Sloe Ride (Sinners, #4)

“I thought we already had this talk, breac.” Donal bent over Quinn’s back and embraced him from behind, a hard crush of strength Quinn hoped his father would never lose.

“I know. Hell, Miki and Brae beat it into me too. It’s just that… I’m… it hurts to see her here. Like this,” Quinn confessed. “It just… hurts.”

“It does, aye.” Donal’s granite-whiskey rumble poured gold on the darkness stretched over them. “But ye know yer mum. She’s going to be pampered for a few days, and then we’ll have to be fighting her to get her to rest. So don’t feel so sorry for her. Ye just be holding yer sympathy for the likes of me once I get her home and she starts chewing on us because she can’t sit still. That’s when ye should be coming around with yer sorries.”

Donal laid a kiss on Quinn’s temple, then headed out to the corridor, his firm strides taking him off to do battle with the hospital’s unsuspecting medical personnel.

It wasn’t as if Quinn’d never been in a hospital before. Growing up with seven Irish-tempered siblings meant frequent trips to the emergency room and a few bedside visits when one or another Morgan did something beyond foolish. Hell, there’d been a long stretch of hours, darkness, and tears back when he was a teenager and the world had gotten a bit too close for his liking, but Quinn’d never stared down at his own mother—still and pale—on sheets so white they hurt his eyes.

They also smelled of bleach. Acrid, nostril-burning bleach.

“Couldn’t they have used the lemon-scented kind?” The cotton was stiff beneath his fingers, an unyielding, stark prison. Tugging at the corners, Quinn pulled the top sheet free, flapping it slightly to loosen its tight fold. Satisfied, he patted down the blanket and was about to do the other side when he noticed his mother watching him, her hooded and dazed deep emerald eyes—his eyes—catching his every movement.

“My Donal said… ye and Rafe were fine.” She sounded raw, like she’d swallowed glass, but every inch his hard-scrabble, take-no-prisoners mother. The Gaelic was welcome, a comforting catch and song so familiar to his ears. “Then… yer arm?”

“What?” He twisted about, looking first right, then left. The turn did him in, ripping the fabric from his torn skin, and then there was blood. A lot of it, gushing from his now open wound, and he scrambled to grab tissues from the table next to his mother’s bed. She must have seen the dried trickle of blood on his arm, something he’d missed entirely. “Shite, I’m bleeding.”

“Call… doctor.” Brigid motioned toward the call button, straining to reach the module dangling from her bed’s side rails. “Need… stitches. How?”

Quinn pulled up the sleeve of Kane’s dark blue shirt, grimacing when he realized how crusted the fabric was. He’d leaned against Rafe, probably smearing blood all over him as well. Or maybe not. He frowned. It was a deep scratch—a groove, really—burned into his upper arm. “Probably sealed into the shirt when I put it on in the bathroom. I thought all the blood was yours. Well, hell.”

“Turn ’round. Let me… see,” Brigid commanded. Her wan face was nearly as bleached out as the sheets she lay on, and someone’d pulled her mane up into a queue, its wild curls spilling an auburn sunset over her pillow. Her eyes and hair were all the color she had, a frail Irish fey ghost lying too still for Quinn’s liking. “Ach, he shot ye. He’ll die—”

“Don’t worry about me, Mum. Probably would have been worse if I hadn’t bent down for the can next to me. I’ll have them look at it after I get kicked out.”

It was a sincere promise, but Brigid gave him a practiced side eye. If he hadn’t the reputation of avoiding any and all medical procedures, Quinn would have protested her damning and silent accusation, but Brigid had more than just cause.

Crossing his finger over his heart, he asserted, “I promise, Mum. On Harley’s head.”

“That’s… good. Promising on a… naked-ass cat,” Brigid rasped. She coughed, paling further, and Quinn nearly reached for the call button. “Stop that, ye wee naff… throat hurts.”

“Da said you could have ice chips. Do you want some, then?” He reached for a cup filled with icy slivers, then scooped a few out with his fingers. His mother took them, birdlike nibbles from his hand. She’d always seemed larger—much larger—and Quinn trembled, wondering how his tiny mother had the strength to survive being shot.

“Don’t look like that,” she scolded. “Always the guilty one. Should… have been a priest.”

“I’ve discovered I like sex too much,” Quinn confessed, mostly to see a smile on his mother’s face. Brigid laughed, gasping in pain after a second. He grabbed her hand, wincing when she dug her fingernails into his forearm. “Sorry, I just… didn’t mean to hurt you.”

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