Page 55 of Before You Can Blink (Rust Canyon #4)

This had been a rough couple of years for the Sullivan family. First with Daisy getting sick, and then my ma passing suddenly. If I was stressed out enough to have a damn heart attack, I could only imagine what my kids were going through .

Feeling the whole family needed a little levity, I smirked at my boy, who had somewhere along the line become a man. “You know why we stopped having babies after you, don’t you?”

Tripp lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Why do I have the feeling I don’t want to know?”

His intuition was spot on, but granting him mercy felt like a cop out. “Because you were the biggest cockblocker known to man.”

“Oh my God.” Tripp dragged a hand down his face.

“Jett!” Daisy exclaimed, smacking my arm gently.

“What? It’s true.” With a wicked grin, I tacked on, “Any time I tried to go near your mama, you’d start beating down the door, crying for her.”

My wife tsked. “That’s not why we stopped after two kids.”

“Maybe not. But it sure as hell wouldn’t have helped if we had wanted more.”

Tripp shook his head, muttering, “Almost liked it better when we used to butt heads over everything.”

“Oh, come on,” I chided. “You’re a father now. Certainly, you can understand the challenges of intimacy with your wife with a bunch of little ones underfoot. But don’t worry, you get to rediscover each other again once they’re grown and out of the house.”

Ignoring me, he spoke to Daisy. “Are we sure it was his heart? Because right now, I’m more concerned there’s something wrong with his brain.”

“What’s wrong with his brain?” Aspen’s panicked voice preceded her entry into the room. “Did he have a stroke too?”

“Nothing’s wrong with your father’s brain,” Daisy assured our daughter.

Brow creasing, Aspen turned to her brother. “Then what were you talking about? ”

Tripp kept his eyes locked on mine, arching an eyebrow in a silent challenge. When I refused to speak, he let out a wry laugh. “Oh, nothing, big sis. Just Dad commiserating over the fact that we don’t have sex lives because we have kids.”

“Whoa, speak for yourself, buddy.” Mac’s voice echoed from down the hall before he came into view, wrapping his arms around Aspen’s waist. “There’s no shortage of orgasms in the Blaze household. Isn’t that right, Freckles?” He placed an affectionate kiss to the side of her head.

Aspen’s pale face went red as a tomato, and her mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

A smug smirk tugged at Tripp’s lips. “See what you started?”

Yeah, this had gone a little off the rails, but at least the heavy blanket of tension in the room had lifted. I’d take the small victory.

Daisy leaned in close, whispering, “I see what you did there.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”

She hummed in the affirmative, letting her forehead rest against mine.

A sharp knock sounded on the door, and our heads turned to find that a doctor had joined the party.

He gave me a warm smile. “Glad to see you awake, Jett. How are you feeling?”

I grunted. “Like I’ve been run over by a truck.”

“Sorry to say, but that’s to be expected for at least a few days.”

“Great.”

With a tablet in one hand, he stepped up to the opposite side of the bed from where Daisy was seated.

“I’m Dr. Terrier, and your son has already warned me that you’re not the biggest fan of lengthy medical explanations, so I’ll keep things simple.

You’ve had a mild heart attack, and thanks to the quick action taken by your son-in-law, we were able to treat you quickly.

While you were unconscious, we did a procedure that cleared the blocked artery, so after a few days of monitoring, you can go home with some moderate restrictions. ”

“What kind of restrictions?” My gaze darted to Daisy. “I take care of my wife, and she’s got dialysis three times a week.”

Dr. Terrier’s lips pressed together. “Unfortunately, you won’t be able to drive for a month.”

“No.” I groaned, trying to sit up. “That’s not going to work. She needs me.”

Sympathy filled the doctor’s eyes. “I understand this is upsetting and a disruption to your life, but it seems like you have a decent support system.” He gestured toward my children and their spouses.

Aspen was the first to speak up. “I’ll take Mama to dialysis.”

I blew out a breath. “Sweetheart, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“What about work?”

My daughter stepped forward, grasping my hand. “That’s the beauty of being your own boss. You get to make your own hours. I want to help, so please let me.”

I wanted to scream and shout that Daisy was my wife, my responsibility—more than that, I was desperate to soak up every minute we had left together—but I had a feeling that it would fall on deaf ears.

Then the guilt set in that our children now had two sick parents to care for, stealing focus from their own families. And I hated putting them in this position.

“Fine,” I grumbled, turning my attention back to the doctor. “What else?”

Dr. Terrier took this as his cue to continue.

“Now that you’ve had a heart attack, there’s a twenty percent chance that within the next five years you will have another.

Survival rates drop after each consecutive cardiac event, so our focus will be on preventing a repeat occurrence.

The best way to do that is by managing your health with a combination of medications, along with diet and exercise. ”

My nose wrinkled. “What kind of diet?”

“You’re gonna want to cut down on your sodium and sugar intake and limit the amount of red meat you eat, while prioritizing fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and healthy oils.”

