Chapter 18
Fighting And Finishing Sentences…I Sense A Bromance In The Making
The heart monitor beside the bed started beeping quicker as John tensed beside me. This time, though, it wasn’t in fear or pain…it was pure anger. I sat up, seeing it in his eyes as he looked at Ryan, and turned his face toward me.
“Hey, calm down, okay? We don’t want anything happening to you when you’re still recovering,” I soothed as his fiery green eyes meet mine.
Ryan laughed as he set the paper back down on the table beside the chair I’d been in. “You two have been in this room by yourselves for the past hour, Em. I’m sure you did a few things to get his heart rate up…”
“Ryan, shut up or I’m going to kick you out of here,” I growled, glaring at him then.
“And I proud to admit the fact that I know you most certainly can.”
I rolled my eyes as I stood up, walking around John’s bed until I was between him and Ryan. Though Ryan was all smiles and jokes, John continued to glare, but I knew that relationship wasn’t going anywhere fast…if anywhere at all. I wasn’t going to put up with their testosterone- and ego-fueled behavior, though, no matter how much I loved the both of them.
Ryan cooled the teasing down, thankfully, as he handed me the plate with my name written across the plastic covering. “Sorry, but I ate with everyone at the house. This one’s for you, though. Your favorite, of course. Juliet thought you could use a good meal other than gross hospital food.”
“Mm, yum,” I nodded as he handed me a fork. “I’m starved. Tell her thanks for me later.”
“Sure,” he laughed, watching me immediately stab a piece of chicken before putting it in my mouth. “Hey, slow down before you choke, woman!”
With my mouth full of food, I couldn’t tell him to shut up, so I smacked him on the back of the head instead.
Ryan’s eyes went over the top of my head to John. “Sorry, big boy, but all you get is jello. No solid foods for you yet.”
John, who had stayed silent through the exchange, was rigged on the bed. Just by his conflicted expression, he didn’t know what think of my and Ryan’s exchange, but I had to show him that Ryan was okay…in every sense of the word.
So I sat my plate back down on the table and pushed Ryan into the chair I’d been in. “You stay there and don’t stay anything stupid,” I said, poking his chest. “Quit trying to get him all riled up. You do realize he’s only been conscious for an hour, right? And yet you’ve pissed him off enough that he wants to kill you already.”
Ryan couldn’t help but smirk, holding up his hands in surrender, though I could see he understood. “Okay, okay. I’ll behave.”
“Good,” I nodded, and then turned to John, who was still silently glaring. “And you. You need to calm down and quit killing Ryan with your eyes before you get up and let your fists do the job for you.”
“If I wasn’t hooked up to all this shit, I would have already finished what I started in that alley,” he growled out.
Ryan snorted. “Yeah, before you went crazy just by the sound of Em’s voice.”
“Says the person who killed her in the first place!”
“Technically, that was Juliet, not me.”
“Sure, but I’m also talking about the last…”
“Both of you, just shut up!”
I didn’t know how I was going to handle these two already and they hadn’t even been in the same room for five minutes. An hour before, I’d been worried about what would happen when John woke up. Thirty minutes before, I’d been crying in John’s arms, relieved that he was awake and okay and with me. And now…now I wanted to strangle them both.
“If you have no other reason to be civil toward each other, at least do it for me. My nerves are still shot and I don’t think I can take the two of you bickering back and forth. Because guess what? You’re both important to me. Ryan’s my overprotective, annoying big brother and John’s the love of my life. I plan on both of you being in my life for a very long time, so the two of you are just going to have to get used to the fact that you’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
Without even taking a moment to gauge their reactions, I grabbed my plate, sat on the side of John’s bed, and started eating again. My rant must have gotten to them both, because they were completely silent. I didn’t look up until I’d finished eating, which wasn’t for a few minutes. I’d pretty much scarfed down my food, not realizing how hungry I’d been.
But when I looked up, both of them were staring at me, not glaring at each other.
“What?” I grumbled.
