His refusal to spill his thoughts broke, seemingly as solid as his resolve not to feed Miki’s fucking dog from his plate. “I’m the reason he’s lying there in a fucking machine with catgut holding him together.”
“Really?” The older man coolly shrugged and sipped at his coffee with a loud slurp. “I thought ye were the very reason he was with us at all.”
There would be no retreat now, not with the challenge lying subtly in Donal’s words. Inwardly cursing his weakness, Damien hid behind the rim of his cup, keeping his voice steady. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“What do ye think would have happened to your Sinjun if ye hadna’ found him that night?” The wolfish gaze drifted back to Damien’s face, pinning him in place. “Where do ye think he’d be now, Damie boy?”
“He’d have been….” Damien came up short, horrified at the places his mind took him. “Miki’s strong. He’d have kicked life in the balls.”
“Aye, maybe. But maybe not,” Donal murmured, turning the cup around in his broad hands. “I think our Miki’s strong because ye had a lot to do with his becoming the man he is. The two of ye, bound together in a way none of us understand, but it’s a glorious thing to behold. Where do ye think the world would be without ya’two? How silent this world would be without ye.”
“What? So God put us together?” He wanted to tear the man’s reasoning apart, shredding his words to show Donal the fallacy of his beliefs. “Where the fuck was God when that truck tore through us? Where the fuck was fate when some asshole… probably the same fucking asshole who killed my mother and shot at me… sliced Miki open?”
“I don’t have answers for ye there, Damie boy.” The man leaned back, resting his shoulders against the hospital wall. “But does that change the past? Because I’m telling ye, that boy in there… the one that loves my son… the one we’ve all come to love… is who he is because of ye.”
“Miki—”
“Hear me out.” Donal held up his hand, stopping Damien before he could go on. “I knew ye weren’t listening to Kane when he was talking about what happened. Were ye? Listening, I mean?”
“Um….” Damien thought back to what had been said when Sionn spotted the Morgans. His brain misfired, focusing only on how he’d held onto Sionn’s hand and the buzz of Irish accents murmuring around him. “Not a fucking thing. Just… that he was being stitched up. That he was okay.”
Donal sighed, the sound of an exasperated father, and Damien instinctively flinched when the man raised his hand to pat the bench next to him. A flicker of troubled emotion ran over the older man’s handsome face, and he patted at the wood again, silent and watchful.
“Yer Sinjun is a fighter. No mistake about that,” Donal began when Damien settled down beside him. “But see, Damie boy, while Miki has always been a fighter, yer the one who gave him something… no, someone to fight for.”
“I was dead.”
“He still fought for ye.” The man shook his head. “Do ye think it was easy for him to fend off the people who were suckling at yer corpse? He didn’t have time to mourn ye. Not really. There were too many people picking at him, even when he was hiding. Yer the one who taught him how to love, Damie boy. Yer the reason he can stand with my son and say he’s with Kane. No one before ye gave a fecking shit about that boy. And the less said about the bastards who had him before….”
“No offense, I know you’re a cop and everything.” Damien glanced at the man. “But I’m really fucking glad they’re dead.”
“Well, son, as a cop I’m supposed to be saying that every death is a tragedy, but for those two men, I’m thinking the devil should have had his due a long time ago,” Donal intoned. “And we’re not talking about them, are we?”
“No, sir, we’re not.” Before Damie could figure out where the hell the sir had come from, Donal spoke again.
“He fought that man off… the one who stabbed him. Miki was waiting for Kane to bring the car around because my boy didn’t want him to risk the wet sidewalk, and that bastard tried to gut him. Imagine then, that asshole thinking he can come up to our Miki and filet him without paying for it? No, not our Miki. He did what ye’d told him to do. Don’t know if ye remember it—”
“If someone’s bigger and stronger than you”—Damien grinned at the memory bobbing up to the surface of his brain—“you grab something and even the playing field.”
“Even it he did, at that.” Donal laughed, a hearty bark rumbling up from his chest. “Picked up one of those wire magazine things people put flyers in and beat the shite out of that arsehole. Then for good measure, grabbed the knife and gave him back what he gave our Miki. Pity he slipped on the wet. That’s what brought him down. That knee of his gave out, else we’d be staring at that blond bastard through bars.”