Page 5 of Part & Parcel

“Okay,” Kelly whispered, wondering how the hell Nick had spent his entire life like this, doing what was expected of him to appease people who treated him horribly. It was brand-new insight into Nick’s otherworldly stores of patience. Kelly hugged him closer, and Nick hissed and stumbled a little. “Sorry! Shit, I keep forgetting about the stitches!”

“It’s okay,” Nick said, his voice strained as they reached the car. He lifted his jacket out to peer at his side, where just ten days ago an attacker had stabbed him. Twice. There was blood on his otherwise pristine white shirt. “Hey! Looks like an excuse not to stay too long at a sorry-your-shitty-dad-died party, huh?”

Kelly rolled his eyes and helped Nick into the car.

“You okay?” Kelly asked yet again as they sat in the dim back corner of a bar several blocks from Nick’s childhood home. It was his father’s local watering hole, where the mourners had come to pay their last respects after the coffin had been lowered into the ground.

Nick shook his head, staring at the full glass of whiskey in front of him. He hadn’t taken a sip. It was a drink meant to honor his father’s memory, and he intended to let it sit there. How many times had he been sent to this tavern to find his father and tell him it was time to come home? How many times had he been shouted out of this bar and run home, praying he’d get there before his dad did?

He tapped two fingers on the table, rattling the drink. “Let’s go home, huh?”

Kelly didn’t question him; he merely nodded and pushed his chair back to stand. He helped Nick get to his feet, handing him his cane and offering his arm. It’d been mere days since Nick had been released from the hospital in Miami. Kelly had been with him every second of his recovery, and this routine was one they’d repeated at least five times a day since Nick had woken. He appreciated Kelly being there, but for the first time in their long history of fighting side by side, Nick was ashamed of needing help. Kelly wasn’t a corpsman anymore, he was Nick’s boyfriend.

When Kelly had called his sister Kat to let her know that Nick was alive, Kat had told them about Brian. He was dying, in the hospital with mere days to live. Nick hadn’t made it home in time, nor had he especially tried to, and he knew without a doubt that his mother would never forgive him.

Nick was having a hard time pretending to be the grieving son.

He leaned on Kelly as they threaded their way through the small crowd, spared from the obligation of saying good-bye or shaking hands with his late father’s friends. Everyone knew what he’d been through, everyone knew he probably still should have been at home in bed, if not in the hospital. Everyone knew he was still weak.

Nick fucking hated it.

“Nicky,” a man in uniform said as Nick and Kelly neared the front door. Nick stopped, and Kelly discreetly stepped away so Nick wasn’t leaning on him as he faced the man. “How are you, son?”

Nick gave a curt nod in answer. He was at least five inches taller than the man, but he remembered having to crane his neck to see his face when he stood in their living room waiting for Nick’s father to go to work.

“I was surprised to see you out there.”

Nick didn’t respond. He merely stared, waiting.

His silence apparently made his father’s old partner nervous, because the man continued talking, his words faster and his fidgeting more pronounced. “Everyone knows what you tried to do for your daddy. Even if that liver didn’t take, you gave him one more year. Him dying wasn’t your fault, Nicky.”

Nick made a clicking noise with his tongue and stood a little straighter. “I know,” he said, voice just as flat as his expression.

He turned before the man could say more, reaching for Kelly’s arm as they made their way out of the pub.

“Wasn’t your fault,” Kelly grumbled under his breath. “Why the fuck do any of these asshats think you’d be sitting around blaming yourself because your dad’s body rejected a piece of liver you risked your life donating?”

“Becausetheythink it’s my fault,” Nick said blithely, his head down to watch his steps on the uneven sidewalk.

“You don’t really think that, do you?” Kelly asked, sounding half-horrified and half-insulted.

“I know it. That was my dad’s partner. They worked together for thirty years. He responded to a domestic disturbance call at my house one night when I was about ten. Wrote the report up and everything. Disturbance caused by fall down the stairs.”

Kelly slowed and glanced over his shoulder.

“My dad’s friends all know that if I could kill people with the power of my mind, my dad would have been the first to go.”

Kelly snorted angrily. “What, they think you filled your liver with hate before you gave it to him?”

Nick chuckled, shaking his head as he continued to stare devotedly at the ground. He tightened his grip on Kelly’s arm, and Kelly moved closer to him as they walked toward the car.

“Maybe I did,” Nick murmured after a few seconds of silence.

“Nick.”

“I’d be okay with it,” he admitted. He slowed as the pain in his knee swelled, and he had to stand there for a moment with his eyes closed, waiting for it to pass. He’d eventually need surgery to repair the damage that had been done by a vicious kick. The orthopedist wanted him fully healed from his other injuries first, though, and so he was left to limp around and live on painkillers until then.

For a man who’d spent his entire life being active and relying on his dominant physical capabilities day in and day out, it was possibly the most frustrating state of being he could imagine.

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