“We’re trying to be civil,” Ryan shrugged.
“And the most civil I’m going to get with this guy is not talking to him at all,” John continued.
Ryan nodded, during his slightly narrowed eyes to John before looking back at me. “Exactly. You can’t expect us to just get along right from the start of this new whatever you want to call it…”
“And we’re not going to call it anything. Because it’s nothing. I don’t care what Ed and…Juliet…” John growled out the name, fury appearing again in his eyes.
“Hey, she’s not that bad. And even Emmy’s warmed up to her…even likes her…”
“Likes her? After everything Juliet’s put her through since last May? You can’t be serious.”
“Get used to it, buddy. Your girlfriend likes your sworn enemy…likes all your sworn enemies…including this guy talking to you now.”
John growled. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Well, you’ve shot me before, but couldn’t do it then. I don’t know how Em would feel about you doing that either now,” Ryan grinned.
“Don’t call her Em.”
“I’ll call her whatever the hell I want!”
“Guys!”
“What?” they both yelled, looking at me.
My eyes went back and forth between the two of them as a small smile forming on my lips. “You two do know you’re agreeing with each other, finishing each other’s sentences, and acting like five-year-olds all at the same time, right?”
John and Ryan glanced at each other before looking back at me, grimacing, and said a one-worded sentence that two five-year-olds I knew would get it a lot of trouble for. “Shit.”
And that made me laugh harder than I had in a while.
I was still laughing when there was a knock on the door and Theo appeared when it opened a moment later.
“It’s nice to hear your laugh again, Emmy,” Theo smiled as he walked toward the bed. “It’s been too long.”
“I think she’s a little delirious from lack of proper sleep,” Ryan commented, rolling his eyes. “She worries too much over this guy.”
“Well, she had a right to be worried,” Theo said, stepping up beside the bed. He looked John over for a moment before speaking again. “How are you feeling now, John? Any discomfort, trouble breathing?”
John pointed to Ryan. “That’s my discomfort…get him out of here.”
Ryan merely grinned. “If you throw me out, you’d better throw Emmy out, too. She’s his trouble breathing…if you know what I mean.”
When Theo raised an eyebrow at me, I just closed my eyes and shook my head. “Just ignore them, please,” I groaned. “And John, just answer the man.”
“I feel good considering,” John finally answered truthfully. “Sure, there’s a little discomfort, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ve been through worse.”
“Well, I wouldn’t consider it worse,” Theo said, checking everything on the monitors. “The injury to your back was hardly as life-threatening as this.”
“Considering I was almost paralyzed…wait,” John paused, looking up at Theo again, this time in confusion. “How do you know how serious my back injury was? Do they have a file explaining what happened?”
Theo shook his head. “No, I was one of your doctors in London for the first few weeks before you woke up from your coma. I came back here after you did. I remember what happened.”
“You never told me that, Theo,” I said.
He smiled over at me. “Someone had to watch over him in the hospital while no one else was there. We couldn’t not have one of us watching out.”
“‘One of us’?” John questioned.
I glanced back and forth between Ryan and Theo. “Um…”
“Emmy, what is it you’re not telling me?”
I bit my lip. “Well, this is one of those things that we have to talk about when you’re not still recovering in the hospital…and Ed should be present also.”
This time, it was me he narrowed his eyes at. “Fine, I’ll let it slide…this time. But answer me one question.”
“What?”
He looked up at Theo. “You said before that we were in a town called Pallandino…and then just mentioned that you came back here after what happened a few years ago…” His eyes returned to me. “So what exactly is here? What is Pallandino?”
My teeth were digging into my lip harder, almost to the point where they were drawing blood. “It’s a little town in the Italian countryside…”
“Don’t give me the tourist information shit, Emmy.”
I was about to answer – and prepared for the wrath that it would bring – but Ryan beat me to the punch. “You Brotherhood members have Paddon Manor and its surrounding lands…and we Knights have Pallandino,” he answered, grinning. “You’re in Knight territory now, brother.”
