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It sounded ominous.

“Tucker, what’s going on?”

“Well,” he said, taking a breath. “Mom’s getting married.”

“What? I’m sorry, I think I just hallucinated.”

Jed gave me a look as if to say that wasn’t funny right now.

“Mom’s getting married.”

“What? When? Who is she marrying? Why?” Nothing made sense.

“She’s marrying that pilot guy, Steve.”

“That is such a tacky name.”

“They’re getting married tomorrow night,” Tucker said, ignoring my comment. “Can you get out here? I know it would mean a lot to her.”

Tomorrow!

“Oh right. I’m the kid she doesn’t care about.”

“Lauren, you know that’s not true. She’s just, Mom. Please come. I don’t want to have to sit here all by myself.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering why my brother wouldn’t have a date. He wasn’t as bad as Old Dean, but he was close. “No hot date?”

I could practically see him shaking his head over the phone.

“No hot date. It’s just me. Now you see why I need you to come.” He paused. “Come on, we can play Drunk or Crazy with all the wedding guests!”

I laughed. It was a favorite past time for us.

“Fine,” I said. “If I can, I’ll be there. Can you text me the details?”

“Definitely,” he said. “Feel better L, I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon, Tuck. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I clicked
end
and handed the phone back to Jed.

“Well, it appears I have a wedding to attend. But first, I have to go make sure my boyfriend is alive.” For some reason boyfriend didn’t feel like the right word, but that was all I had right now. It didn’t feel like enough for what Dean and I had.

“Good plan,” Jed said. “How’s your hand?”

I waved it around.

“Well, right now it’s great. When the pain medication wears off, I’m sure there will be hell to pay for my stupidity.”

“Well,” Jed said, in a truly parental way, “At least you learned to never go down into a mine all alone to make out.”

I rolled my eyes. He knew that wasn’t the case even though he didn’t know the real story.

“Now, let’s go make sure they stitched him up right,” Jed said.

I couldn’t get there fast enough.

JENNY SAW ME through the window in the door and came out.

“Here, you can see him now. He’s still asleep.”

I hugged her quickly.

“Thanks Jen. I’ll be fast.”

She gave me a sad smile and sat down next to Jed on a chair in the hallway.

Dean was lying in a bed in a room that was identical to mine. There was still an oxygen mask on his face, which was surprisingly not as cut up as I expected it to be. When they said he was lucky, it was the understatement of the year. His heart monitor kept beeping, which annoyed me to no end, but I couldn’t take his off like I did mine. It was so incredibly hard to see him this way. It was like proof that Clark Kent was mortal.

I sat down in the chair by his bed and realized he must have done this for me when I was sleeping after the avalanche. I wanted to laugh at how accident-prone we were, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate since he wasn’t awake to laugh with me.

I took his hand in mine and felt the tears come.

“Dean,” I whispered softly. “I hope you can hear me right now, because I’m so mad at you. Not because you didn’t tell me that you knew my dad, or that Emma was my sister. I
am
mad about those things, believe me. But that can wait. What I’m mad about right now is that you would risk your life and go into that mine when I already lost someone in there. Did you think I could lose you too? Did you think Jenny could lose you? Whatever you went down there for better be pretty damn important.”

I took a breath and choked back tears.

“I’m being selfish right now, but I don’t care. I need you so much. I just found you, and I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you. I need to talk to you about something, because no one else understands. My mom hates me. She hates me, Dean. She’s getting married tomorrow night, and I have to go. I don’t want to leave you, but I have to. Even for someone who hates me, I’m going.”

Tears started streaming down my face and I squeezed his hand, half expecting him to squeeze back.

“Fight for me! Love me! Want me! All I ever wanted was for her to notice me! Is that so much to ask for from my mother?”

I put my head down on the bed next to him.

“I just want to talk to you about it,” I said softly after a moment. “You would know exactly what to say. You always know exactly what to say,” I trailed off.

I wiped away my tears and studied his face. I liked seeing his dark lashes sweeping over his cheeks when he was sleeping next to me, but not this artificial sleep. I hated that I couldn’t wake him up.

I felt bad taking time away from Jenny, who probably needed this more than I did. He was her brother, after all. I’d only known him for mere weeks.

I squeezed his hand one last time and hoped he would wake up, but he didn’t. He was still too far under. I leaned down and kissed him lightly, but this wasn’t
Sleeping Beauty
. He stayed motionless. I opened the door and saw Jenny and Jed sitting outside.

“Jen, you can go back in if you want,” I said, nodding my head inside.

“Okay,” she said gratefully. “But we can take turns.”

I nodded and she went back into the room.

I took her place on the chair next to my uncle and sighed.

“So,” I said to Jed. “Was this in a letter?”

He shook his head.

“No, it wasn’t. Have you read yours yet?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Why not?”

“I’m scared of what it says.”

Jed leaned over and took my hand.