“Sounds fucking terrible.”

Daisy nudged my shoulder. “Welcome to my world.”

I cringed at the reminder that her diet had changed drastically these past few years, and my reluctance to join her in a healthier lifestyle was likely what had landed me in this hospital bed.

Penny chimed in from the corner. “We’ll find ways to jazz it up and make it less bland, and I bet Reagan would just love to get creative in the kitchen.”

This just kept getting better. Now we were dragging our ten-year-old granddaughter into caring for us. She should be enjoying her childhood instead of being stuck in a kitchen, cooking for her aging grandparents.

Overwhelmed and possibly more stressed than ever at the idea of being a burden to my family, I let my eyes drift shut, saying, “I’m tired.”

“Of course. We’ll let you get some rest,” Dr. Terrier replied.

There was a shuffling of feet near the door, but I called out, “Mac, if I could have a word?”

Surprised, my son-in-law spun around, pointing a finger toward his chest. “Me?”

“Mm-hmm.” I nodded. Turning to Daisy, I asked, “Can we have a minute alone? ”

There was a question in my wife’s eyes, but I shook my head slightly, silently asking her to drop it, which she did, rising from my bedside and leaving the room with our children.

“Shut the door,” I commanded, and Mac was quick to obey.

“Listen, if this is about what I said about orgasms earlier . . .” he began, but I cut him off.

“Come sit down.” I gestured to the chair near the bed.

Swallowing so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed, he dropped onto the chair.

“Is Bentley okay?” My battered heart twisted at the memory of the little boy’s terror-stricken face.

Mac let out a heavy exhale. “He’s rattled, as you might expect, but I think once he sees that you’re on the mend, he’ll be all right.”

“I sure hope so.”

The man seated by my side eyed me carefully. “That all that’s weighing on your mind, Jett?”

Shaking my head, I confessed, “I need a favor.”

My son-in-law leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Anything, Jett. You name it.”

This was the tricky part. There’d been a thought bouncing around at the back of my brain for years now.

And I kept it buried deep, too ashamed of voicing it aloud because it was selfish, and I feared what it would do to my soul, knowing I’d condemned someone else’s loved one to death in order to save my wife.

But now, if there was even the slightest chance that I wouldn’t live long enough to see Daisy recover, I had to ensure that she would.

“This is a too big of an ask,” I hedged.

He fixed me with a stare, his dark brown eyes full of sincerity. “Impossible.”

We’ll see.

Here goes nothing.

“You left a lot of things behind when you moved to Rust Canyon.” Mac’s brows rose, but he remained silent, allowing me to continue. “I know it’s been a long time, but I was hoping you might still have a few connections.”

“What kind of connections?” he pressed.

“Ones that might have a way of getting Daisy’s name moved up the transplant list.” It had been nearly three years, and we were creeping dangerously close to the front end of that five to ten years we’d been estimated my wife could survive on dialysis alone.

Lips parting on an exhale, an “oh” slipped out.

Immediately, I began to backtrack. “You know what? Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked, it’s—”

Mac held up a hand, effectively silencing me. “Jett, you asked for a favor; the least you can do is give me a minute to figure out how I can grant it.”

He scrubbed a hand over the stubble lining his jaw, and I watched on as the wheels turned in his brain.

Eventually, he spoke.

“Messing with the transplant list wouldn’t be exactly ethical,” he began.

“Right, I know that. It’s why—”

“You gonna let me finish or keep interrupting?” Sitting back in the chair, he folded both arms over his chest.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“But what if there was a way we could find Daisy a donor outside of the list?”

I wanted to point out that she’d already closed off the possibility of taking a kidney from one of our children, but bit my tongue, having already been called out for not letting him finish his thoughts.

A sparkle entered his eyes. “Ready to hear what I’m thinking? ”

“On bated breath.” I couldn’t refrain from uttering the sarcastic comment. My patience was wearing thin, and I hadn’t been kidding earlier when I told the doctor I was tired.

“Typically, the Foundation grants funds to already established charities and organizations . . .” A few years into their marriage, Mac and Aspen had decided to funnel a large portion of Mac’s massive fortune into the creation of the Forever Freckles Foundation, which supported worthy causes around the globe, with Bex Grant at the helm.

“What if, instead, we use our resources to start a nationwide campaign to find a living donor match for Daisy? If we’re successful, maybe we can do the same for more people out there waiting for a transplant. Pay it forward, you know?”

Pay it forward. Those might as well have been the magic words, and a part of me wondered if old Buck Livingston was speaking through my daughter’s husband, reminding me to accept help when I needed it so I could turn around and provide assistance when I was in a position to do so.

“You know what, Mac? I think that’s a great idea.”

In the span of a single day, my son-in-law had not only saved my life, but he might have saved my wife’s too.

I’d never been more glad Aspen had needed a fake boyfriend all those Christmases ago.