...
To say John freaked out would be a complete understatement. At first, once Ryan pretty much dropped the bomb, he was completely silent. His eyes were set forward, away from any of us, but that all changed in the next minute.
It all happened in a blur. First, his heart rate spiked and then started beeping quicker, chest heaving with every breath he took. He then ripped the IV out of his hand and the other wires connected to him before he tried to jump out of the bed and ran for the door. He didn’t take two steps before he dropped because of how weak he still was.
Theo had called for another doctor then and they both rushed around to the side of the bed he was at. John threw a meager punch at them, though, right before the other doctor stuck a needle in his arm, injecting him with a sedative that had him relaxing almost immediately, his eyes drooping, before falling asleep.
He wasn’t the only one to freak out, though. Seeing all of it happen made me start crying again and Ryan was there to pull me back when I tried to stop them, screaming. He’d already been through so much, why did they have to put him back to sleep?
“He’s going to be okay, Emmy,” Theo assured once they had John settled back in the bed and hooked up to everything again. “The morphine will help him sleep.”
“Yeah, but what will happen when he wake up again?” I cried. “He’ll just freak out and do the same thing.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “We’ll just have to watch him. I’m not on call for the next few days, so we’ll probably move him to the house. That way, he’ll be in a more comfortable environment and I’ll be able to keep a closer eye on him. And maybe you’ll even be able to get a better night’s sleep than sitting in that chair. But for now, he’s staying here. We’ll do a few more scans while he’s out of it and, if they come back good, we’ll release him tomorrow morning.”
...
With John out for the rest of the night, I slept in the chair beside him, holding his hand like before. Ryan had left around midnight after giving me a kiss on the forehead as my eyes drooped from exhaustion. I fell asleep before the door even closed completely.
The next morning, for a second time, I woke up to the silence of the heart monitor. At first, I started freaking out, thinking that something had gone wrong. But when my eyes met Theo’s, I calmed down.
“So he’s going to stay at the house?” I asked, rubbing a hand over my face.
He nodded, signing a few papers on his clipboard. “Yes, he is. We’re going to have him stay in your room, though I’m sure you don’t have any problem with that,” he smiled.
I definitely didn’t.
It wasn’t for another two hours that we had John settled at the house, in my room, and in my bed, but it was nice to have him out of the hospital. Having him there made me less anxious, especially since he was only hooked up to an IV for fluids, but that would be take out once he woke up again.
A little before noon, there was a knock on my door. But even after I called for whoever it was to come in, they hesitated before opening. And when I saw Kate’s face, I knew why.
“Hey,” I smiled, sitting up from where I’d been lying beside John.
“Hi,” she smiled, looking at John as if she were afraid that he would wake up and see her. “How’s he doing?”
I nodded, looking down at him before running my fingers through his messy hair. “Really well according to Theo, though it might still be a little while before he wakes up from the morphine. They gave him a little more than usual. I’m just happy to have him here instead of at the hospital.”
Kate sat down beside him on the other side of the bed, looking down at him with tears in her eyes and hands clasped tightly together in her lap. “He’s changed more than I realized now that I see him up close,” she whispered as a tear fell.
“No much,” I smiled. “I’ve seen the old pictures…he just looks a little older. Well, now, he’s a lot bigger muscle-wise.”
“He’s grown into a man.”
“An amazing man.”
“Who also has an amazing woman by his side.”
Her compliment made me blush as I took John’s hand, lifting it up to my lips to kiss softly, but I looked at her, smiling. “Thank you, but not just for that. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t have been there when he woke up. Thank you for getting Juliet to see reason and let me stay with him, tell him what’s really going on.”
Kate smiled, reaching forward to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “She knew it would happen sometime soon. We couldn’t keep you locked away for very long, especially when you would be the one to look out for John whenever he went out on assignments. He would have spotted you in no time if you got too close, even if he thought he was just seeing things.”
