Page 85 of Power Play

“You got to fifteen, and somebody finally said, ‘Come home. You’re staying.’ I didn’t get that until I was old enough to build it myself.”

My eyes moved around the table. Cade looked at me first. Easton’s expression had softened, and Rider had stopped pretending to look at his phone. Briggs followed my gaze while Cade leaned one arm against the table.

“You’ve got it now,” Cade said.

I looked at my best friend, who had almost died under my hands four months earlier and now sat across from me alive enough to threaten Easton over fries.

“Yeah. I do.”

Briggs released a slow breath. “Blood doesn’t guarantee shit.”

“It doesn’t.”

“People who stay do.”

I touched my glass against his. “That part I’ll drink to.”

Easton clinked his glass next, followed by Rider and Cade until Briggs had five drinks knocking against his from every direction.

He looked around the table and shook his head. “You’re all becoming emotionally disgusting.”

Easton reached for the ketchup. “Good. I was worried we were going to start hugging.”

“I have at least seventeen additional childhood wounds available if anybody wants to continue.”

Rider sighed. “Please eat something before you begin wound number two.”

Briggs picked up his burger. “I cope through protein.”

The laughter came easier after that.

His phone vibrated one more time, but Briggs turned it off, shoved it into his pocket, and took a bite like the decision had cost him something.

Cade watched him chew. “You good?”

“I’m not good yet.”

The honesty made Cade nod. “That’s fair.”

“I will be.”

“That’s better.”

Briggs pointed at Cade with the burger. “Don’t therapist me.”

“I went to therapy. I’m qualified now.”

“You went to therapy because you got stabbed.”

My chest tightened before I could stop it.

A tray crashed somewhere behind us, porcelain cracking against the tile, and the sound went straight through me. For half a second, the restaurant vanished beneath the memory of Cade’s blood soaking my hands while his face went gray under fluorescent lights. I was on my knees again, pressing against the wound and screaming at him to stay awake while my palms slipped. The dispatcher’s voice came through the phone, but I couldn’t understand half the words because Cade’s breathing sounded wrong.

I pulled air through my nose and forced myself to count. Four beats in, hold, then let it out slowly enough for the restaurant to return around me through the clatter of forks, overlapping voices, and Briggs sitting across the table.

Cade was alive.

He watched me carefully. “You still getting hit with it?”