grace now, and that meant he had everything.

At Grace’s stubborn insistence, Casey carried her out to the kitchen while I followed behind. He planted her ass on the counter top. Then he stood between her legs with his back to her. She latched her arms around his shoulders while they chatted with their friends. I stood on the fringes next to Fox, beer after beer shoved in my hand until I felt unsteady.