I grimaced, thinking about a few nights before in the alley in Florence. He thought he’d been seeing things then, hallucinating. “That would have happened, no doubt,” I nodded, before looking up at her. “But what about you? If he’s going to be staying here, he’s bound to run into you at some point. And with Aiden and Sterling sure to recognize him from the pictures in your room…”
As I trailed off, her smile dimmed just in the slightest as she looked down at John. Hesitantly, she reached forward, brushing her fingers across his cheek. “Whenever he wakes up…I’m going to come see him.”
Maybe I had subconsciously taken on some of John’s sadness and guilt over what happened to his mother, because I started crying then. Just knowing that he would get to see her again, understand what really happened, made me so emotional. Maybe it was just because my emotions themselves had been going everywhere the past few days and weren’t quite right yet.
“Emmy, darling, why are you crying?” Kate asked, laughing slightly, as she reached over to wipe my cheeks.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, shaking my head. “I just…I get John back and knowing now that he gets both me and you. I’m just so…happy.”
...
It was after Kate left that John started to come around. I’d been lying beside him, listening to his steady breath go in and out. The sound itself was barely anything to get so worked up over. But considering the fact that I didn’t know if he would make it before, I didn’t care. It was mesmerizing, just like feeling his heart beat against my fingertips.
I saw when his eyes started to open and he swallowed. “Ugh,” he groaned, closing his eyes tightly before blinking again. “Em?”
“I’m here,” I said quietly, my heart jumping into my throat. “How are you feeling?”
He gagged. “Like I’m going to be sick.”
“That’s the morphine,” I laughed, sitting up so I could grab the glass of water on the table beside the bed. “Here. Drink this and maybe it’ll help it subside.”
Lifting his head off the pillow, I held the glass up to his lips and let him chug half the glass before he was able to do it himself. When I knew he had a firm hold on it, I stood and walked over to the other side of the bed, the side he was closest to. So when he finished the water, I took the glass from him before holding out my hands toward him.
“Do you want to sit up? Sorry, but there’s no snazzy hospital bed that can move. We’re going to have to resort to pillows.”
His answer was to put his hands in mine.
Okay, so I knew I wouldn’t have been able to lift him totally on my own, but I was at least there for support. When he was up, I had to sit in front of him to reach over and grab the other pillows before moving them behind him. In doing so, it made me press slightly up against his side, but he didn’t mind at all. In fact, he pulled me into his arms like it was nothing.
“John, be careful…”
“Emmy love,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m fine. I promise.”
“But you’re not…”
“I’ve got you right here. Everything’s perfect.”
I started shaking my head as I leaned back, looking at him. “Not according to what happened last night when Ryan told you exactly what Pallandino was.”
At that, he stiffened, narrowing his eyes slightly. “How did you expect me to react, Em? Did you want me to be all forgiving when all I’ve known the Knights to do was take away the people I love most? All I associate them with is the pain of losing those people and revenge for doing what they did.”
“Can you at least have an open mind when dealing with all this for the next few days? You don’t have to talk to anyone besides me if you don’t want to…but there are some other people I’d like you to meet, who have all become very important in my life over the last few weeks.”
“Emmy love, you can’t be serious. These are Knights we’re talking about.”
“Yeah, and they’re not the bad guys that you’ve painted them out to be.”
John growled then and I raised an eyebrow. But we didn’t have time to say anything more.
Two sets of footsteps raced down the hallway and I knew almost immediately who they belonged to. But unlike usual, Aiden and Sterling didn’t burst into my room. They stood on the other side of the door and I could see their shadows in the slightly that was filtering underneath my door.
“Speaking of two Knights who’ve become very important to me,” I started, standing up to go to the door.
When I opened it, Aiden and Sterling both looked up at me with identical smiles and bright eyes.
“What are you two doing here?”
Aiden smiled guiltily. “Um, we just…”
Sterling cut in, though. “Mummy saids that she was makin’ yous somethin’ to eat. And yous saids that we could meets John when he waked up. He waked up, didn’t he?”