“Lauren, losing your dad was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through in my life. I’m older by five years. You always think it should be chronological, but that’s not always the case. God has other plans, and Josiah knew that. He knew a lot of things.” His voice sounded strained. “I have to tell you that when Josiah told me he found Dean in a halfway house not far from here, I thought it was bad. I wanted to ask why he was there anyway, but knowing Josiah, he was probably led there by divine providence. That’s always how it was with him. Always in the right place at the right time.”

My voice squeaked out.

“Until he wasn’t.”

Jed sighed sadly.

“Until he wasn’t.” Then he started again. “But Lauren, everything happens for a reason. I have to believe that, because it’s what Josiah would have wanted me to believe. Maybe that was where he was supposed to be after all. Without Josiah, Dean would never have gotten out of there− the mine, or out of the halfway house. He’s said so. He saved that boy’s life, and if he hadn’t, Dean wouldn’t have saved your life. Without you, those kids would be in the foster system and there’s no telling if they would have had good homes with loving parents, or the ones where the parents lock kids in the basement and use the government funding for drugs.”

I shuddered to think that Dean and Jenny went from the frying pan and into the fire when they were put into bad foster homes.

“It’s okay to be sad,” Jed continued. “It’s okay to miss him. I still miss him, every damn day. But I look at you, and I look at Emma, and I see all of the good that Josiah would have wanted. Dean protects the two of you because he chooses to, but also because he knows Josiah would have wanted him to.”

I didn’t want to cry, but if he kept up with this, my emotions were going to get the best of me.

“But don’t you see how that bothers me? Did Dean run around trying to find me or something?”

Jed laughed.

“Oh no, he didn’t want to find you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Once Josiah said something about how he hoped you two would meet someday, and it made Dean mad. He’d seen pictures of Josiah’s beautiful little girl who was everything to him. He didn’t want you to know him as the mess your father cleaned up.” He looked me straight in the eye. “So don’t treat him that way. He’s a good one, Lauren. Don’t let this break you.”

Jed had never talked to me this way, and I didn’t know how to react. If he was willing to say all of this, he must really believe it.

“Thanks Jed,” I said as he pulled me in for a hug. “Thank you for everything.”

“Of course, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you.”

Jenny opened the door, her arms crossed. She looked like she had been crying.

“Lauren?” she asked quietly. “I just need to go home. I can’t be here.”

I knew the hospital probably reminded her of her mom, so I nodded.

“I’ll take her,” Jed said. “Is that okay with you, Jenny?”

She nodded. “Can you take me to Callie’s? I don’t want to be alone.”

“Here, I’ll go with you…” I started, but she cut me off.

“No, you should stay here with Dean. I don’t want him to be alone either.”

My heart broke for Jenny, and I pulled her into a hug until she stopped shaking.

“You’re okay if Jed takes you home?”

She nodded and handed me my phone.

“Call me if you need me, okay?” I told her.

“Okay.”

Jed nodded and led Jenny down the hall.

I opened the door to Dean’s room, bypassed the chair, and squeezed myself onto the space next to him on the bed, careful not to lean on him too much. I wasn’t sure where his ribs were broken, but I just needed to be near him.

“Please wake up,” I whispered, trying to block out the beeping before it gave me a panic attack. “I need you so much.”

A NURSE CAME in a few hours later and told me I had to leave. I fought her on it, but she seemed like she was seasoned enough that she wouldn’t let up until I left. I think she was particularly upset that she found me on the bed next to him, but I didn’t care.

I knew I needed to catch a flight to Georgia so I could attend my mother’s wedding. According to Tucker, Steve was from old Southern money.
Typical.
Mom was a gold digger if nothing else. That was a little bit ironic now that I knew that Dad had millions of dollars worth of gold from his dredging in Palmer Lake.

Maybe she would love me more now that I had an endless supply of money. Tucker had one too, though, according to Jed, he just needed to fly here and activate it as I had. I wondered what would be in his safe deposit box, and if it would be as interesting as mine.

I convinced the nurse I would leave as soon as I wrote Dean a note. I wanted to be here when he woke up, but if that wasn’t possible, I wanted to make sure he knew that I had been here.

I scribbled as fast as I could on the back of a menu she’d given me that I was at my mom’s wedding and that he should call me when he could. I left it by his bedside, kissed him, and left. I wanted it to be a real kiss, one where he was a willing party, but that would have to wait.

Jenny drove the Range Rover to picked me up. Dean’s truck was still up at the mine so she drove me up there, and then I drove his truck back to the house so everything was accounted for.

“I’m going back so I can be there when he wakes up,” she told me as she dropped me off. “Thanks for asking Jed and Mary to stay with us until this is all over.”

“Of course! Good luck, his nurse is like the Terminator. Minus all the robotic parts.”

She smiled.

“Good luck on your trip! Call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” I assured her. “I’ll be back soon. I don’t plan on staying away for long.”