Propping an elbow on his knee and resting his chin in his hand, Graham stared into the white surroundings, wondering where the door was.

“Where do you want the door to be?” his mother asked.

“It’s highly uncomfortable knowing you’re doing that,” he told her. The knowledge that she was hearing what he thought instead of what he said had him hoping he could control his thoughts.

“As a boy, you were always so serious,” she said softly, a smile reflecting in her voice.

“I didn’t grow out of that, Mom.” He wondered if she had hoped he would.

“So I see,” she murmured. “But what a fine man you’ve become, Graham. You’ve made more than enough sacrifices in your life, done more than enough to earn your chance at peace.”

Damn, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“I don’t think I’m ready for peace, Mom,” he said warily. “I’ve still got some fight left in me.”

“Do you?” his father asked. “I haven’t seen a lot of fight since you came back from Afghanistan. Even though the woman who died in your arms was a viper, still you let the memory of it hold you back from the place you know your heart belongs. That’s not fighting, son.”

Graham slid a slow look in his father’s direction. “It felt like a hell of a fight.”

Garrett Brock chuckled at the comment. “Love is sometimes the greatest battle a man can fight. You knew she wasn’t like the woman who tried to be her in an attempt to deceive you. You’ve always known she was right there, waiting for you, loving you. Perhaps the question I should ask is, why did you fight it?”

“What does Lyrica have to do with this place?” The white peace was too encompassing. Too peaceful. And he didn’t see a Mackay in sight.

Life without Mackays would be boring, he thought morosely, realizing the part they’d played in his life for so long.

“Those boys promised me the day you were born that they would always look out for you if I were to leave your life,” his father revealed. “They’ve done well. But it’s not the Mackays in general you’d miss, is it, boy?”

He hated it when his father called him boy. It meant he was disappointing him.

“To return is to face her,” his mother said then, her voice gentle. “Having you with us would complete the circle we began in that life. But it would not complete the circle you were meant to build, Graham. Which choice will you make?”

The whiteness slowly receded. It became a world washed in color, in sight and sound and scents that were incredibly sharp and focused.

He still sat. He was in the garden his father had created for the wife who so loved the sight and scent of flowers. He sat on one of the chair-size boulders, his position the same, chin resting in his palm as he watched the most incredible sight.

It was beautiful.

As he watched, the peace that suffused him was far greater than even that of the perfect white peace where his parents had come to him. It was soul deep. It was wonder and beauty; it was a perfection he’d never imagined existed.

“Mine?” he whispered, awed, so taken aback by what he was seeing that it was all he could do to contain his emotion.

“Yours,” his mother whispered, her own voice thick with emotion now. “You knew it was happening. You’ve sensed it. Isn’t it the most wondrous sight, Graham? Is this really what you want to leave? Is this what you want to continue to run from? If it is, then you can have that as well.”

“No!” He jumped to his feet to hold on to the image, anger crashing through him at the knowledge that it was leaving, that it was being taken from him. “Make it stay!”

He turned to his parents, wild with the loss pouring through him, his heart racing as he’d never felt it before, a sense of pain clenching at his chest and arm.

“Only you can make it stay, son,” Garrett said softly, somberly. “Only your choice can bring it back.”

Turning, Graham willed it back, fought for it, snarled with furious determination as the white slowly morphed again, and the image returned.

Stepping closer, he felt tears fill his eyes.

Going to one knee, he reached out, touched her face, brushed his thumb over her lips as she slept.

Then his gaze returned to the children sleeping beside her.

A boy, his Mackay looks diffused with the strong, determined lines of his father’s bloodlines.

The daughter, though, sweet heaven help them all. His daughter was pure Mackay in looks, already the image of her mother, with a hint of that bastard cousin of hers, Natches.

He couldn’t help but grin.

“The son of a bitch is going to crow about that one,” he whispered.

“Will you be there to hear it, though?” Garrett asked. “Or will Natches be the one to stand in for the father who couldn’t fight hard enough to return to her?”

—

“We’re losing him. Goddammit, we’re losing him,” Dr. Caine Branson yelled out to his surgical team, determination raging through him as he felt Graham slipping slowly away from him.

The EKG was quickly going to hell, BP was dropping.

“Like hell I’ll let you go,” he snarled softly. “I made that mad-assed father of yours a promise, Graham Brock, and I’ll be damned if you’ll see me break it.”

A lot of men had owed Garrett Brock, and Caine was but one of them. But at this moment, Caine knew, he was the most important.

His surgical team worked like the well-oiled machine it was, as though the years of working beneath him had been solely for this moment.

For this young man.

The artery was repaired, but the bullet was far too close to the heart, and the other had clipped his liver before ripping out his back.

The surgeon repairing the damage below was one of the best protégés he’d ever had. Giana Worth was worth her weight in gold. She was working quickly, efficiently, refusing to allow the teams keeping his heart beating to distract her from her job.

“BP’s coming up,” Nurse Salyer announced, though Caine could feel it, sense it.

“Heart rate’s coming back.” The male nurse, Jeffers, called out numbers.

Caine kept working. The vein was repaired. The chips of bone were removed from their precarious location next to the heart. He was almost finished, the damage nearly repaired.

“Your dad made me promise if you ever made it onto my table that I’d make damned sure you were breathing when you came off it,” he murmured.

He’d been talking to the boy since his gurney had been rushed into the ER.

“You make a liar out of me, boy, and when I reach the afterlife, I’m coming looking for you.” He worked steadily, tirelessly.

“This isn’t a good day to die,” he muttered as Graham’s heart rate fluctuated again. Garrett Brock had said that once, laughing as Caine warned him that his heroics were going to get him killed. “Buck up, boy. You’re stronger than this.”

Graham was indeed stronger.

Muttered comments and prayers slipped from the surgeon’s lips as he worked, but he was prone to do that often, anyway.

Whatever it took, he often said. He’d always felt his patients could hear him, no matter how irrational that may seem.

“There’s a girl out there crying for you, you know?” He kept the one-sided conversation moving. “Did you hear her crying your name when she came in with you? Really want to leave a Mackay sobbing, boy? Thought you knew better than that. Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches will strip your ass if they find you. Heaven or hell. It won’t matter.”

One of the techs chuckled, no doubt helplessly. They all knew the Mackays. Hell, sometimes Caine thought the whole world knew at least one Mackay, if not all of them.