I nodded, kneeling down to their level. John’s eyes were on me, I knew, and he was hearing every word I was saying, but it wasn’t like I didn’t want him to. I needed to show him just how normal all of this was and not the evil he’d come to expect when associating the word ‘Knight’.
“Okay, you can meet him, but I need you two to be very careful. He just woke up again and is still trying to get better, so no playing around, okay?”
They both nodded, peeking over my shoulder before looking back at me. “Okay.”
Standing again, I turned toward and saw John looking confused as he looked at me. He was about to open his mouth to speak, but that was when I stepped forward, letting Aiden and Sterling inside. And when his eyes met theirs, they widened.
“John, I want you to meet two very special little men,” I smiled slightly, walking over to take the same place where I’d been sitting before. I reached my hands out to Aiden first, helping him up to sit beside me. “This is Aiden.” Sterling was already crawling up into my lap before Aiden was even settled. “And this…” This is your baby brother. “This is Sterling.” I looked at the boys before nodding toward John. “Boys, this is John. Do you want to say hi?”
“Emmy talked about yous all the time!” Aiden grinned, looking over at John. Straight to the point, huh, Aiden? “She missed yous a lots.”
John looked up at me with wide eyes, almost like he didn’t know what to say to the pair of five-year-olds. I didn’t know, why, though. From the times I’d seen him with Lacey, Miles and Violet’s daughter, it seemed almost natural.
I looked down at Sterling, who just kept his eyes on John, like he was trying to figure something out. But I knew what it was. Sterling had grown up seeing old pictures of John when he was younger. Maybe he couldn’t quite put two and two together yet.
Aiden was still rambling on about how much I’d talked about John, oblivious to the fact that the three of us were barely listening.
It wasn’t until Sterling turned his head to look up at me that everything pretty much changed at once.
“Emmy, I knows where I’ve seen hims before,” he whispered, though it was loud enough for John to hear over Aiden’s voice. “He’s in all of Mummy’s old pictures in her room, but he looks older now.”
“Shh, Sterling,” I shushed. “We need a little more time…”
“Emmy, what is he talking about?” John asked then, staring at me.
I grimaced, moving Sterling off my lap before I stood. “Come on, boys. I’m sure everyone wants you down for lunch. Let’s go,” I urged, trying to scoot them toward the door.
“But Emmy,” Aiden whined.
"Don't start."
“But Mummy knows him. I know him.”
“Sterling, please, let’s just…”
“But he’s my brother!” he yelled then. “Mummy said that he’s was her son and I’m her son, too. Doesn’t that make him my brother?”
My eyes went to John and then to Sterling and then back to John, seeing the confusion on both of their faces. But before I could make my own words form sentences, another voice answered for me at the doorway. And when I looked up, Kate was standing there, her eyes sliding right past me and to John, whose expression I could hardly imagine at that moment.
“Yes, darling,” she nodded, holding out her hand for Sterling’s. "It does make him your brother.”
***First off, I want to tell you just how much I freaked out at the responce on the last chapter. I mean, I knew you guys would be freaking out...but my goodness! Over 250 votes and 150 comments? Holy crap!
And that first scene...goodness, I can't tell you how much I loved it! I thought John/Emmy and Ryan/Emmy scenes were the best...but John/Emmy/Ryan scenes totally surpass that!
I wasn't planning on it ending right there, but I thought it would be a better place than where I was going to have it. Now it builds anticipation!
Because school is officially starting back for me tomorrow. Now, we've got 6 more chapters to go and I'm going to try to finish them all in the next week and a half to two weeks. I HAVE to, because this summer semester is going to be insane and I'm going to have to put all my focus and energy into that.
So the next upload will either be Sunday or Monday, depending on how much time I get to write in the next three days. Let's do the usual 100 votes and 30 comments before the next upload? And, you know, we can totally go past that like we've done for the last three chapters. ;D
Comment and vote!!!1***