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“I’m glad you see it that way.” Alistair beamed at him, then turned that winning smile on the rest of the Garin family. He hadn’t seen Sazahk in the shadows in the corner, and Sazahk wasn’t interested in rectifying that. “The position doesn’t begin for another week. The day after the gala celebrating my son’s engagement. In the meantime, please relax and enjoy your time together.”
“Thank you.” Garin nodded proudly, but his fingers twitched toward the tablet where the offer waited. The offer, Sazahk recognized, that could pay for the meds that miraculously allowed Garin’s mother to sit there beside him, alert and present.
“Of course. It was a pleasure to meet you all.” Alistair gave one last nod to the family and made his exit. Sazahk couldn’t help reaching through his implant to nudge the door closed extra hard behind him.
As soon as Alistair disappeared, Garin lunged for his tablet.
“Hey!” Beaty cried, rearing out of the way. “Easy with your bullet hole.”
“It’s fine,” Garin replied without looking at her, scrolling rapidly on his tablet. “Holy shit.”
“That good, huh?” Lucas exchanged a less than ecstatic glance with his brother and Beaty.
Garin stared at his screen, then collapsed back on his pillows and laughed. “Yeah. Fuck, yeah, it’s good.”
That peculiar affection, so acute it hurt, tightened around Sazahk’s throat. Relief rolled off Garin in waves, the strength of it evident in the moisture that squeezed out the corner of his eyes as he laughed.
“Let me see.” Ethan snatched the tablet from Garin’s loose grip, and turned it toward himself. “Whoa. That’s…”
“Enough.” Garin opened his eyes and grabbed his mom’s hand. “For your meds. With that salary, I can cover them easily. And they…” Garin studied his mother’s face, then glanced at Beaty. “Seem to be working?”
Beaty nodded, and Margaret smiled and squeezed Garin’s hand. “They’re working. But we should talk about their cost.”
Garin shook his head. “No, Mom, we don’t have to do that.”
“We do,” Margaret said firmly. But then she extricated her hand and shot Sazahk an impish smile. “But there’s someone else here to talk to you first, and he has been waiting very patiently.”
“Oh no, I don’t want to disrupt.” Sazahk raised his hands and backed away. “I understand that in the hierarchy of Garin’s loved ones, and those entitled to his time, you’re far above me.”
Margaret tsked as she stood. “Nonsense.”
“Boys,” Beaty ordered in a practiced voice as she pushed from her chair, too.
“We’ll pick you up something from the cafeteria, Kev.” Lucas clapped his brother on the shoulder.
“But we’ll knock first!” Ethan grinned and let Beaty shepherd him out the door.
Margaret left last, giving Sazahk a supportive smile as she closed the blinds on her way out.
Chapter Seventeen
Sazahk slowly turned around and found Garin flushed red.
“I am so sorry about that.” Garin dropped his head into his hands. “They’re not great with boundaries.”
“I didn’t mind. I valued the opportunity to interact with the people who have had such a formative effect on your life.” Sazahk approached Garin’s bed, irrationally itching to touch him and ensure his wholeness despite Sazahk’s own eyes verifying his integrity. “May I examine you?”
“Uh,” Garin looked up and blinked, flushing a little darker. “Yeah, sure, be my guest.”
“I’ve been monitoring your vitals from the moment you were admitted, but there’s a difference between equipment readouts and concrete observations.” Sazahk cupped Garin’s neck to feel the pulse in his throat beating beneath his fingertips. Garin’s breath caught, and his pulse quickened at the contact, but stayed strong and steady. “I recognize that accessing your medical readings without your permission is a violation of your privacy and almost purely selfish on my part since I’m not a doctor and have limited tools at my disposal to aid you in the event of your readings taking a negative turn, but I couldn’t stand being ignorant of your state.”
Garin’s blush didn’t fade, but his lips pulled into a smile. “You can monitor my vitals all you want, Sazahk.”
“I don’t think it’ll be necessary once you’re discharged.” Sazahk lifted the edge of Garin’s shirt to eye the bandages wrapped around his midriff. They were still taut and white, so Sazahk let them be. “It’s not necessary now, not that it was before either, but I’m reluctant to relinquish my visibility.”
Garin lowered his arms when Sazahk admitted to himself there was no additional part of Garin he could justify examining. “Sazahk, were you…worried about me?”
Orange flooded down Sazahk’s forearms to his fingers playing with the sheet beside Garin’s hand. “Of course I was worried about you!” Sazahk scowled at the man. “Your chances of surviving that excursion onto the Wate station were slim. I was worried about you the second I was informed of where you were and why. And when I learned that you’d—” Sazahk snapped his mouth shut, the words scraping up his throat like glass and too painful to get out. Been shot. When he’d found out Garin had been shot.
