“What?” Miki sounded worse than Connor felt, but the snarl was still there, and the sound of it made Con smile.
Leaning over the space between them, Connor pointed at the man’s phone and said, “Call your boyfriend. I told him I’d give him an update once we found you. I don’t do that, he’ll come kick my ass.”
“Fuck. I’m fine. He worries too much, but okay,” Miki snapped back but took the phone anyway, his fingers flying over the screen. “Shit, I didn’t even get the damned sticks!”
“I NEVER should have asked them to go down there.” Forest tried taking a step forward, but pacing in the waiting room was next to impossible.
Mainly because it was full of Morgans—both cop and otherwise. He’d spent a couple of Sundays at the house, but Forest’d never encountered the clan en masse. Even in the large area set aside for waiting families, they were overwhelming.
He was pretty sure he now knew what it felt like to be a penguin in a kiddie pool full of leopard seals.
He just didn’t have a glacier to hide behind.
“It’s okay, kid,” Kane said, patting Forest absently on the shoulder. It might have been meant to be a light tap, but the hit rattled Forest’s teeth in his skull. “Damie’s tough. And Miki….”
Kane didn’t finish what he was saying. Instead, the large man paced off toward the ward doors, only to be turned around before he could push them open by a sharp word from his father. Kane glared back for a moment, then paced back off, hands on his hips and spine taut and firm.
“Worse than trying to keep them in their playpens,” Donal muttered under his breath to Brigid.
“Yer the one who yelled at me when I tied them to the tree,” she shot back, her voice rolling along with Donal’s heavier accent. “It was good enough for my gran.”
“Yer gran also taught ye how to spit chewing tobacco when ye were three.” He rolled his eyes. “Thank God, yer mum put a stop to that nonsense.”
“Now yer scaring the boy.” Brigid reached out to snag Forest’s hand. He let her pull him closer, grateful for her arm as it slid around his waist. “It’ll be fine, love. All of them are stubborn bastards. Don’t know what you were thinking when ye fell in with this lot.”
“The boy’s a lot stronger than ye think,” Donal said, winking at Forest. “How are ye holding up, son?”
“They’re a bit….” He searched for a word to describe the sheer presence of Morgan around him. “Intense, and I’m scared. Scared shitless.”
“It’s okay to be scared, son.” Donal wrapped his arms around both of them, squeezing lightly before letting go. It was like being hugged by a redwood, but Forest thought it felt nice. “But I’m telling ye, they’ll be fine. Injuries weren’t bad, and the doctors just want to make sure they get their pound of flesh.”
Forest was mollified, but the Morgans didn’t seem to get the “they’ll all be fine” memo. Even Quinn, the quietest of the Morgans, glowered and simmered from his place against the wall. A young nurse tried to move him to reach into a cabinet next to his elbow, and she was pushed back by the sharpness of his hard green eyes. Apologizing to the woman, Kiki dislodged her brother. Shoving him aside, Kiki aimed him toward a less trafficked part of the room.
The others were no less worried and certainly as fierce. He’d barely recognized Riley, who’d come to pick him up. Even though he’d gotten a phone call from Connor saying everything was okay, but they were at the hospital, Forest feared the worst when Con’s younger brother showed up at the door looking like an avenging angel ready to reap his soul. As a collective, they were a force, a roaming tsunami of bristling nerves and snapping tempers.
“Who’s here for Connor Morgan?” As one, the clan snapped around to face the man standing by the swinging doors. “He can have a visitor now. He’ll be able to go home once we get the final tests back in, but everything looks good.”
Kiki took a step, but Donal caught her gently. Nodding to Forest, he said, “It’s the boy’s time, darling. Go on, Forest. He’ll be looking for ye.”
Brigid squeezed Forest one last time and shooed him toward the door. “Tell him not to give the doctors a hard time, or I’ll be back there to remind him of his manners.”
“What about Miki St. John?” Kane growled.
“That’s who I was going to ask about next.” The nurse stood firm against Kane’s looming form. “You can come back now too.”
The walk down the hall wasn’t memorable. He left the wave of Irish behind and caught a whiff of it in someone’s voice in a room down the way. At some point along the noisy clatter of the emergency room, he’d lost Kane when the male nurse guided Kane toward one of the side rooms. Forest got a glimpse of a grit-smeared Miki, and then the man was lost from sight, swallowed up by Kane’s embrace.