Page 47 of Ghost’s Awakening

"Smart woman." The fork pointed at me. Then at the plate. Then back at me. "This one stays. The pasta and the cook. I'm telling Hawk."

Down the bench, Mateo lifted his chin and announced, loud enough for me and for everyone else in the building, "The basil's mine." Then he went back to eating and took no further questions.

Ghost and I ate standing at the counter, plates on the working steel, hips against the edge, facing the room. It was a cook's spot. You ate there when the meal was yours. He'd taken the place next to me without asking why it mattered, and that landed in me too.

His second helping went slower than his first. His eyes kept traveling the tables. Tank flattening a third plate. Trenza arguing something mechanical at Blade with a crust of bread for a pointer. Mateo at the end of his bench, sitting taller over his plate than he'd sat all week, because the basil in there was his.

"Look at them." Ghost said it under the room's noise, his fork slowing, wonder creeping in. "Look what you did. Cuervo hasn't chewed that slow in his life. Trenza's on her third—no, that's a fourth piece of bread. You get that you did this, right? You walked in here at five in the morning, and by lunch you've got fifty outlaws sitting quiet like it's—" He ran out of comparison, shook his head, and dropped his voice to just-for-me. "This is what you are when nobody's making you fight. I'd been wondering."

I had no answer for that. So I gave him the spoon instead. The last of the pan on it, the cook's bite, held out before I'd decided to hold it out.

He leaned in and took it, mouth closing over the wood, and his eyes came up to mine while he did it.

The room kept going. We didn't. I stood in front of fifty or so bikers holding a spoon a man had just eaten from, and he straightened slowly with his mouth still full, and I watched the same math land on his face that had just landed on mine. Six feet away, Irish had frozen over the pasta pan, eyebrows climbing into his red hairline, a man swelling visibly with the need to say something.

He didn't say it. He clamped his mouth shut, turned himself around through what looked like physical effort, and got deeply invested in stacking trays. He gave us the moment on purpose. It cost him. You could see the years coming off his life while he paid.

I went back to my plate. Ghost went back to his. Under the counter's edge, his knee found mine and settled there, and the room roared on without noticing a thing.

We were nearly done, shoulders close, when the phone rang.

I'd forgotten it existed. That's the truth. One whole morning of eggs and eggplant and this loud impossible family, and the phone in my pocket had stopped being a thing I carried, stopped being the wire that ran from my hip to a room across the city where a machine breathed for my brother. The first note of the ring fixed that. It went through me like a knife. My fork stopped in the air. Four months of training snapped back in one second flat, because that ring was the real ring, the one I'd left on for a single caller, and the last time this phone had spoken about Liam, a monster had bought half my debt and called it an invitation.

I put the fork down slow. Slower than I needed to. Pulled the phone out.

UMC.

The room kept its noise. Forks, voices, Irish shouting at somebody about tray stacks. All of it moved off somewhere behind glass, still there, not reaching me. And beside me Ghost had gone completely still, his fork already down, and when I glanced at him his eyes were locked on my face, braced, a man watching a storm come in and waiting to find out what kind.

"Liam?" One word, low. Everything he had was riding on it.

I answered.

"Mr. Rossi?" I knew the voice. Blue scrubs, reading glasses, a pen behind one ear. "It's about your brother. Now, before anything else, you hear the whole sentence. It's good news."

The floor tilted under my boots. I put my free hand flat on the counter.

"Liam's responding." She wasn't hiding the smile in her voice, and she wasn't rushing either. "He's still asleep, and he'll stay asleep a while yet, so don't come tearing in here expecting a conversation. But his responses have been climbing three days now, faster since yesterday, and this morning he squeezed the doctor's finger on command. Twice, because she didn't believe it the first time. They're easing his sedation back. He's finding his way up, honey. Slow. But he's coming."

I don't know how long I stood with the phone against my ear. The counter was cold under my palm. Somewhere far off the nurse was saying nobody needed to decide anything today. And inside me, four months of weight moved all at once, silent, huge. My eyes burned. My knees went loose and I locked them. Three days. He'd been climbing for three days, which meant my brother started up while I was drawing warehouse maps and learning another man's mouth, he'd been climbing that whole time and I hadn't known, he'd been climbing alone⁠—

"—so come by if you want," she was saying. "He won't know you're there. Though between you and me, I've worked this floor twenty years, and I've stopped being sure about that part."

"I'm coming." It came out wrecked. I let it. "Today. Now. Thank you. Thank you for⁠—"

"Thank the boy's own hard head. Rossi men, apparently." The warmth came straight through the line. "Drive safe."

She hung up. I stood there anyway, phone still at my ear, and when I finally lowered it and turned, Ghost was already square to me, fork abandoned, both hands gripping the counter's edge, strung so tight he was practically vibrating.

"Responding." The word barely held together on the way out. "Still asleep. But the swelling's dropping. He squeezed a finger. Twice."

His face went through six things in a second. Then his hand shot up and gripped the back of my neck, one hard squeeze, and he was already in motion, gloves coming out of his back pocket, walking backward toward the doors with his eyes still on me.

"We're grabbing helmets. I'm taking you." His voice picked up speed as he went. "And that wasn't a question, I know it sounded like one. It isn't. Move."

"Yes." The apron was already coming off over my head, and underneath everything, quiet, where only I could hear it, something in me said the other thing. Thank you. For not making me ask.

Irish appeared out of nowhere and lifted the apron out of my hands, and the second he read my face, all the comedy fell off him like a dropped jacket. "Go. The kitchen will survive one afternoon without its usurper." Then his hand landed on my shoulder, heavy, real, and his voice came out gruffer. "Good news?"